True Nobility

The present financial "crisis" (read: mess) is ready ground to be dug in order to find exemplars of avarice, conniving, and thievery. In short, it is filled with the kinds of grubbing human behavior stuffed in fine men's wear that makes one a believer with Paul Ricoeur's "masters of suspicion" - the constant deconstructor of any good in human nature.

Where can one turn for true nobility, honorable action, and hope? The one place to which one has always been able to turn: Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Modern persons have not perhaps lost completely their capacity to grasp the sacramental nature of grace and nature. For in the Mass (Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion, etc.) we are not only invited to enter the Paschal Mystery with our understanding but with our being. We fulfill in our participation the normative and imperative of Our Lord in St. John's Gospel, chapter 6:

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. {54-56}

Through sheer grace, our nature becomes sanctified. We become ennobled participants in the Being of the Triune God, and by our acts shall others know us: honorable, loved, chivalrous - children of the Most High.