“The beginning of the Gospel stands for the whole; uttering it, one is as it were sending out the breath of the Holy Spirit to engage the four winds, pervading them and turning them to good. The world is thus declared to be the realm of God’s creative word; matter is subordinated to the power of his Spirit. For matter too is his creation and hence the sphere of his gracious power. Ultimately we receive the very bread of the earth from his hands. How beautifully the new eucharistic bread is thus related to our daily bread! The eucharistic bread imparts its blessing to the daily bread, and each loaf of the latter silently points to him who wished to be the bread of us all. So the liturgy opens out into everyday life, into our earthly life and cares; it goes beyond the church precincts because it actually embraces heaven and earth, present and future. How we need this sign! Liturgy is not the private hobby of a particular group; it is about the bond which holds heaven and earth together, it is about the human race and the entire created world. In the Corpus Christi procession, faith’s link with the earth, with the whole of reality, is represented “in bodily form,” by the act of walking, of treading the ground, our ground.” ~Pope Benedict XVI
(Above Quote From: The Feast of Faith, Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, pp. 134-135)
This took my breath away! How beautiful to think of the Liturgy in such terms. And the image of uttering the Gospel as sending out the breath of the Holy Spirit to engage the four winds…wow.
