There is a passage in that work which, if he had never written another thing, would have been enough to have made us remember him, especially in the times in which we are now living. Especially over these past months many have come to a deeper understanding of the Holy Eucharist as a life-line. Even for those unable to attend in person, the objective grace flowing from the Mass being celebrated is as the blood flowing through our veins. Think of that when reading what Dom Gregory wrote of Christ's command to "do this, in memory of me…”
"Was ever a command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of human greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetich because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and prisoner-of-war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of S. Joan of Arc -- one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei -- the holy common people of God."
It is my privilege to offer each day, quietly, the Holy Sacrifice in our family’s private Chapel dedicated to the Martyr St. George. Each day it is in union with those countless Masses being offered throughout the world, obeying our Lord’s command to "do this, in memory of me…” It is here that your intentions are prayed for, remembering the living and the dead, and giving thanks for the blessings of daily life and for the hope of eternal glory.
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Pictured: The Chapel of the Martyr St. George