Dear Parishioner,
Words can become flat, lose most of their meaning and become mere space fillers on a page. Think back, if you can, to the 1980’s, when any policy announced by the government or any large organisation involved a ‘package’ or ‘raft’ of measures, meaning only that there were a number of things being discussed. I suppose the intention was to reassure that many things had been thought of, that there had been careful planning, although disobliging people (i.e. me) would be reminded that rafts were often bundles of what was at hand assembled to serve an immediate purpose or stave off some dire emergency. Thank goodness present day governments don’t act toilet that…. But I digress. Signs can lose their original meanings too. I gather that the little white running people on a green background that guide us to fire escapes, are to be redesigned with sensible, purposefully walking people, who clearly have not paused to gather their personal belongings.
You see, words can have echoes and signs can lose much of their meaning, so when we approach this feast of Corpus Christi, which sums up so much of what is central to our faith, what are we actually saying when we proclaim that the whole of Jesus Christ, all his humanity and divinity are to be seen in what once was bread and is no longer wine? Certainly we understand that here is a whole world to see, taste, touch, think on, pray about; but then what? Before us, with us, is not only Jesus-in-a-moment, defined, but Jesus-in-life, doing what he did so often with his disciples, eating with them. Here are all those meals he shared with those closest to him and with all manner of waifs and strays. Here is where he did so much of his teaching, correcting, accepting. And there we are too, ourselves being fed, taught, reconciled. What happened to all those people so long ago, happens to us. If such fragile things as once bread and no longer wine can bear such a weight of meaning, such truth, then even fragile people like us can bear that meaning also, so that we can become that action, we can be what Jesus does.
And what is asked of us? Listen to Pope Leo, Doctrine aims to teach us how to approach problems, and even more importantly, how to approach people. The doctrine, the teaching, we meet at Corpus Christi is a gift to lead us to all those problem people around us. We do not do this alone though for we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit that was present at creation, , the spirit through which the Eucharist tales effect, the spirit we received at baptism, the spirit that Mary received at the Annunciation. We have that spirit now so let us pray along with Our Lady in her great prayer the Magnificat in which the world and all its assumptions are turned upside down.
The feast of Corpus Christi isn’t just something we observe or learn about or hold dear, or are moved by, or pray through. It is something that we do. So, Spirit filled, what can we do with so great a gift?
Happy Feast!
Abbot Martin OSB
