Dear Friends,

        In Eucharistic Prayer II, which is often prayed in the Mass, a couple of phrases occur that may need some explanation.  The priest invokes the Holy Spirit upon the gifts “like the dewfall”.  What’s that mean?  In dry land like Israel any precipitation is important even the dew which nourishes plants to take root and blossom.  It is a sign of God’s blessing.  It is also a reminder of God’s gift of manna He provided in the desert.  In the book of Exodus we read “in the morning you shall  have your fill of bread” and “dew lay all about the camp” and “when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert were fine flakes.”  So, the dew refers to the action of the Holy Spirit blessing and enabling the hosts, our manna, to become the body of Christ.

        Another one is when we pray for the dead and ask God to “welcome them into the light of your face.”  To see God’s face is to see, understand, God as He is.  To know intimately God’s nature - His essence - in all His power and grandeur.  It is believed only angels and the blessed in heaven can see God’s face because to see it during our human life would be so overwhelming we would die.  We pray that our beloved dead know “God’s face”.

        In the new translation of the Profession of Faith we run across the word “consubstantial”.  This has many people wondering what it exactly means.  The prefix “con” can mean “together with”.  Substance means the nature or essence of something - that which it truly is.  The Father and Son share one and the same divine nature or substance.  The Son is God as is the Father.  The higher-ups didn’t think “one in being” expressed this concept sufficiently - who'd thought?  It was originally expressed as consubstantial to battle a heresy that said Jesus and the Father had a similar, not same, substance or nature.

                     Fr. Tom