Corpus Christi
June 2, 2013

Listen to this homily (.mp3 file)

     I have two little stories I’d like to share with you this morning, and both of them involve Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  The first was told by a Jesuit priest who was invited to offer Mass with Mother Teresa’s community at one of her Houses of the Dying in Calcutta.  The priest told how, when it came time for Communion, he was very conscious of how honored he was to be giving Holy Communion to the small, intense woman with the warm yet piercing eyes, clothed in white sari trimmed in blue -- but how he quickly abandoned those thoughts when he saw the way Mother Teresa looked at the consecrated host.  To use his words, “It was then that I realized that the true wonder of the moment was not that I was giving Holy Communion to a living saint, but rather that I was holding in my hand the Body of Christ. Even if I had been slow to understand or believe that, the look in her eyes made it abundantly clear.”

     That’s the first thing I would like to share with you today: a powerful picture of faith in the Blessed Eucharist that might well challenge your own.  The other is a statement which Mother Teresa herself made the day she received the Nobel Peace Prize.  In her acceptance speech she declared, “I believe that we are not social workers.  We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people.  But we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world.  For we are touching the Body of Christ twenty-four hours a day!”

     My friends, the meaning of the Feast of Corpus Christi is contained in those two glimpses into the faith of Mother Teresa.  She, perhaps better than some of the great theologians of the Eucharist, grasped not only the profound meaning of those two simple words, Corpus Christi, Body of Christ, but also the marvelous ambiguity inherent in those words.  For the Mother Teresa who gazed with such awe and wonder at a simple piece of bread, seeing in it the Body of Christ, was the same Mother Teresa who, day after day in the squalid gutters of Calcutta, cradled the broken bodies of the sick and dying, knowing that there, too, she was in the presence of the Holy, touching the Body of Christ.

     That is what I mean by the marvelous ambiguity of this great mystery we call the Body of Christ, Corpus Christi.  Jesus is really present in the Eucharistic meal that we gather to celebrate:  in bread broken as his body was broken on the cross, and in wine poured out as was his redeeming blood.  Our belief in that sacramental presence is a defining truth of our faith and we celebrate it today with a certain holy exuberance (with song, incense, flowers, candles, banners, and a wonderful procession).  But no matter how strong our faith might be in the real presence of the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist, if his presence is not just as real for us in the people whom the Lord loves -- all people without exception, but especially the poor, the broken, and those we find it difficult to love -- then we are involving ourselves in a terrible contradiction.

     St. Paul said as much long ago in his First Letter to the Corinthians: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ?  The bread which we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?”  And then Paul went on to say, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”

     There is that wonderful ambiguity once again:  we eat the one bread which is Christ’s Body and in so doing we become that very body.  We become the Church, and everyone -- everyone -- becomes our brother and our sister.

     All of this is made very visible and very real in the way we worship in this Cathedral. Right in our midst, unmistakably central to everything that goes on here, is the altar, a symbol of Christ and the table from which we receive his Body and Blood in a sacred meal that can satisfy our deepest hungers.  And assembled around the altar is the Church -- also the Body of Christ -- this marvelous gathering of humanity, incredibly diverse in just about every way imaginable, but one in faith, one in hope, and one in love.  Or at least striving to be one.

     One of the most moving moments of my ministry as a priest -- and I’m sure I speak for many who share this privilege -- comes whenever I minister the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  “The Body of Christ,” I keep saying to people over and over again.  And I am saying it to you:  the young, the old; the well-to-do, the poor; the Asian, the Caucasian; the casual, the awestruck; the searcher and the certain, the saint and the sinner.  I often find myself profoundly moved by what it is I am saying, “the Body of Christ”, and, yes, to whom I am saying it, also “the Body of Christ!”

     Years ago, a priest who taught me in the seminary went out on what may have been, in those days, a bit of a theological limb.  He suggested that, while it could be helpful to close our eyes after receiving communion in order to concentrate and pray, it might be good once in awhile to do what he thought was even more difficult:  to open our eyes and look around -- not to gawk but to say to ourselves, `Lord, these people are your Body, too.  Each one of them!’

     Isn’t that what Mother Teresa did day after day as she gazed in wide-eyed wonder on the Eucharistic Body of Christ, and then looked with eyes of tender compassion on the Body of the same Christ suffering and dying in the streets of Calcutta?

     Corpus Christi.  Body of Christ.  We become what we receive.  May I conclude with yet one more word from Mother Teresa -- this from a little book of reflections she co-authored with Brother Roger, the founder of the Community at Taizé?  I quote:  “In Holy Communion, we find Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.  In our work, we find Christ under the appearance of flesh and blood.  It is the same Christ.” 

     My friends, make no mistake about it: it is the same Christ....

     Father Michael G. Ryan