We tend to be sorrowful and weep over things which don't really matter. We are permitted to partake of the bread of angels and the cup of eternal salvation. Yet lesser concerns distract for this amazing blessing. We treat our other pursuits and endeavors as so important that we make idols from them. They clamor for our hearts, trying to drowned out the rightful place of God.
My beloved ones, avoid idolatry.
Because we are allowed to participate in the one sacrifice of Jesus our hearts need to be as wholly his as we can manage. Because the Eucharist is the Blood and the Body of Christ truly and substantially present in the Church we have no wiggle room to also serve the world. The gift we are given is too great, too present, and too overwhelming generous, for us to justify anything other than complete dedication.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and also the cup of demons.
Yet we persist in making our token offerings to the world when we choose lesser things instead of God. We still try and eat from both tables. In fact there has only been one person in the history of the Church who never fed in any sense from the table of demons. That is the person Christ gives us as mother.
Then he said to the disciple,
"Behold, your mother."
He gives Mary to us precisely because she can teach us how to care only about the one thing necessary, to receive only from table of the LORD. Only if we learn this can we stand by the cross of Christ with Mary. We have earthly sorry whenever our tainted desires are not met. It is these concerns which make us flee from the cross with most of the disciples of Jesus. Mary has no room in her heart for such earthly sorrow. She has sorrow only to see her Son abused and neglected. Her sorrow can heal our sorrow.
and you yourself a sword will pierce
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
Mary's sorrow calls us to a recognition of what truly matters. It is a life-giving sorrow that leads to repentance. It is utterly unlike our sorrow which just becomes more and more desperate. The sorrow of Mary calls us to fully enter into the cross he bears, to stand there with him as she does. Only in entering fully into this sorrow where all the things of earth and of our former lives are striped away do we experience the freedom of the resurrection. Then we can take up the cup Jesus himself gives us, untainted by any of demons or idols.
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
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