Photo courtesy of the National Geographic Society The nearest star in our universe is the Sun. This nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma is 330,000 times larger than our vast planet, and accounts for 99.86% of the mass of our solar system. In other words, the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, along with earth and the other five planets, combined, do not weigh a tiny fraction of what the sun weighs. With a core temperature of 15.7 million degrees, it fuses 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium per second, sending it 93 million miles to power our planet and everything in our solar system. The sun is about 5 billion years old, which to our sense of time seems eternal.
“Imagine eating the sun—and imagine you could do it without perishing. What would happen? You would receive into your body the source of light and warmth.” With those words Peter Kwasniewski opens his new book on the Eucharist, The Holy Bread of Eternal Life.
Today we celebrate the first time a human being “ate the sun.” Her name was Mary, a poor girl from a village in an outlying Roman province. She ate the sun without being annihilated. She became the sun by receiving it into her body. It transformed her into light and warmth, radiating through her.
Today one billion of us on planet earth are Catholic, and a third of the planet’s population are Christian. It began with a poor girl eating the sun, and now we can all eat the sun and not be annihilated. We become light and warmth, radiating God’s glory. In half an hour I will begin the Mass for the Feast of the Annunciation. I will eat the Sun, and then give the Sun to the forty or fifty people at Mass. May it not annihilate us, but transform us into light and heat!
“Imagine eating the sun—and imagine you could do it without perishing. What would happen? You would receive into your body the source of light and warmth.” With those words Peter Kwasniewski opens his new book on the Eucharist, The Holy Bread of Eternal Life.
Today we celebrate the first time a human being “ate the sun.” Her name was Mary, a poor girl from a village in an outlying Roman province. She ate the sun without being annihilated. She became the sun by receiving it into her body. It transformed her into light and warmth, radiating through her.
Today one billion of us on planet earth are Catholic, and a third of the planet’s population are Christian. It began with a poor girl eating the sun, and now we can all eat the sun and not be annihilated. We become light and warmth, radiating God’s glory. In half an hour I will begin the Mass for the Feast of the Annunciation. I will eat the Sun, and then give the Sun to the forty or fifty people at Mass. May it not annihilate us, but transform us into light and heat!
RSS Feed