Action Alert!

Romano Guardini—Christ’s Offering of Self

By James T. Majewski ( bio - articles - email ) | Jun 17, 2022 | In Catholic Culture Audiobooks (Podcast)

Listen to this podcast on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed | YouTube Channel

This is a listener-supported podcast! Thanks for your help!

“The Lord’s memorial is the central mystery of our Christian life. It has taken the form of a meal at which He offers Himself as the food. We were taught this in the Communion instruction of our childhood; we hear it repeated again and again in sermons and retreats; we read it in religious books. Yet are we really aware of the stupendousness of the thought?”

Romano Guardini (1885-1968) was a German priest and academic, regarded to be one of the most important Catholic intellectual figures of the 20th century. He authored numerous books and was a major influence on such Catholic thinkers as Josef Pieper, Luigi Giussani and Joseph Ratzinger, among others. He declined a cardinalship offered by Pope Paul VI in 1965, and his cause for canonization was opened in December 2017 by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

Guardini was particularly influential in the area of liturgy. The work from which this reflection comes, Meditations Before Mass, originated as a series of discourses offered in preparation for the celebration of Mass. “Their purpose,” Guardini writes, “was simply to reveal what the Mass demands of us and how those demands may be properly met.” This particular meditation can serve as a helpful preparation for the coming Solemnity of Corpus Christi.

Links

Christ’s Offering of Self full text: https://guardini.wordpress.com/meditations-before-mass/

Donate at: http://www.catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Theme music: 2 Part Invention, composed by Mark Christopher Brandt, performed by Thomas Mirus. ©️2019 Heart of the Lion Publishing Co./BMI. All rights reserved.

James T. Majewski is Director of Customer Relations for CatholicCulture.org, the “voice” of Catholic Culture Audiobooks, and co-host of Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast. Based in New York City, he holds both a BA in Philosophy and an MFA in Acting. See full bio.

Sound Off! CatholicCulture.org supporters weigh in.

All comments are moderated. To lighten our editing burden, only current donors are allowed to Sound Off. If you are a current donor, log in to see the comment form; otherwise please support our work, and Sound Off!

There are no comments yet for this item.