The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (22.06.14)
How healthy is The Body of Christ?
Catholics, universally, celebrate ‘Corpus Christi’ in June. The celebrations vary greatly. In countries where there is active persecution, China and parts of Africa for example, the celebration is hidden. In other countries there is a tradition of street festivals and colourful, exuberant demonstrations. In our western European society we’ve ‘accommodated’ the festival by transferring it to a Sunday! There are questions of convenience v commitment about such accommodations.
At the heart of ‘Corpus Christi’ must surely be the assembled Baptised community praying and breaking bread together to celebrate both Jesus’ sacramental presence in the Eucharist and his Word as well as his presence within them who, together, are the visible Body of Christ.
In too many areas of our world there is no Eucharist for the Feast because there are no priests. The assembled visible Body of Christ (the local Church) celebrates Jesus’ presence in his Word and in them but they are unable to fulfil his words “Take and Eat for this is my Body” (Matthew 26.26)
By contrast, there are other areas of our world where the Eucharist is available but people pay more attention to the trappings of ‘carnival’ and lose sight of the person of Jesus in the Eucharist or his Word and, sadly, in themselves as his adopted family. Comparisons can be drawn with present day European celebrations of First Holy Communion where the clothes, the party, the transport, the gifts of money to the communicants have successfully distracted young hearts and minds from the person of Jesus.
Surely the most heart-rending ‘celebrations’ of Corpus Christi involve long-term, faith-persecuted Catholics cut off permanently from contact with fellow believers and any semblance of Church. For these, our Baptised brothers and sisters, it must be immensely painful, not to mention, difficult to hold on to a sense of Church in such an evil isolation. It is thought that Jesus spent his overnight incarceration, following his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, in a subterranean lightless, foul smelling, dungeon beneath the High Priest’s house in Jerusalem. In recent decades such a space was found and excavated. Many who have stood in its now sanitized confined space must surely have felt something of Jesus’ utter helpless desolation and Peter’s ringing denial of him, there.
When the Kingdom is revealed, these incarcerated, isolated, long-term brothers and sisters – of all ages and nations – will be welcomed with open arms and heart by God their loving Father and Mother. Accompanying these revered and much loved sufferers will be those who, through no fault of their own, were long deprived of the Eucharist through its unavailability, those who were cast out of the Church by the modern ‘Pharisees and Sadducees’, those who were made to feel so unworthy as not to count and so forth.
Rembrandt has captured such a happening in his magnificent and conscience-alerting painting called ‘The Prodigal’. If you haven’t already done so, you might pay attention to Rembrandt’s detail of the Father’s hands outstretched on the flayed back of his prodigal son. One hand is clearly a male and the other is clearly female!
Rembrandt’s painting includes shadowy, ill-defined figures in the background and leaves us to ascribe them identity. Among them, surely, must be the prodigal’s elder brother whose self-righteous indignation sits ill with Gospel readers. (Luke 15:11-32) Perhaps, too, they include Baptised Westerners who have allowed themselves to become blinkered. Who have succumbed to the Devil’s use of mockery, ridicule and belittlement spread through TV, papers, magazines, so-called friends to undermine the spiritual values of Catholic family life. Causing Catholic parents to feel helpless against the incessant secular ‘tsunamis’ that flood their home through all manner of electronic wizardry.
In Rembrandt’s painting the Prodigal’s shaven head (a sign of imprisonment), threadbare clothing, broken footwear and bleeding feet are external and remediable – “the best robe, sandals” etc. The Prodigal’s heart, which had been previously disaffected, is now contrite and whole – “Father, I have sinned …. I am not worthy to be called your child”.
Wherever you are celebrating ‘Corpus Christi’ this year and in whatever state of life and overall circumstances in which you find yourself, may you have a sense, through the Holy Spirit, of your heavenly Father’s love revealed through the patient, forgiving compassion of Jesus – God’s only begotten Son and your brother.
A missionary in Africa decades ago, when only priests were allowed to distribute Holy Communion, noticed a small boy come forward. The priest placed a consecrated host on his tongue. A little later the same boy appeared again and again received Holy Communion. When the boy appeared a third time the priest felt bound to say, “You have already had Holy Communion.” The boy replied, “But, Father, I haven’t eaten for three days!” The priest, a now revered member of the Lancaster diocese, told the little fellow to make a cup out of his hands and filled them with Consecrated Hosts! The liturgically correct may lift their hands in horror but I believe Jesus smiled.
Helder Camara was the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, a desperately poor region of Brazil, from 1964 to 1985 during the military regime in that country.
A dedicated advocate of the poor – and in that sense a forerunner of Pope Francis – Archbishop Camara is remembered for the aphorism, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”
He wrote the following under the heading “On-Going Communion” which was quoted by the late Cardinal Basil Hume OSB.
“Am I mistaken, Lord, is it temptation to think You
increasingly urge me to go forth and proclaim the
need and urgency of passing from the
Blessed Sacrament to Your other presence
Just as real in the Eucharist of the poor?
Theologians will argue, a thousand distinctions be advanced.
But woe to those who feed on You
and later have no eyes to see You, to discern you
foraging for food among the garbage, being evicted
every other minute, living in subhuman conditions
under the sign of utter insecurity.”
A Blessed Feast to you all.
“Save us, Savior of the world,
for by your Cross and Resurrection
you have set us free.”