Homily for Corpus Christi 2009
On this day we celebrate the Great solemnity of Corpus Christi—by contemplating with great awe and with renewed amazement, the great and unfathomable mystery of the Holy Eucharist. Through out the centuries, Holy Mother Church and her faithful disciples have spared no extravagance, devoting their best resources, no matter the effort or cost, to expressing their wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist. Beginning, as we heard in today’s readings, with the careful preparations of the first disciple to prepare with great dignity the “upper room” for the institution of this Most Holy Sacrament, the Church continues to carefully prepare for the celebration of this great mystery.
Today we hear how the disciples where struck with profound and utter amazement when Jesus took bread broke it and gave it to his disciples saying: “Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you” then he took the chalice of wine and said to them: “Take this all of you and drink from it: this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, the mystery of faith, which will be given up for you and for the many, so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in commemoration of me. How can we fail to be amazed along with them each time we hear the priest put his voice at the disposal of the One who spoke these words in the upper room, Jesus Christ our Lord and God.
Our previous Holy Father, John Paul the Second, in his beautiful encyclical on the Holy Eucharist, called us to contemplate the great amazement and the great faith of those early disciples over the great gift of love--the Holy Eucharist. By doing so, John Paul wanted to reaffirm the Church’s constant and unchanging teaching on the Holy Eucharist, what and who It is. He, like so many popes wanted to lead us to a deeper faith, hope and love in Jesus, who is sacramentally, but nonetheless, truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament--the Holy Eucharist. In his encyclical John Paul is calling for a renewed faith that Jesus is really, physically and personally present, Body, and Blood, Soul and Divinity through the miracle of transubstantiation. Through the great gift of the ordained Priesthood in which a man is configured to Christ, Christ can use, literally, this man’s body, his hands, his voice to change, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the very substance, that is what the thing is, of bread and wine into His, Jesus’ own Body, Blood, Soul And Divinity-the whole Christ, not just His spiritual presence but His whole being in the fullness of His humanity and divinity.
The Holy Eucharist is a gift, it is a reality, that is, it is real, it is true. To believe this is to be a true follower of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, we believe that Jesus is truly present in the Holy Eucharist because He Himself has said so, and He is God who cannot deceive or be deceived. Let us take Jesus at His Word, anything less is to mock Him.
Oh how we should fall down in worship, how our hearts should be moved to great amazement, to great love, equal to that of those first believers over the reality of Jesus truly present in the Holy Eucharist. Just as the Holy Father, I want to enkindle in you and in myself the great amazement of those early disciples of our Lord, when they beheld the Eucharistic face of Jesus. I want to enkindle this love in the hearts of every person on the faith of the earth. How can we not want others to know that the God of Love is still on earth in a human body, with a human heart and soul? The greatest sin in the world is that God is not Loved, that God who is still with us in the Holy Eucharist is not loved. How much we should love a God who out of love for us, gives us the greatest gift possible, the gift of His very self as our heavenly food.
How can anyone, especially Catholics, not believe, adore, hope and love Jesus truly present in the Holy Eucharist the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. How we should beg pardon for all those, including ourselves who do not believe, who do not adore, who do not hope and do not love Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. How we should try with our own love and reverence for the Holy Eucharist, to make up for the ingratitude of the hearts of men toward such a great gift; in fact, the greatest of all gifts.
I invite all of you to devoutly take part in this Solemn High Mass and in every Holy Mass where Christ comes to us in the Eucharist. I also invite you to take part in the Eucharistic procession, which will follow this Solemn Mass. This procession is a grace from the Lord, which brings great joy to those who take part in it. I hope that it grows into an even grander event in the years to come. Our processing with Jesus through our streets show the world our faith that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus, our Lord and God and that we want all, along with us to adore and love Him with us.
Again, we can never spare any extravagance when it comes to adoring our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. We must always, always give Jesus our best in all things. Again, this is why we have undertaken the many restoration projects we have undertaken here at St. Peter’s. They are truly small things; adorning the altar of our Lord and placing the statues forward for us to pray easier as well as the future restoration of the High Altar and Communion rail. These small things are gifts for us to grow in our love for the Eucharist.
With what piety, care and reverence we should receive Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. We must always be on our guard against any diminishment of love, awe and reference for such a great gift. In fact, John Paul in his encyclical warned all the faithful that along with the great lights of a renewing of amazement in the great gift of the Eucharist in our present time, there are also some dark clouds. He spoke of those places where Eucharistic adoration as been completely abandoned. He speaks of various parts of the Church were abuses have occurred, leading to confusion with regard to sound faith and Catholic doctrine concerning this wonderful sacrament, places where the Holy Mass is stripped of its sacrificial meaning, and is celebrated as if it were simply a fraternal banquet or a feel good worship service. He also points out places where the necessity of the ministerial, ordained priesthood, grounded in apostolic succession, is at times obscured, where the priest’s role is seen as one of just leading the community in prayer and proclaiming the word, when in fact, there could be no Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, no Holy Eucharist, without the ordained priesthood. For it is the priest who, by the authority of his ordination, effects the consecration and makes present in reality, the Whole Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. John Paul reminds us that the Eucharist is too great a gift to tolerate ambiguity and depreciation.
Let us not let our parish, in any way, ever be one of those places of darkness with regard to the Holy Eucharist. Let us ask the Blessed mother, the mother of the Eucharist to lead us to see the face of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament with a living and true faith. Let us this day ask her to help us to renew our love and reverence for Jesus in the Eucharist as a way of making up for the ingratitude and indifference of so many souls, as well as for the sacrileges committed throughout the world against the Holy Eucharist. Let us ask her to make our Parish a Eucharistic parish, madly in love with Jesus truly present in the Eucharist. As on priest said, let us become Tabernacle huggers. The Holy Father has said that adoration of the Eucharist outside of Mass is of inestimable value for the life of the Church. And it is of inestimable value for the life our parish family. (turn mike on, turn toward the tabernacle).
Three Fatima Prayers:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete