THE CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION: The Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus, or Corpus Christi, is celebrated this weekend, June 6-7. All of you are invited to participate in a combined Eucharistic procession joining forces with all the Catholic parishes in our deanery. 762 to be precise!
Join us at 2:30pm this Sunday June 7th. The Corpus Christi Procession starts inside St. John Church at 711 N. MLK. Then we will process on foot down MLK (Francis St.) with a police escort toward St. Mary Star of the Sea where the event will conclude with benediction. A Lumen Christi bus will take people back to their cars at St. John so you don’t have to walk both ways. Those who made their First Communion this spring are invited to help lead the procession wearing their special dresses and suits one last time.
Last week, I shared with you the accuracy of the Church’s teaching about the Eucharist and the Real Presence, namely, that when receiving Holy Communion, we are receiving the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, just as he was in the flesh 2,000 years ago when he walked the earth and on stormy seas. I also pointed out that too many Catholics have written this teaching off and do not believe it. That needs to change and I hope that this Corpus Christi will cause a reawakening of Eucharistic faith in those who have lost it.
Try to think back to your First Communion Day, a time when you likely did not question this or any other Church teaching. You believed because your parents believed. They believed because their parents believed. The system worked. Parents and Godparents were living the faith and practicing it, and teaching their children to do the same. Somewhere in the last half century, things that were once crystal clear have become murky. It is time for us to regain the clarity that only Jesus can give, who healed people of their blindness that they might see the world through the new eyes of faith, to see him on the altar as true flesh and blood for our salvation.
In Holy Communion, Jesus lives up to the name given him by the Prophet Isaiah, ‘his name shall be called Emmanuel, God is with us’ (Is. 7:14). In Holy Communion, Jesus keeps his promise from his Ascension Day, spoken in the last verse of Matthew’s Gospel, ‘Behold, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20). By our Eucharistic faith, we can be with Him who is always with us, we can be one with Him who promises to be with us always.
The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as “the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.” In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.” “This presence is called ‘real’ – by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1374).
“How I loved the feasts! I especially loved the processions in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. What a joy it was for me to throw flowers beneath the feet of God!… I was never so happy as when I saw my roses touch the sacred Monstrance…” -St. Therese of Lisieux
“I throw myself at the foot of the Tabernacle like a dog at the foot of his Master.” – St. John Vianney
“When the bee has gathered the dew of heaven and the earth’s sweetest nectar from the flowers, it turns it into honey, then hastens to its hive. In the same way, the priest, having taken from the altar the Son of God (who is as the dew from heaven, and true son of Mary, flower of our humanity), gives him to you as delicious food.” – St. Francis de Sales
“If angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion.” – St. Maximilian Kolbe
