God and Man at Table are Sat Down

Every time I hear the theme from the movie "Schindler's List" I hear the melody of this song.  The song is "God and Man at Table are Sat Down."  In the midst of the horrors of the holocaust there were some who sat down with God to accomplish some good.  I haven't searched for the song in a long time but behold I found it today and with such spectacular images of Yosemite National Park.  And that leads to another reflection.  After I first left from studies for the priesthood, then from formation for a missionary society I moved to California.  I got a job teaching in the lovely San Joaquin Middle School, in the Diocese of Stockton.  The nuns who ran the school, Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, were a great community very warm, kind and generous.  My first long weekend off I decided to go to Yosemite National Park.  My hope was to see the place, take a few days away, alone, and be on a kind of retreat.  What a retreat it was.  As I hiked around the place, visiting a couple of different falls and walking along many paths I reflected on the paths my life had taken to get me where I was at that moment.  I pondered about whether I had made the right decision in leaving studies and family, friends and home and move to a place where all these things would be absent.  But what an opening it made, I would later realize, for so many other people and things and events.  On that weekend journey, as I stopped by an opening in the path I hiked a little above ground level and found a rock from where I pondered the massiveness and the stupendous beauty of the place, filled with a majesty I hadn't ever experienced anywhere before.  I reflected that if God had to find a place to retreat, here on earth, it might be there at Yosemite.  It was perfect home for Him and a perfect place to be with the Lord.  As you listen to the song allow the images to transport you to the place where you imagine God would rest when coming to our world. After you have rested there come back, realize that the place where God chose to rest here on earth was in the person of Jesus Christ.  It is in Him that God chooses to be with us.  It is in us that Jesus chooses to be united in the presence of the sacrament of His Body and Blood.  It makes me think of the line from the song, "Gift of Finest Wheat," "Whom all the world cannot contain, comes in our hearts to dwell."  That is nothing short of phenomenal!  In all the majesty and splendor where we sense the presence of God, imagine the reality that He comes into this creation of flesh and bone to dwell.  Thus is the Mystery of the Eucharist.  God and man at table are sat down, but it is God who invites us to the Eucharistic Table.  Our presence is a response to the Divine Grace of the invitation.  We respond most fully when we get up and bring others to the same table with us!