Dear Parishioner,

In Ingmar Bergman’s classic film The Seventh Seal the quest for God is set against  a medieval world threatened by  plague. After his battles, a knight returns home.  He survives calamity but Death lets him know that he is doomed to die within a certain time. The knight wants to believes in God yet he is unable by himself to reach faith and he can see no  sign of God’s presence, surrounded as he is with a world suffering the Black Death.    On his journey he meets a peasant couple with their child and he shares with them a meal – wild strawberries and milk, the only food they could find.  However the knight sees the love in the young couple’s welcome as greater than the food and drink that is shared and in the simple actions of sharing a meal he sees the presence of a love that has eluded him;  in that meeting place the darkness begins to lift from the knight – he has been gifted with more than food, he has been graced with more than fellowship. 

Each of us seeks God and we all need the witness of each other’s love and faith at this simple eucharistic meal. On this Solemnity that is Corpus Christi,  the gospel account shows Jesus facing the darkness of his last time by gathering friends and sharing with them the gift of himself.  After the resurrection they would gather to keep his memory alive, to listen to the stories that love remembered, to break the bread that would nourish them.  Down the ages the Christian community has shared that memory as life and that is what we do today.  And as we process around the street we have  an opportunity to invite the broader community to ask questions about the Eucharist and encounter Christ as the Blessed Sacrament is brought to them in a very public display of faith and fellowship.

Deacon Alex