Celebrating Our Identity as Catholics

29th MAY, 2016 THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST CORPUS CHRISTI (SOLEMNITY) YEAR C.

SCRIPTURE READING:
Gen. 14: 18-20
Ps 110:1.2.3.4 (R. 4cd).
1 Cor. 11:23-26; Accl; 6:51
Gospel Luke 9:11b-17

Preamble:

Dear friends please repeat these words after me;
Stay with me Lord Jesus, as I give you my mind, may your word never depart from me.
Stay with me Lord Jesus, as I give you my ears, help me listen and obey your voice.
Stay with me Lord Jesus, as I give you my heart, help me welcome you always.
Holy Spirit, rekindle in me the fire of your love. Amen.

What more can we call our identity or how else can we celebrate our identity as Catholics other than the Holy Eucharist whose feast we celebrate today in order words the solemnity of the body and blood of Christ (Corpus Christi). This celebration defines our faith in the Eucharistic Lord. nothing else defines us other than the Holy Eucharist.

The meaning of corpus Christi is clearly seen in the celebration which is captured in three ways. First there is what we are doing right now, meeting together around the Lord, standing before the Lord, for the Lord, and thus standing side by side together.

Secondly there is walking with the Lord, the procession. And thirdly, there is the heart and the climax of it, kneeling before the Lord, the adoration, glorifying him and rejoicing in his presence.

Standing before the Lord, walking with the Lord, and kneeling before the Lord, these three therefore are what makes the celebration of today meaningful. For we cannot come before the Lord and behave as if we are before nothing, before what is considered meaningless.

We are before a mystery, a reality, a presence, a power that supersedes all powers, a person whose personality overwhelms us and transforms us in his perfect image and likeness and has given us his body and blood firstly as a remembrance of him, secondly a presence that energizes us onward on our pilgrimage journey and a love that leaves us speechless and in deep contemplation and at the same time is boundless which leads us to the very end of also laying down our lives for our friends-John 15:13 tells us “no greater love has a man than to lay down his life for his friends.”

We begin with the first-standing before the Lord:

At the time when Christianity was spreading out across the world, from the beginning its representatives laid great emphasis on having in each city one bishop, only one altar. This was supposed to express the unity brought by the one Lord, who embraces us in his arms outstretched on the cross, transcending all the barriers and limits traced by earthly life, and makes us one body.

And this is the inmost meaning of the Eucharist, that we, receiving the one bread, enter into this one heart and thus become a living organism, the body of the Lord.

The Eucharist is not a private business, carried on in a circle of friends, in a club of like-minded people, who seek out and get together with those who already suit them; but just as the Lord allowed himself to be crucified outside the city wall, before all the world, and stretches out his hands to everyone, thus the Eucharist is the public worship of all those whom the Lord calls, irrespective of their personal make-up.

Jesus demonstrated this in his earthly life to have men of the most diverse groupings, social backgrounds, and personal views brought together in the greater whole of his word and his love.

This act of love is also seen of the Eucharistic celebration in the Mediterranean world in which Christianity first developed, for an aristocrat-a rich man who has found his way into Christianity to sit there side by side with a Corinthian dock worker, a miserable slave, who under Roman law was not even regarded as a man but was treated as chattel (property).

It was characteristic of the Eucharist for the philosopher to sit next to the illiterate man, the converted prostitute and the converted tax collector to sit next to the religious ascetic who found his way to Jesus Christ.

Depsite this idea of love that bound people together irrespective of their class or status or race or colour, we see again in the New Testament how people resisted this idea again and again. How people wanted to stay in their own circle, and yet this very thing remained the point of the Eucharist: gathering together, crossing the boundaries, and leading men through the Lord into a new unity.

When Christianity grew in numbers, this exterior form could no longer be maintained in the cities. As early as the time of persecutions, the titular churches in Rome, for instance, were already developing as forerunners of the later parishes.

Even here, the public nature and the given structure of worship remained, so that people who would otherwise never meet were brought together. But this opening up of relationships within a single space was no longer sufficiently visible.

That was why the church developed the idea of one bishop, one alter which is called statio. Which meant that the pope, as the one bishop of Rome, especially in the course of Lent, leads the worship for the whole of Rome and goes right through each of the titular churches. Christians met together, went to church together, and this in each particular church, the whole becomes visible and touches each individual.

This basic idea is taken up by Corpus Christi. It is a statio urbis: we open up the parish churches; we open up for ourselves all the old corners and farthest reaches of this city to be brought together to the Lord, so as to be at one through him. Here too, we are together irrespective of party or class, rulers and ruled, men who work with their hands and those who do mental work, men of this tendency or that.

And this is the essential thing, that we have been brought together by the Lord, that he leads us to meet each other. This moment should issue a call to us to accept one another inwardly, open ourselves up, go to meet each other, that even in the distraction of everyday of life we should maintain this state if being brought together by the Lord.

We notice in our world today, loneliness has become the other of the day. We are torn apart by the current trend of today such that we lack warmth and that connection among members of the same church, neighbourhood, and work place.

We live in a time where people are just masses, a greeting turns into a mistake, people hurry past each other without a word but a wave of hand for fear of been misunderstood, insulted, disrespected and taken for granted.

Yet in the Eucharist we see that the Lord brings us together and opens us up, so that in standing before him we can learn again to stand next to each other. We are united today not by private interest of this group or that, but the interest that God takes in us, to which we can calmly confide all our own interests and wishes.

We are standing for the lord. And the more we stand for the Lord and before the Lord, the more we stand with one another, and our capacity to understand one another grows again, the capacity to recognize each other as people, as brothers and sisters, and thus, in being together, to build the basis and to open up the possibilities of humanity and of life.

Secondly, standing together in the Lord’s presence, and with the Lord, leads to walking to the lord. We can stand side by side each other only if, first of all, under the guidance of the Lord, we go to each other. We can come to the Lord only in this procedure, in this moving out and moving forward, by transcending our own prejudices, our limits, and our barriers, going forward, going toward him, and moving to the point at which we can meet each other with renewed enthusiasm.

The procession, which from an early period was a part of the stational worship in Rome, certainly did acquire a new dimension, a new depth, in Corpus Christi.

For the Corpus Christi procession is no longer just walking to the Lord, to the Eucharistic celebration; it is walking with the Lord; it is itself an element of Eucharistic celebration, one dimension of the Eucharistic event. The Lord, who has become our bread which nourishes us on our journey and is thus showing us the way, is in fact our way, as he leads us as he led the Israelites wandering in the wilderness.

Israel was able to find the path in the pathless wilderness because the Lord is leading it in the guise of cloud and of light. It can live in the pathless and lifeless wilderness because man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And so in the story of Israel’s journey through the wilderness the underlying meaning of all human history is revealed.

Isreal was able to find a country and was able to survive after the loss of that country because it did not live from bread alone, but found in the word the strength to live on through all the pathless and homeless wilderness of the centuries. And this becomes a lesson for us all. Man finds his way only if he will let himself be led by him who is word and bread in one.

Only in walking with the lord can we endure the challenges of life. So Corpus Christi paints the reality of our life’s for us which describes Israel’s journey to the promised land. It is a march that can keep on in the right direction only if we are walking with him who came among us as bread and word.

Corpus Christi means for us today that it is the lord who leads us on our pilgrimage journey.

It is a feast that reminds of him who became man, Eucharistic lord who shows us the way, feeds us just as he feed the five thousand men, he reminds us that even as he leads us, he gives us our freedom and our capacities so that we can make efforts, discover things, and struggle with things. He tells us that he is the standard of the accessment of things and only when we look to him are we able to make a difference between the right path and the wrong; walking with the lord, as the sign and as the duty of this day.

Finally, there is the kneeling before the Lord: adoration. Because he himself is present in the Eucharist, adoration has always been an essential part of it. For if the Lord gives himself to us, then receiving him can only mean to bow before him, to glorify him, to adore him.

And even today it is not contrary to the dignity and freedom and status of man to bow his knee, to be obedient to him, to worship him and glorify him. For if we deny him, so as not to have to adore him, then what remains is merely the eternal necessity of physical material.

Then we are truly bereft of freedom, a mere speck of dust that is flung around among the mill wheels of the universe and that vainly tries to persuade itself of having freedom. Only if he is the creator is freedom the basis of all things; only then can we be free. And when our freedom bows before him, it is not denied but it is at that moment truly accepted and rendered definitive.

The one we adore is not some distant power. He has himself knelt down before us to wash our feet. And that gives to our adoration the quality of being unforced, adoration in joy and in hope, because we are bowing down before him who himself bowed down, because we bow down to enter into a love that does not make slaves of us but transforms us.

Let us beloved in Christ as the lord to help us understand and rejoice in it and that this understanding and this joy may spread out from this day far and wide into our everyday life and influence those around us.