Writer's Wednesday - Kathryn J. Hermes

What I receive from the Eucharistic Liturgy doesn't depend on how I feel or whether I have a "good experience" at Mass. Rather, it is about what God has done, and all that God promises to do. As Catholics, our daily lives are not fully broken open until joined with other in this art of praising and thanking God in the midst of our human situation. To pray for and with and out of a suffering world, out of our own suffering is to learn something true about praise and blessing; it is to profess most authentically that God is God, the One who alone deserves our worship and adoration. To continue to worship in the liturgy, to acknowledge God in the midst of adversity as well as in good fortune, is to understand ever more deeply who we are in relation to God. The liturgy is best celebrated when we bring real life to the healing and consoling, the reconciling and illuminating work of God. There we learn to speak the language we pray. We are refashioned and our perspectives enlightened by the repeated hymns of praise and thanksgiving, our voices raised with the angels in the proclamation of the power of God's love: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might. The liturgy is a school for remembering who God has promised to be, and by recalling who God has been for us, we can then recall who God will be. And we can remind God to be God--to come and save us now!

---Kathryn J. Hermes, FSP, Surviving Depression, A Catholic Approach.

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