Corpus Christi cycle C, 2019
When I was growing up, my church was
the Cathedral of Saint Helena, the church of the Diocese of Helena,
Montana. It was and still is a magnificent building, deliberately
modeled on a famous European church. A gold miner named Thomas
Meagher struck it rich and told the powers that be that if they built
the Cathedral in Helena, rather than in the town of Anaconda as had
been planned, he would pay for it. And in one of his travels in
Europe he had fallen in love with the Votivkirche in Vienna, Austria,
and arranged for the Cathedral to be modeled after it. So that was
where I learned to be an altar server.
We altar servers had a lot of
responsibilities. We had to speak the responses to the priest in
Latin, and we weren't just parrots; we had to know what the responses
meant. We had to know when to kneel and stand and ring bells, all
punctuating the mass; because the priest could only speak the latin
words and never ad lib and say things like, “please kneel”. And
his back was turned to the people, so he couldn't even gesture at
them.
But perhaps the biggest job we had was
to convey by our actions and demeanor that we knew what the Eucharist
was all about. We were told never to touch the sacred vessels; only
the priest could do that because his hands had been consecrated. We
had to learn a whole protocol regarding the possibility of dropping a
sacred host on the ground. It involved putting a little fence around
the host, so that after the Mass the priest could properly deal with
it. He would never just reach down and pick it up, because after he
had washed his hands he held his thumb and index fingers together,
opening them only to touch the Sacred Host or the Chalice. And we
held patens. They were like little plates with handles, and we held
them under the chins of the people receiving communion, which of
course was on the tongue. And the laity never touched the sacred
blood, because that multiplied the risk of dropping it.
And it was drummed into the core of
our souls that we would genuflect when we passed in front of the
tabernacle, and never, ever talked in church, except in a whisper
when you were going to confession.
I'm glad some of these practices have
changed. But one of the things that they did was remind us over and
over again that this bread and wine was not ordinary food; this was
Jesus Christ himself. And Catholics were conscious of that in other
ways; I doubt that my mother or father ever committed a mortal sin,
but if they missed their monthly visit to the confessional, they
would not receive the Eucharist till they had gone. My grandmother
would go to confession weekly, and reverently receive communion the
next morning on Sunday. And there were many people who would come to
Mass but refrain from receiving the Eucharist. We didn't ask why.
Saint Paul talks about the possibility
of receiving the Eucharist unworthily. No one quite knows what he
meant, but he did say that you were risking your soul if you did so.
Jesus himself pointed out that unless you ate his body and drank his
blood, you could not have life everlasting. And he put this in more
positive terms; those who ate his body and drank his blood would have
eternal life.
We human beings need a sense of
reverence. I think that's one of the motives of the people who seek
to return to the mass in the Tridentine rite, the old Latin mass.
And there a few people around, one of my deacon friends comes to
mind, who have switched rites from the casual Novus Ordum rite of the
Latin church to a much more solemn rite – in his case, the Maronite
rite. And I wonder how many people have left the Church because they
have not cultivated a sense of reverence, a sense of the great
mystery which is the Eucharist?
Saint John Vianney, the patron saint
of parish priests, said, “If God could have given us a greater gift
than the Eucharist, he would have.” And yet sometimes we – and I
include myself – receive this gift with our minds a mile away, like
three year olds ripping through their birthday presents without so
much as a thank you. For three year olds, it's understandable; but
for us much less so.
The Feast we celebrate today came
about because a priest, otherwise pious and hard working, had trouble
believing that the bread and wine really became the Body and Blood of
Jesus Christ. One day while celebrating Mass, as he said the words
of consecration the Host began to bleed. After nearly dying of
shock, he reported it to his bishop, who in turn told the pope, who
was traveling through the area. The pope witnessed the miracle, and
shortly afterwards created the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ,
to be celebrated throughout the Church. The stained cloth which
contains the blood from the miracle is still exhibited in a chapel in
Italy.
We are invited today to think about
the great gift we have been given. Jesus gave his body and blood,
his whole life, for us, He continues in this sacrament to unite us
with the moment so long ago when he redeemed the human race by his
death. We Catholics believe in the real presence. Together with
other Christians we try to follow Jesus' example, we turn to God in
prayer, we worship together – but for us the central fact, the most
important thing, is that Jesus is uniquely present to us; Jesus is
the Father's gift to us, day after day, week after week, in the
Eucharist.
