Every now and again, I glimpse it.

I have a friend who has recently re-started attending Mass. I'm pretty sure he grew up Catholic but because of circumstances about marriage he and his wife went and were wed elsewhere. Now his kids are old enough to start asking questions and he doesn't have answers. Being the kind of person I am, I invited him to our parish and he's started coming--three or four weeks running now. He'd looked closer to home but the times didn't work out, they didn't have anything for the kids, such as that.

So it's occurred to me to look at Mass, the Catholic faith, faith in God in general through the eyes of his children. And it's bizarre to think about, not to put too fine a point on it. It is fantastic and incredible, and I don't mean those as superlatives for "good." It is like a dream, impossible to believe.

The idea that a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent Being should put on flesh to bring me closer to Him. To decide to endure birth (which I've read isn't any more pleasant for the baby than the mother--think about it), hunger, thirst, cold, heat, uncomfortable shoes, and itchy clothes just as a start. Then to choose to go through the Passion--the scourging, crowning with thorns, the ridicule, carrying the cross, the very crucifixion itself. He left Heaven to do all that for... me.
And He still comes to me, to all of us, to nourish us every time we attend Mass. Not just our hearts and minds with His Word, but physically and tangibly as Food.

My husband asked me why I was a little wet-eyed at Mass this week. It's a wonder I wasn't sobbing in the pew.