Showing What We Believe

Solemnity of Corpus Christi
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  Recently, pilgrims from across the US started a walking pilgrimage from the four corners of our country: the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota; New Haven, Connecticut; Brownsville, Texas; and San Francisco, California.  The idea is that all of the pilgrimages will leave in time for the Blessed Sacrament to arrive in Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress in July.

Eucharistic Procession at St. Pius X, Flint

    Why would Catholics walk all that way for a piece of bread?  The answer is simple: it’s not a piece of bread.  It is the Lord.  It’s not just a reminder of the Lord.  The Lord doesn’t simply come in and dwell inside the bread.  By the power of the Holy Spirit and the ministry of an ordained priest acting in the Person of Christ the Head (in persona Christi capitis), bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ.  And walking across the country with Christ makes a lot of sense, because the Lord always walks with us on our pilgrimage of life, and at times [like tonight] when we have a chance to walk with our Eucharistic Lord, we take advantage of the opportunity to be with Him.
    But it’s not just about walking with Him.  Our attitude around the Blessed Sacrament, whether walking on the road or even here in the church, says a lot to people about what we truly believe.  I remember hearing a story about a Catholic interacting with a Muslim man.  The Muslim asked the Catholic if he really believed that the bread becomes the Body of the Lord.  The Catholic said, “Of course I do!”  The Muslim man said, “Then why don’t your actions show it?  If Allah [the Arab word for God] were to be in the flesh in front of me, it would change the way I acted in His presence.” 
    Or I recently read in a Matthew Kelly book on the Eucharist a story that Fr. Mike Schmitz told about his days in college.  Fr. Mike related how, during his time in college, he wasn’t as strong in his faith.  He went to Mass, but many things didn’t click.  It was vogue at that time for parishioners to make the unleavened bread which was used for Mass.  When the eucharistic bread is made that way (even according to Church law), it tends to be crumbly.  And crumbs would inevitably fall around the altar.  After Mass, another young college student would gather the crumbs up and reverently consume them.  And college-student Mike Schmitz eventually asked him why.  The student told this story.
    When Communism first started in China, there was a great persecution of the Church.  The government soldiers went to a Catholic Church and beat up the priest, and then locked him in his house, and forced him to watch as they desecrated and destroyed the church at which he served.  They eventually threw out the tabernacle, and and it burst open, consecrated hosts spilling all over the ground.  But the guards wouldn’t let the priest out to tend to the Lord scattered on the ground.  At night, the priest looked out and saw a little Chinese girl slowly approach the place where the consecrated hosts were.  There were still no permissions at this point to receive the Eucharist in the hand, so she crept up to a host, and picked it up the ground on her tongue, reverently receiving it.  Then she scurried back to the darkness, never being noticed by the guards.  She did this night after night, until there was one consecrated host left.   She reverently received the Lord one last time, so that there was no more Eucharist on the ground.  But as she returned this time, she slipped and made a little noise.  The guards noticed her and shot and killed her.  That, the student related, is why he gathered the crumbs, because each crumb was still the Lord.
    How do we approach the Lord?  Would an outside recognize what we believe, Who we believe the Eucharist is by the way we act in church, by the way we receive the Lord, by the way we act outside of church, having just received the Eucharist?  I have been thinking about this a lot over the past few years, and it changed me.  Before, when transferring hosts between two ciboria, the containers that hold the consecrated hosts, I would pour them one into another.  But I was convicted that the way I transferred the hosts was more like pouring out a bag of chips into a serving bowl, not the way I would handle my Lord.  I don’t say that to condemn or criticize other priests; simply to say that I want people to know what I believe by how I act.
    I recently added the chalice veil and burse to our set-up before Mass.  And we have been using for some months the hand patens when I distribute Holy Communion at Sunday Masses.  I know that sometimes it takes a little more time, and sometimes the placement of the paten is a little awkward, but I hope it demonstrates that this is not like standing in line to pick up a snack or even an expensive bottle of bourbon.  During Communion, the Lord of Heaven and Earth is present for us in a unique way, and so we treat everything surrounding it differently to remind ourselves of this great miracle that takes place on millions of altars around the world each day.  We elevate our language and we elevate what we use to communicate just how precious the gift of the Eucharist is.
    As we come forward for Holy Communion today, if we have fasted for at least an hour, if we have gone to confession if we have previously committed a mortal sin, and if our lives conform to the major teachings of the Church in terms of moral theology, I would invite us to think about how we receive?  Am I doing so reverently?  I do not change my behavior to be seen and admired by others, but I change my behavior to reflect the Other who gave His life for me, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Joy to the World–Even in 2020

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–Mass at Night and During the Day

    Our Savior, dearly Beloved, was born this day.  Let us rejoice.  Sadness is not becoming on the Birth Day of Life Itself, which, now that the fear of death is ended, fills us with gladness, because of our own promised immortality.  No one is excluded from sharing in this cheerfulness, for the reason of our joy is common to all men.  Our Lord, the Conqueror of sin and death, since there was no one free from servitude, came that He might bring deliverance to all.
    …Let the sinner rejoice, since he is invited to grace.  Let the Gentile exult, for they are called to life.  For the Son of God, in the fulness of time, has taken upon Himself the nature of our humanity, as the unsearchable depths of the divine counsel hath decreed, in order that the inventor of death, the devil, by that very nature which he defeated, would be himself overcome.

These words are not mine, but those of Pope St. Leo the Great.  He invites us to rejoice at Christmas.  But, you may say, Pope Leo the Great didn’t have to deal with COVID-19.  He didn’t have to cancel family celebrations.  He didn’t have to miss seeing children and grandchildren whom he hadn’t seen in the better part of a year, if not a year or more (though, as a pope, it’s good that he didn’t have children or grandchildren).  He wasn’t a waitress who had her job taken away, given back, and then taken away again, just in time for the holidays.  He didn’t have to quarantine because a student in his child’s class was diagnosed with the virus.  
    And that’s all true.  Pope St. Leo the Great had his own difficulties–Attila the Hun sacking most of central Europe, into Italy; barbarians sacking Rome; heretics seeking to divide the Church with their errors; emperors being murdered; the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire in the west.  But Leo’s happiness wasn’t based upon something transitory or temporary, and certainly not simply on the twenty-fifth day of December.  Leo could encourage the people of Rome, to whom he preached this homily, to rejoice because of what we celebrate on the twenty-fifth day of December: the birth in the flesh of our Incarnate Lord. 
    What we celebrate on Christmas is that God loved us so much that His Eternal Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was born for us in Bethlehem.  And that birth is, in itself, great enough news that there is no room for sorrow, because God has become like us so that we can become like Him.  How much love does it take for someone in a distant land, not needing anything, perfect in himself, to travel to a far away land in enemy territory, subject himself to all kinds of humiliations, just to be close to us?  And yet, that is what God did for us! 
    And if that wasn’t enough, that little baby, whose birth we celebrate today, would grow and would show even greater love, as He chose not only to become like us in all things but sin, but to die for us, so that we could live forever.  Matthew Kelly describes it this way in his Sacrament of Confirmation program called “Decision Point”: there is a virus that is infecting and killing everyone, and try as they might, scientists cannot find a cure.  As they try to work out how the virus works, more and more people keep dying.  And then, one day, they discover this one person, whose blood contains the antidote to the virus.  From his blood, a vaccine can be made that will eventually save everyone on earth from this virus.  The only problem is that, in order to make the vaccine, every drop of blood is needed; the person will have to give up his life.  That person, not thinking only of himself and how he will be fine, but all the people he can save, agrees to die so that others could live.  That Confirmation program was developed years ago, but it hits home even more so now, in the midst of this pandemic.
    Jesus’ Nativity is a reason to rejoice, no matter what is happening in our lives and in the world.  Jesus’ Nativity is the hope that gives us the strength to keep going, these 9 months after “14 Days to Flatten the Curve.”  As Catholics, we don’t live for this world.  While we treasure and care for the creation that God has entrusted to us, we have our minds on the world to come.  And this “momentary, light affliction,” as St. Paul says, is as nothing compared to the glory to be revealed in heaven.  We care for ourselves, and make prudent choices about our health, but we don’t obsess and fret about death because Jesus has freed us from the fear of death.  Death is not the end, but for those who follow Jesus, a transition to new life, glorified life, joy-filled life. 
    This is not to make light of the many sacrifices that have been made and are being made by people each day.  This is not to brush off the real hardships that many find themselves in during the pandemic.  But Jesus’ Nativity is a great reminder that these experiences are not all there is to life.  If anything, this pandemic has revealed to us how much we have lived like this life is all there is, and have not focused on heaven enough. 
    No government official nor any created thing can stop our joy that comes from this day and the hope the newborn Jesus brings to us.  Though our celebrations may be smaller, and maybe not happen with family and friends at all, and though we rightly find some level of happiness from our time spent with loved ones, the true joy of today comes the fact that God’s love for us has been revealed in Jesus being born for us to save us from sin and death, and open for us the way to eternal salvation.  So “let us rejoice.  Sadness is not becoming on the Birth Day of Life Itself.”  “Joy to the world!  The Lord is come!”