we have in the gospel today the words lord i am not worthy to have you enter under my roof
only say the word and my servant will be healed those words of the centurion who recognized the
holiness of jesus and his unworthiness his sinfulness and yet he was asking our lord to
come and heal his servant so he trusted in god and but he saw his unworthiness he was had a humble
heart and our lord said you he has great faith greater than many of the jews and for that our
lord cured him without even going to his house and this the centurion believed that but we have
these beautiful words of humility that we recite
before
we
we
received the blessed sacrament at holy mass and now we are reciting the literal words
lord i am not worthy to have you come under my roof now with a new translation
so we have that little taking of those words from scripture to say for mass
before to help us to prepare to receive our lord and this is so important
before receiving jesus in the blessed sacrament what is our preparation and it's so appropriate
during season of advent to reflect on the preparation receiving jesus in the eucharist as
we are preparing to receive him in christmas christmas time how do we receive our lord what
is our disposition of our heart we it needs to be humble contrite aware of our unworthiness
our unworthiness our nothingness and that receiving jesus in the eucharist is a great privilege
that we don't deserve and yet god god's great mercy and love offers that to us but we have
the obligation to receive him well to receive him worthily to prepare well and we are all sinners
we're all nothing in the sight of god and so we have to acknowledge that and we we need to
be sorry for our sins we need to look into our heart and our actions and purify our life we have
to purify our mind purify our thoughts purify our actions in our daily life and if we come
to mass and during this time of the beginning of the mass where we recall our sins we need to be
deeply sorry for them truly sorry and have that
unrighteousness and we need to be more humble and more prepared to receive jesus in a way that
we will please him but if we come before him with all this dirt and sin and uh lack of charity and
lack of love for god we are not going to please our lord he wants a humble heart a contrite heart
a heart full of charity and love
so we need to cleanse our heart first we need to really work and look at what kind of bad habits
where we have what kind of sinful tendencies we have in our relationship with our neighbor
in our thinking in our words and we need to cleanse our life we need to cleanse our actions
purify our our actions and go to confession of course but even since we can't go to confession
every day. We can make an act of contrition, a deep act of true act of contrition, which says
I reject sin. I abhor sin. I am going to do all that I can not to commit sin. I'm going to
change my life reform and change my ways of acting so that I don't sin, so that I'm not
flirting with sin. I'm not getting close to sin, but I am cleansing myself from sin, and I am
acting against it. I am opposed to sin. I'm not just not sinning, but I'm opposed to it. I fight
it. I reject it. I repel from sin. This is what our Lord wants our heart to be before we receive
Jesus, not this lackadaisical, weak,
weak,
way of dealing with sinfulness and temptation, but he wants a rejection. He wants us to reject
sin and to cleanse our hearts, and then to fill our hearts with love and that disposition of love
for Jesus that we want to receive him, we desire to receive him, and we want to receive all that
he wants to give us, those graces, the virtues, love,
especially, and we need to have that disposition. This is what our Lord is looking for. Are we going
to give that to him? Are we going to cleanse our life and our heart and mind, and are we going to
fill it with love, or are we going to just receive our Lord in a mediocre way, in a lackadaisical way,
in a way where we don't really care very much about him? We don't have much faith.
We need to have this interior disposition, especially,
this interior disposition of hatred for sin and love for God and love for our neighbor and love
that disposition of love in our heart, but we need an exterior disposition as well.
As we come into church, we dress well. We compose ourselves well. We don't talk and chatter. We
don't chew gum. We don't do things profane. We're not too familiar with our Lord, and
and we
pay attention, we pray, and we
communicate with our Lord in a reverential way, in a way that's not too familiar. This
too familiar disposition has come and creeped into the church after Vatican II.
Too much familiarity has creeped in, and now we don't have, we lost a lot of the reverence that
we should have. We need to bring that in. We need to bring that in, and we need to bring that in to
We need to make sure that we're getting that into there, and we need to get that to the church.
We need to bring that in, and we need to get that into the church, and we need to get that into the
that reverence back and be careful not to be too familiar.
If we receive our Lord in the hands
of receiving Holy Communion,
it should be done in a very reverent way
since the church has permitted it,
should still be done in a very reverent way,
creating a throne to receive our Lord,
but perhaps in a better way to receive our Lord
on the tongue, which prevents us
from any kind of too much familiarity.
If we receive our Lord in the hands,
there's a temptation to have this idea of manipulation.
Manipulation comes from the Latin manus, the hands.
Manipulating our Lord too much,
taking him, doing things with whatever we want,
and not being reverent is that temptation.
So we can avoid that by receiving our Lord in the tongue
and showing that special reverence
for our Lord in the hands.
And we think of the way we dress,
our exterior composure,
and that's why we want to have a beautiful church,
beautiful chalices, beautiful vestments,
beautiful monstrances, everything beautiful
surrounding our Lord so that our faith is strong
and so that we're showing the proper reverence to our Lord
and we're not getting too familiar.
And then when we're too familiar,
we are not sensitive to sin.
We're not sensitive to the love and humility
that God wants us to have, and we get lazy.
And laziness, after with laziness comes sin,
comes sin and a lack of sensitivity to sin.
And this is all, all this is what God does not want.
Our Lord wants us to be humble, contrite,
pure of heart and full of love for him.
And so these are all the things we need to,
have in mind as we are saying beautiful words like these.
Lord, I am not worthy to have you under my roof.
Only say the word and my soul shall be healed.
And yet by you I have the
Size of my heart and my heartbeat.
I am worthy to have you under my roof.