Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Thanks to St Juliana of Liege we have this feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ. She resisted for twenty years the plea of the Lord to honor him in this. Then realized this was part of her mission 800 years ago as a religious woman in love with the Lord. Many priests called her ‘Juliana the dreamer.’
This solemnity is more than an explanation about the Eucharist, transubstantiation, processions and miraculous stories about the Eucharist, as important as those ideas are. It is God’s plan to be one with you and me. He wants to enter us physically, almost like a sexual encounter, and be one flesh with us. How often do we receive him without thinking of what we are doing…
What is Corpus Christi? Perhaps it is to help me see that I am not the body of Christ as I should be, as I am called to be. If I were, I would let myself be killed by my parishioners, my friends, my family, but usually I don’t have the spirit of a martyr, of dying to myself, of giving my life cheerfully for the other. Today is an invitation to live as Christ, as a Christian, only if we have Christ within.
The monstrance is important for the Church today, to show Christ physically. In the monstrance we carry the Lord. And you and I can be that monstrance today and everyday. If the Lord is within us, we can bring him to the family, to the office, to the gym. This is the true procession, the real one, to bring him everywhere. Take and eat, all of you, he says. Christ wants to nourish all of you!! Give yourself to the others. Be Christ for the other. Love is to give yourself, to suffer for the other, to be patient with the other. If we don’t live this way we are not Christ, we are not Christian.
The good news today is Jesus Christ give us his own body and blood like a pelican feeding its young. This was a common image centuries ago. It’s a sign of God loves us, and how he provides for us. Don’t be tricked by the other bread the world offers: vanity, sex, money. This is the only true Bread that gives life.