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Reverend Jerry Singleton’s Homily

Feast Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ
June 14, 2009

The older generation among us remember when this feast was regarded as a Holy Day and was named Corpus Cristi, the Latin words for “the body of Christ.” In many towns there would be a public procession where the Blessed Sacrament and the monstrance was carried through the streets as a mark of respect and belief in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In between, it would seem that many may have lost some of that respect and fervor, and even the beliefs in its significance in our lives. As a matter of fact some polls would show that 33% of Catholics attend the Eucharist each Sunday on a regular basis. Forty-three percent of Catholics who would doubt that the Christ is really present in the Eucharist, and that the bread and wine are more symbols than actuality. The reality is that we see many people and many parents, unfortunately, who do not bring their children with them to celebrate the presence of Christ in our midst. It would seem that they missed the fact that the Eucharist is really at the center of our Christian life. It is regrettable that we cannot transfer some of the same passion that we have for sports, work, and the pursuit of riches and power to the Eucharist. We will sacrifice to make sure that our children don’t miss a sports event, and yet we don’t take any notice of them missing mass. We need to remember when it comes to believing in the Eucharist that it is the same faith that we have referred to in the past number of Sundays, the Resurrection, the Pentecost, the Holy Trinity. All of these we believe through the eyes of faith. It is regrettable that there are some who no longer believe, but it is not new. If we look at John’s Gospel, where after Christ performed the miracle on the loaves and fishes, that the people returned to him the next day looking for a repeat of what he had done. Christ went on to address them that he is the bread of life and that the bread that they enjoyed yesterday was only bread for material support of their body, but that he had come to be much more, to be the bread of life and to sustain us. Then they requested that He give them this bread of life. He progressed from there to explain that the bread I give is my flesh for the life of the world and my blood is for the salvation of the world. It is at that stage that many turned their back and left him because they could not believe.

We also need to remember when we talk about the Eucharist, that Christ chose the Feast of the Passover to have the Last Supper and to have his first Eucharistic sacrifice. The Feast of the Passover has always been very important to the Chosen people and to the Jewish people in our day. Christ knew its significance and chose that occasion to celebrate the First Eucharist on Holy Thursday night. Passover was, and is a celebration of thanksgiving by the Jewish people for their delivery from slavery in Egypt, and arriving safely in the Promised Land. That Feast of Passover is celebrated each year where there are readings from scripture and singing of hymns of praise where they recount God’s goodness to them. It is not just a memorial, it is done to remind the Jewish people that God is present in their midst today, as much as he was in the Old Testament. Likewise, in the Eucharist we celebrate our deliverance form the slavery of sin through the death of Christ. We celebrate our salvation. Like the Chosen people we are on a journey to the Promised Land which is called Heaven. Like the Chosen people, we are sustained by the belief that they would arrive at a promised land; we too are sustained by our belief in a life hereafter in Heaven. This is one of the central beliefs of our faith. But as the Chosen people after their delivery from Egypt had a long journey to the Promised Land and had their moments of anxiety, fear, frustration and disappointment, we too have many of the same experiences along our journey between birth and going to our promised land. Just as the chosen people were sustained by the presence of God in their midst, so are we sustained by the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. After all he has told us, “I am the bread of life.” In the Eucharist we are fed the Body of Christ just as the chosen people were fed by Manna from Heaven. Christ tells us again, “I am the living bread that came down from Heaven and whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

Just as Passover was not an individual but a community celebration of praise and thanksgiving, as it is today, so also is the Eucharist. At the Last Supper Christ washed the feet of the apostles to give them the message that they need to do likewise to their fellow man. So we need to remember that Christ did not come on Earth just for our individual salvation, he came on Earth so that we could live as a community and sustain each other as a community. Christ himself built a community around himself when he was here on Earth, to give us an example of what we needed to do. Because it is by living in our community as we do here each Sunday in the Eucharist, that we draw strength as a community. It is as a community that we are able to respond to the appeal to spread the word in Father Linus’ home village. It is as a community that we are able to respond these weeks to take care of the homeless at our Parish hall. So therefore, we need to remember that our belief is not an individual thing alone, but that we need to be part of a community. Attendance at our Eucharistic celebration each Sunday is one of the beautiful ways that Christ instituted for us to do so. It is also important to believe that we draw our strength from it to go out and live the message that He gave us. It is only then as we leave these four walls with the final words of mass, “go in peace to serve the Lord and one another,” that we will have true meaning in our lives.

© 2009 Saint Anthony Catholic Church, Fort Laud., Florida