Celebrating The Body And Blood
Of Jesus Christ

Homily 06 02 2013
Corpus Christi C

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Those of you a few years younger than me don't remember the Corpus Christi Feast from Before Vatican II.

In the latter part of the 13th century, there was a Corpus Christi Procession in parts of the world.

It began about 1209 when a nun, Julian of Liege, reported a vision. She had seen the full moon in splendor, except for a dark area on one side.

As she understood it, the moon was the Church, and one area was dark because there was no feast of the Blessed Sacrament.

Juliana must have been one persuasive woman; 55 years later this feast of the Eucharist was a feast of the universal Church.

I believe it is still a welcome feast because we cannot take the Eucharist for granted. We need to be regular guests at the Supper.

There is a sameness in the Eucharist every week and some people say they get bored, and with few exception there is the same words, gestures, standing, shaking hands but every week there is something different from the Word of God and we are reminded today of the Exodus, of Covenant.

The feast originally had the congregation marching in procession with the Blessed Sacrament and a conviction that they were carrying the most Holy One into the world with prayer, song and praise.

It became an outward visible expression of the individual communal movement of humankind toward Christ.

As I reflected on this experience from growing up it reminds me that we are a people enroute, a pilgrim people, always on the way. Along the route of human procession in life there will be changes, pitfalls and detours.

Growth, conversion, and transformation are necessary. Rahner said that a procession is a holy movement of a people truly united. It is a gentle, steady stream of human hands and hearts toward the God whose involvement with humanity could also be described as a procession.

Today during the Eucharistic Prayer I would invite you to somehow sense that when we come to Mass that we are in a procession.

As food for the journey, Jesus left us the Eucharist; as our companion and guide along the way, he bequeathed the Spirit.

Today's Feast is like a Procession. It's like another leg on our journey, since none of us are sure of our ETA...our Estimated Time of Arrival, let us live well, love well, and travel with earnest faith and persevering hope.

As the Gospel is proclaimed today, in the midst of believers who have processed here together in celebration of God's Gifts, we come also to eat the Bread and Drink the Wine, so that in our daily lives we can give others to eat and be Eucharist to the World.

The Lord's Supper ensures that we can remember Jesus from any place.

Apollo 11 landed on the moon on Sunday, July 20, 1969. Most remember astronaut Neil Armstrong's first words as he stepped onto the moon's surface: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

But few know about the first meal eaten on the moon...

Dennis Fisher reports that Buzz Aldrin, the NASA Astronaut had taken aboard the spacecraft a tiny pyx provided by his Catholic pastor. Aldrin sent a radio broadcast to Earth asking listeners to contemplate the events of the day and give thanks.

Then, blacking out the broadcast for privacy, Aldrin read, "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit." Then, silently, he gave thanks for their successful journey to the moon and received Jesus in the Holy Eucharist surrendering moon to Jesus.

Next he descended on the moon and walked on it with Neil Armstrong.

   -Dan Gulley: "Communion on the Moon": Our Daily Bread: June/July/August, 2007.

His actions remind us that in the Lord's Supper, God's children can share the life of Jesus from any place on Earth - and even from the moon. God is everywhere, and our worship should reflect this reality.

In Psalm 139 we are told that wherever we go, God is intimately present with us.

"Buzz Aldrin celebrated that experience on the surface of the moon. Thousands of miles from earth, he took time to commune with the One who created, redeemed, and established fellowship with him." - Dennis Fisher

When we receive Eucharist we should always have reverence.

The usual way of receiving Communion today is placing one hand under the other and receiving the host in the palm of the hand, not grabbing the host from the priest and then either bowing to the Cup as you pass by or drinking from the cup reverently.

These are the central symbols of the sacrament.

Today is a feast about people, about bread and wine, coming from one of the most important papal initiatives on the liturgy from the Middle Ages.

Vatican II also reminded us that the Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church. The liturgy actually goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas, but Vatican II made Eucharist more than something to look at.

We are to feed and drink on the Body and Blood of Christ.

In a few minutes at Communion time, when the priest or Eucharistic Minister holds up the Eucharist and says to you, The Body of Christ or the Blood of Christ, make a special effort to realize what you receive.

It is the living body of Jesus.

Only a loving God could give us such an incredible gift as we celebrate this feast of Sacrament.

Eucharist is so important.

A story to give witness...

The former archbishop of San Francisco, John Quinn, loved to tell the story of the arrival of Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity to open their house in the city.

Poor Archbishop Quinn had gone to great efforts to make sure that their convent was, while hardly opulent, quite comfortable.

He recalls how Mother Teresa arrived and immediately ordered the carpets removed, the telephones, except for one, pulled out of the wall, the beds, except for the mattresses taken away, and on and on.

Explained Mother Teresa to the baffled archbishop, "All we really need in our convent is the tabernacle." - Msgr. Timothy M. Dolan in Priests of the Third Millennium, 2000 p. 218.

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