The sacrifice of the Holy Mass is the most powerful prayer that can ever be made because it is the prayer and sacrifice of Christ Himself. This prayer is unique only to the Catholic Church. At Mass, Christ prays for us, He goes to Calvary anew on our behalf and embraces the wood of the Cross. At that singular sacrifice, he performs the great miracle of transubstantiation and makes bread and wine His body and blood. He takes us to the table of the Last Supper and His sacred voice reverberates: “Take this all of you and eat of it… drink it…” Thus he gives the totality of himself-body, soul and divinity – to us.
We can only conclude here that we are twice blessed! In the Catholic Church, we experience the diverse expressions of the powers of the Holy Spirit being made manifest in the different spiritualities that we possess. This spiritual dynamism is encountered in the Pentecost drive of the Charismatics, the Marian gentleness of the Legionaries, the saintly calls of the various pious societies modeled after the spiritualties of individual saints and the Eucharist model of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary, among others. In a word, ours is a Church made up of all the Churches and spiritualities that abound; hence the title: Catholic (universal).
• Most Rev. (Dr.) Alfred Adewale Martins, Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Lagos.
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