FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI

Today is another of the great feasts of our Church,  as we have moved over these past several weeks from the Ascension,  to Pentecost,  to Trinity Sunday, and now to the SOLEMNITY OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST -- Corpus Christi!   Each of these four feasts of our Church invite us to pause annually and reflect upon how we are allowing these faith mysteries to touch our lives.   We celebrate each of these special days here at the Franciscan Prayer Fraternity in Ava, MO.   We take time to reflect upon what they saying to us -- in a new way -- this year.  Often, we share these special liturgical moments with guests who come here for quiet, for prayer, for retreat time.   

 

Today's feast of Corpus Christi invites us to look ever anew at this faith mystery of bread that becomes body and wine that becomes blood that has been with us from the time of Jesus.  As we hear in the Sequence for the Feast today:   

               What he did at supper seated,

               Christ ordained to be repeated,

                      His memorial ne'er to cease:

               And his rule for guidance taking,

               Bread and wine we hallow, making

                      Thus our sacrifice of peace.

               This the truth each Christian learns,

               Bread into his flesh he turns,

                       To his precous blood the wine:

               Sight has fail'd, nor thought conceives,

               But a dauntless faith believes,

                       Resting on a pow'r divine.

 

St. Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians today tells us:  "I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread ...."    What do we do with what we received from the Lord Jesus in each Eucharist?   How do we pass on what our faith reveals to us?   With what courage do we speak about Jesus, and the wonderful gift of the Eucharist, to others?   If we aren't handing it on,  who is?

 

In the Gospel of Luke today,  Jesus tells his followers:  "Give them some food yourselves."    Today,  we are the followers of Jesus charged with feeding the multitudes.  How can you do that today?   Who are the hungry,  who are the needy,  who are the sick and the lonely, who are the ones in need of the nourishment that you can give?   Often they are as close as your own home or your neighborhood or church or community.    Hear Jesus tell you:  "Give them some food yourself,"  and then bring 'Eucharist' to them. 

 

Let us close today with a poem that speaks of taking what happens for us at Eucharist around the faith mystery of bread that is broken and wine that is poured and finding ourselves charged to feed others.  Unfortunately, we don't remember who wrote this -- it appeared in a national magazine about 10 years ago.

 

         IMITAMINI QUOD TRACTATIS

 

         The day you were called

        to break bread for a living

was the day you were called to be broken.

 

             The days you spend

        bending over bread are spent

     bent around a mystery of fraction.

 

          If you are indeed broken,

           you need to gather up

     each other's fragments gently,

and remember how, again through you,

    God feeds so many with so little.