CORPUS  CHRISTI… 

BODY  OF  CHRIST….  AMEN 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Corpus Christi… Body of Christ …. Amen.”

Today we’re celebrating the feast of Corpus Christi – which – as you know – means – simply and profoundly, “Body of Christ!”

Amen.

THREE QUESTIONS

First Question: When you say, “Amen!” – after coming down the aisle  - as  you receive the Body of Christ - at the moment before Holy Communion  – Union with Christ - what do you mean by that, “Amen”?

Second Question: After Mass today – with the Gold Monstrance in hand – with the Bread of Life – Christ – in the center  of that  monstrance – monstrance from the Latin word “monstrare” - to show – as in the word, “demonstration” - we’re going to walk out the front door of this church – walk down Duke of Gloucester Street  – go in through the brown wooden gates – which is along - the long red brick wall of St. Mary’s Gardens - process through the back gardens and lawn – go around the Carroll House – go through some of the parking lot - and around some cars that may be stuck  – depending on the bridge down below – being opened or closed -  and then we’ll march back into the church – well as all this is happening – what are your  thoughts about  Corpus Christi – the Body of Christ? [By the way that’s a  138  word sentence.]

Third Question: If someone who has no religion – or no Catholic background -  saw the procession today – or walked into the Eucharistic Adoration Chapel down below -  which is open almost all the year – and saw the Gold Monstrance with something white inside the center glass – and asked you what  this was all about, what would some of your  answers be?

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel from part of the 6^th Chapter of the Gospel of John – addresses these questions.

Recommendation – from time to time – read over and over and over again the 6^th Chapter of the Gospel of John.

Read it at home – read it in the Eucharistic Adoration Chapel – read it here in this church or any church.

If you’re scared of death, read just the first sentence in today’s gospel – John 6: 51:  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven ; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

For me that’s as good as – and I connect it with – the bumper  sticker and poster size John 3:16 – that appears over and over again – especially at sporting events:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.”

Isn’t this the core reason why we come to Mass?  Isn’t this the core reason why some people come back to church after dropping out? I’ve often heard people say,  “I missed going to communion.” Don't we come here to connect with Christ - the New Moses who will take us across the desert of life - as we heard about in today's first reading from Deuteronomy [8:2-3, 14b-16a] We don't have to do life alone. Don't we want to be in communion and in community with others?

CONTROVERSIES

As you know there are controversies when it comes to coming to communion – and to me – the controversies say so much. To me it means people know the sacredness of the Body of Christ. They know it’s not just a piece of bread. They know, “Christ is here!”

On a day like today – and from time to time – I always remember the sermon example I heard a half dozen different Redemptorists tell through the years.

It was a Corpus Christi or Forty Hours  procession in Puerto Rico and a priest was walking down the street with the monstrance – with Christ, the Bread of Life, in the center. A tourist on the sidewalk asked in English, “What’s going on?”

Someone – who knew English -  near him in the crowd - on the sidewalk -answered, “Oh that’s Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, going by.”

And the man, having heard of Jesus Christ, but never having heard of the Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, in the Bread, said, “You mean – you believe – that – that is Jesus – who lived 2000 years ago – that he is in that white bread – in that gold thing?”

“Yes,” the local Catholic  said.

At that the tourist  - stunned – surprised – said, “If I believed - that is Jesus Christ – I would fall on my knees – right here on this street - and never get up again.”

Pope Francis – in the past  few days – said out loud – that Mafia folks in Calabria who kill and do atrocious things to others – excommunicate themselves from the Church. Here’s how the news report put it: “Pope Francis journeyed Saturday to the heart of Italy's biggest crime syndicate, met the father of a 3-year-old boy slain in the region's drug war, and declared that all mobsters are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church.”

I hope he has a bullet proof white cassock.

There’s one more take on the issue of who or who shouldn’t be going to communion. 

Whatever your take on this issue is – the fact that people have strong opinions on all this – tells me that we’re dealing with more than ordinary bread here.

I heard another sermon a good 40 years ago – that changed my whole way of looking at life and the Body of Christ. A priest said: “Some people have so much respect for Communion – the Body of Christ – but so little respect for the Body of Christ – all the people around us. Then he quoted Saint Paul’s great speech about all of us being members of the Body of Christ – First Corinthians 12: 12-31.

Ever since then I have sensed the presence of Christ in everyone – that we’re all in the Body of Christ.  Sometimes I forget that; sometimes others forget that. Sometimes I don’t act like that – that is, as a member of his Body; sometimes others don’t.

Does Pope Francis see the Mafia folks as the Body of Christ?

The newspaper accounts of the story I just mentioned said that Pope Francis went to a prison down there in Southern Calabria – to visit the father of the 3 year old boy who was killed. The story gets intriguing when one hears that the boy was in a car with his grandfather and  the grandfather’s girlfriend while the boy's father was in prison for drug trafficking. The boy, the grandfather and the girlfriend were all shot and killed and the car was torched.

I think of Matthew 25:36  – when Jesus said, “I was in prison … and you  visited me.” That's what Pope Francis was doing by going to visit someone in prison - besides challenging those making money off drugs. 

I think of the Church having changed wonderfully when having funeral Masses for those who have committed suicide. If ever a family needed a Mass – to me it’s then.

I think of the Church readdressing at present  the Reception of Communion for so many folks whose lives have been broken by divorce and other disasters.

Let me add a personal twist in all this. I go crazy – whenever I come to the part of the consecration of the Mass and the words now are “Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.”

Since the 1970’s – most of my life as a priest – the words were “for all”. I understand the German Catholic Church has blocked that “for many” and kept “for all”.  I know some priests still say, “for all”.

I’ve heard theologians say, “for many” in the Latin – means “for all”.

I’ve never been able to find out who forced these changes on us – and I’m glad I hear more and more voices – asking that we straighten out this new English translation of the Roman Missal. I go with what the book says because I also know there are people who get upset when priests change words that aren't in the book.

But this one little change hits at my gut – because I’m a Redemptorist  and our motto is, “Copiosa apud eum redemption” – which has often been translated from the Latin as, “With Him there is Copious or Fullness of Redemption." And we understand that means "for all.” Our motto comes from Psalm 130.

CONCLUSION

Ooops. Enough.

I’m here to speak as one member of the Body of Christ.

I’m urging you today to reflect deeply on what your “Amen” means – when you say, “Amen” when you come down the aisle to receive the Corpus Christi – the Body of Christ. Amen.

BREAD  OF  LIFE 

Poem for Today

EUCHARIST

Grip of Christ around my heart!

Ah, let nothing rend apart

Flesh and love that interlock

Thick as roots that buckle rock.

Lord, thy links are hard to sever.

Swear then I am saved forever;

Cannot, though I twist and slip,

Free me fully from Thy grip.

Or at least this fair assurance:

 Should I tear the lovely durance,

Rip with sin the massy tackle—

Tender Eucharistic shackle

Love-alive and fiercely sweet

Round my heart's rebellious beat—

Let the last convulsive shreds

Drag, and cut me with their threads,

Score me Touch Not—Dearly Priced,

Brand me X for Jesus Christ.

So, when I am saved from hell,

Come, ye saints, mark it well:

Here's salvation barely gained

This one heart, though black and strained,

Showing crisscross, rudely sliced,

Scars where once clung roots of Christ.

© John Duffy

Page 35

in Under the

Goldwood Tree,

Poems by

John Duffy, C.SS.R.

Exposition Press,

Smithtown, New York

1982

FIRE

Poem for Today - Saturday June 21, 2014

WHY NOT

BECOME ALL FIRE?

Unless the eye catch fire

The God will not be seen

Unless the ear catch fire

The God will not be heard

Unless the tongue catch fire

The God will not be named

Unless the heart catch fire

The God will not be loved

Unless the mind catch fire

The God will not be known

© William Blake

A  POEM  OR  TWO 

This year on this blog – I’ve been planting a poem each day.

I’ve made it to June 20^th and plan to make it to December 31^st.

The last few years I came up with a “Quote for the Day”. I’ve learned a “Poem for the Day” – is much more difficult.

Maybe next year, 2015, I’ll put a poem of my own for the day. 

We’ll see.

In the meanwhile, what’s your take on poetry?

I have fond memories of seeing my dad sitting there in the front room of our house on 62^nd Street in Brooklyn – with a copy of the book: Best Loved Poems of the English Language. It was a title like that. It was part of a whole series of books with light brown covers and gold lettering on green on the label side.

One day – as a little boy - I had an “Eureka” moment.  I opened up that book of poems on my own and inside  I spotted a dried up dark red rose petal. Surprise!  I had never seen anything like that before.

My dad was in his regular chair – near the window – near the sunlight. I walked over to him with the open book – with the rose petal on it – as if I had a dinner plate with food on it. I asked my dad, “Daddy, what’s this?” He put down the paper and looked at the book, the rose petal, and me.

He paused. Silence. Quiet. Then with his rich smile he said just one word, “Memories.”

I’ve often wished I knew what poem that rose petal was on. 

I’ve oven wished I had asked him, “Memories of what?” 

What’s your favorite poem? What’s your favorite song? What are your favorite memories?

Check out Billy Collins words about “Everyday Moments Caught in Time" on the YouTube at the top of this blog piece.

Have you ever written a poem or two or three? Why not now? Why not catch your memories in words – poetic words – to be remembered. Amen. 

NEIGHBORHOOD TOURIST

Poem for Today- June 20, 2014

CONSOLATION

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna. 

© Billy Collins

PRAYER:

THE OUR FATHER

 INTRODUCTION

The theme I’d like to reflect on once more is prayer—or more specifically on “The Our Father.”

Today’s gospel - Matthew 6: 7-15 - calls us to reflect on prayer—to reflect on Jesus’ simple words and simple teachings on prayer as found in The Our Father.

And I would like to use for all my comments a sermon by Gerd Theissen entitled “The Our Father” in The Open Door, Variations on Biblical Themes. It’s on pages 62 - 66.

LUKE

Today’s gospel gives Luke’s Our Father. Today’s gospel  gives some good teachings on prayer—both in simple teachings of Jesus about  prayer as an introduction to the Our Father and the Our Father itself.

Luke has the disciples coming up to Jesus and asking him on how to pray.

Suggestion: bring this section of Luke—Chapter 11 -- to prayer over and over again. I have been using it for prayer for a good 36  years now.

Go up to Jesus and ask him to teach you how to pray.

I like Luke’s introduction to the Our Father and these simple teachings of Jesus on prayer. Luke has the disciples coming up to Jesus and asking him on how to pray.

GERD THEISSEN

Gerd Theissen in a sermon entitled “The Our Father” in The Open Door, Variations on Biblical Themes  begins his homily with the theory that the motivation of the disciples was not how to pray, but to distinguish themselves from others.

Here in Luke it was to have a prayer that will distinguish them from the Baptist’s followers. In Matthew’s version it was to distinguish themselves from the Gentiles. In the Didache, it’s was to distinguish themselves from the Jews  with the help of the Our Father.

Theissen then states that the joke is on everyone who tries that because “the Our Father is the least suited prayer conceivable for distinguishing us from others. Any Jew and any Moslem can recite it, and probably it would not be difficult for many Hindus to say it with us. It is a quite basic prayer which concentrates on the important things between cradle and grave.” (p. 62)

A CHRISTIAN PRAYER—A TREASURE

Theissen goes on to say that it has become a Christian prayer—a special treasure entrusted to Christians.

It is a treasure because it contains the essentials.

It provides a treasure we can bring to every dialogue with all religions—to Jews, Gentiles, believers and atheists.

But we better first have introduced this prayer into our own life first—giving us convictions we would live and die with and for.

FATHER

Theissen says that the word “Father” is significant. When he was born, his dad was away at war and was a prisoner of war.

He says that he only knew his dad by stories. He didn’t get to know him till he was 6 and a half.

His analogy is to bring out various points. In his book it’s one long paragraph. Let me present his actual words but with a paragraph space after  each sentence.

 “God may be like that to some people.

God is absent.

Many people know God only from stories.

And they hope that God will enter their lives later so that they can feel that something in these stories will ring true.

It rings true that we do not owe our existence to chance, but to a power who wanted us with love, who gave us the task of living, who affirms us and supports us in good times and in bad.

Some people may say that with our parents, father and mother, we remain within our sphere of existence.

But with that father we go beyond it.

What can we already know of him?

How can we trust him?

Let me recall something very simple here.

Even in the case of earthly parents, one thing radically escapes our experience: the story of the love between our mother and our father, that story in which our own existence has its common ground.

We can only hear of it.

Indeed we even have to take the identity of our father and mother on trust—on the basis of stories of others.

But it is reasonable here to believe and trust that it was love—or at least the longing for love—which helped us to exist.

If we trust that, then in later life with our parents we shall find much to confirm and justify this faith, and we shall also not allow ourselves to be led astray by the inevitable conflicts with parents, or even by long alienation.

But if we are full of mistrust, if we suspect that we owe our existence not to a love story but to something else—calculation or chance or thoughtlessness—then we shall  also find much to justify our mistrust.

That is how I imagine our dealings with God: we relate to him as we do our father and mother.

If we trust the accounts which tell us that we owe our existence anew each day to a love story, then every day we shall have new experiences in which the trust is confirmed.

And it is quite reasonable to have this trust—even through deep crises and catastrophes.” (pp. 63 - 64)

HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME

God is present everywhere. But where is God praised? Where is God recognized?

Well here we are recognizing him, praising him, giving him a name, not allowing him to remain anonymous.

Theissen uses the analogy of self—we often spend our days unaware of ourselves—wrapped up in our routines. Then a moment happens that wakes us up—that tears us apart from the regular routine. I am irreplaceable. I am one person between birth and death—who has to make decisions which no one else can make—and encounter joys and sorrows that on one else can have.

So too God in our lives. God is always present in our life.

“But only in a few situations does he emerge from his anonymity, does he disclose himself, so that we ourselves become the answer to his call, with body and nerves, ideas and actions—and at the same time terrified that we owed him this response.

Where God emerges from his anonymous, nameless present, we experience one thing above all: that we must change profoundly, that we must `hallow’ ourselves (as one can say in biblical language) in order to correspond to him and to hallow his name, so that he is not driven out, not forgotten, not despised.” (p. 64)

THY KINGDOM COME

Theissen goes on to comment on the phrase, “Thy Kingdom Come”.

“That’s not all.

We go on to pray, `Your kingdom come.’

That means that to correspond to God not only must we change ourselves, but the whole world must become different, so that it emerges from its anonymous present and can be lived in.

That was one of the great discoveries in the Bible and in Judaism: the world which corresponds to God, in which his name is acknowledged and hallowed, cannot be the same as the world which now exists, which seems to be so final—and which is nevertheless only a transition in the great process of reality.

This new world, which will fully reflect God’s presence, is not something incomprehensibly remote.

It already begins in hiddenness here and now. It already began in Jesus.

And also in Francis, in Gandhi and in Albert Schweitzer.

In all these figures something is present of that kingdom of God in which God’s will is done not only in heaven but on earth.” (pp. 64 - 65)

GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD

Theissen goes on to comment on the phrase, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

He states that we live in a

“problematic world which is different from that world in which God’s will prevails.

In this world we must pray, `Give us each day our daily bread’—or, as we should probably understand the phrase, `Give us each day tomorrow’s bread’, so that we are freed from tormenting cares about life.

For precisely that is the great temptation to which we are exposed in the world.

Bread is scarce.

Material goods are limited.

We are born into a hard struggle over the distribution of resources, a struggle at the heart of which is deep distrust that there may not be enough for everyone.

If we trusted that there was enough for everyone, it would not be so hard for us to give something away.

But as it is we fight over the scarce goods of life—between classes, between nations, between generations, between developed and underdeveloped countries.

No one escapes this oppressive  context: we all live at the expense of other people.

Indeed, we now discover to our horror that as a human species we live at the expense of all other kinds of living beings.

We have spread over this earth so successfully that countless species are already extinct and many more die out each year.

That is what I call the inexorable struggle over distribution. In it we have a right to life, to the bread we need to live.

We also have right to tomorrow’s bread.

But what we are doing is more: we are consuming the bread for the day after tomorrow.

We are plundering the planet so that those who live after us will not find much left, and we are letting the hungry beside us go away empty.” (P. 65)

FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES

Theissen goes on to comment on the phrase, “Forgive us our sins.”

“So it is necessary to pray, `Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.’

We are guilty in this struggle over the distribution of food and opportunities, for even if we are personally innocent, we are caught up and entangled in a system of unfair distribution.

We darkly suspect that there is a close connection between the catastrophes of famine on this earth and our luxury.

We also suspect that our ordered (and perhaps indeed successful) life and study are connected with the failed and ruined lives in our society: where there are winners there are also losers.

The rules of the game are often unfair.

 But those who take part in the game confirm them—even involuntarily.” (p. 65)

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION

Theissen goes on to comment on the phrase, “Lead us not into temptation.”

“Precisely this insight is a great temptation to cynicism.

And we pray: `Lead us into into temptation.’

The tempter approached Jesus in the wilderness loaded with biblical quotations.

It’s the same with us: incontrovertible truths become our temptation.

It is an incontrovertible truth that life is a struggle over distribution, that we have great difficulty in escaping this struggle, that all civilization limits it only up to a point, that it would be too much for the conscience if we felt personally responsible for all that goes on.

And then along comes the tempter and whispers all these truths in our ear—and suggests that cynicism which says, `If you personally share in this struggle over distribution (your share of food, education, possessions and status) -- why bother about the fate of others?, and he goes on to whisper, `It’s really time that you rid yourself of your post-pubertal dreams and faced reality.’

We are mostly tempted by truths, sometimes even by truths supported by science.

But the temptation is that we forget the most basic things.

“We forget that we owe life to the power of God. Before God and through God we all have the same right to life.

“We forget that we are constantly called to repentance, so that his name is hallowed through our actions and thoughts.

“We forget that we are caught up in that process which is aimed at changed of the world, so that everyone can experience God’s goodness.” (p. 66)

CONCLUSION

Theissen ends his homily this way:

“`And lead us not into temptation.’

Today, that means, `Lead us not into temptation to deny the reality of God.’

For in that case everything could basically remain as it was.

In that case we could persist in our laziness, and the world in its remoteness from God. Amen.” (p. 66)

So those are some ideas about the Our Father and Prayer—almost all stolen for Theissen.

WILFRED  OWEN 

STRANGE  MEETING  YOU.  

Poem for Today, Thursday, June 19, 2014

STRANGE MEETING

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,— 

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.” 

“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something had been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress. 

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: 

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels, 

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now. . . .”

© Wilfred Owen

(1893-1918)