Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi 

         Today we celebrate the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. We look at the amazing miracle that happens every day, when the priest pronounces the words of consecration during the Mass, and transforms the substances of bread and wine into the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We will never be able to comprehend totally the mystery we are contemplating.

         I’d like to look at this reality from the point of view of the trascendentals, four ways we share of a certain resemblance with God, which reflects his infinite perfection. The first one is truth: everything that it is, has to be true. It is very important for us to know what the Eucharist is. Most of the indifference we find today in Catholics around the Eucharist is due to ignorance. We cannot value what we don’t know. How can we come more often to visit him, if we think that the host is a symbol? How can we adore Jesus in the tabernacle, if we think that he is not there? There, in the tabernacle, hidden to our eyes is the truth itself.

         The second one is goodness: whatever it is, has some element of goodness, for the fact of being. If Jesus is here, this church should be the most important place of our entire existence. It has to have an influence on our lives. His presence cannot leave us the same. This is why all saints have drawn from the Eucharist the energy that moved them forward, to perform the amazing feats they have accomplished. All actions towards the poor and the needy, should be based upon hours of adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament, recognising Jesus in the tabernacle, welcoming Jesus in the homeless.

         The third one is beauty: to be beautiful, first we need to exist. We try to surround the Eucharist with the most expensive and beautiful things we have, showing to the Lord that we believe in his physical presence. The churches, the altars, the reredos, all the things we use for the Mass, the vestmens, the linen and the sacred vesels, express the love we have for him, even though whatever we offer to him will never be good enough for his majesty. It is true that he doesn’t need all we do for him, but we are human beings, and we normally express our love to our loved ones with gold and precious stones. Jesus was very happy when a woman used the whole jar of an expensive perfume to anoint his body.

         The fourth one is unity. Very much related to being, anything that it is, either conserves its unity or disappears. Jesus is the head of the Church and all of us are members of his body. Therefore we are all united in the Eucharist. Where Jesus is, there is the Church, and we are all with him. This is why when we go to communion, we enter into the most intimate posible union: we eat him, his body becomes part of ours. When Saint Monica was dying, she asked her son Saint Augustine to remember her at the table of the Lord. In every Mass we remember the living and the dead. We are all seated together to renew the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

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