Corpus Christi
June 10, 2012
10 AM and 5:30 PM
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
Today’s feast, The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, used to be an
outdoor feast. It used to be the people’s feast. It was celebrated with
parades, and candles, and incense and flowers, and sometimes even a
marching band. It was a party! Maybe we’ve lost something.
Let me share a memory with you. I still remember vividly when I was
a little boy the big parades in my home town. I grew up in a small town in
Northeastern Pennsylvania that had a Catholic church on just about every
other block. We were all segregated along ethnic lines. The Italians had
two: St. Rocco’s and Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The Irish had the biggest
and most elaborate, St. John the Evangelist. The Lithuanians had St.
Casmir....I could go on but you get the idea. But on this feast, we all had
parades. And sometimes the parades would run into each other. That was
actually the fun part for a ten year old.
But it was all outdoors. The Body of Christ went marching. In
sections of Europe they still hold elaborate processions in many places. And
some celebrate in some pretty strange ways. Another memory coming at
you.
About 25 years ago a few of us were happily traipsing through Europe
on a summer vacation. We decided to splurge in Lucern, Switzerland and
stay at a little hotel on the top of a great hill overlooking the city. It was
called the Chateau Gütsch , but is no longer in service. As we were checking
in, the hotel clerk handed us a neatly typed warning that was also posted
throughout the hotel. It noted that as the morrow celebrated the feast of
Corpus Christi, as had been customary since the 16th century, a canon would
be fired at dawn from the crest of the hill overlooking the city. The crest of
the hill was exactly where the front lawn of the hotel was situated.
We were touched to be reminded that it was the feast of Corpus Christi,
but thought how much bother could a canon be? We were not really
prepared for the dawn. In the lingering darkness we were jolted from our
beds by wave after wave of blasts. Windows trembled, glasses shook,, the
floor groaned. And we ran outside to view an extraordinary spectacle.
During the night the Swiss army had rolled onto the hill what must have been
every howitzer they owned. They were lined up all along the hill firing away
in close sequence. The Esplanade 1812 overture pales in comparison.
It was a truly shocking outdoor celebration. And then the parade
began to spill out from the church doors way down in the city. It was an
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outdoor celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ.
You may have memories of your own. I can still see my family and
friends all dressed up and their Sunday best to parade the Blessed Sacrament
through town. What’s interesting to note is that the Roman Catholic church
had explicitly banned these outdoor processions throughout most of the
Middle Ages. Who says the people have always just obeyed the hierarchy?
This day was a feast for the people!
It’s been said that perhaps no one understood Eucharist more than St.
Augustine (even though St. Thomas Aquinas would run a close second).
Augustine understood that to celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ was to
celebrate not just bread and wine, not just atonement and redemption, not
just Covenant, and blood and sacrifice. It was all those things, but it was
more. Ands Augustine used to frequently remind his community in word
and gesture at communion time in his cathedral.
He would pause before
communion, hoist the bread and wine up high, and say to his people: “receive
what you are; be what you receive.” The Body and Blood of Christ!
St. Augustine treasured the conviction that we are the body of Christ.
We should do no less. The body and blood of Christ is not just here on this
altar. It is there, and there, and there: outside the doors of our church. It is
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an outdoor feast and it has to be because we are an outdoor people of God.
So many people continue to look for Christ in strange places. Augustine got
it right. And do does Mary Oliver in one of her exquisite poems. Her title
expresses it well. Here is the poem.
The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside our Church: The Eucharist
Something has happened
To the bread
And the wine.
They have been blessed.
What now?
The body leans forward
To receive the gift
from the priest’s hand
Then the chalice.
They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.
I want
to see Jesus,
maybe in the clouds
or on the shore,
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just walking,
beautiful man
and clearly
someone else
besides
On the hard days
I ask myself
if I ever will.
Also there are times
my body whispers to me
that I have.
Today is still an outdoor feast. In celebrating it today: receive what
you are; be what you receive. It’s all happening outside the door of the
church. And it deserves a canon and a parade no less today than ever before.
Enjoy the people’s feast; it’s your day. Peace!
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