Sunday, June 6, 202
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.
We just called it “Corpus Christi” when I was young. Many of us, of a “certain age”, will remember the extravagant processions through our childhood neighborhoods, the garmented priest carrying the elevated monstrance.
Little children and adults accompanied the journeying Christ who blessed our neighbors, families, businesses and playgrounds.
Although, for some, such devotional practices have changed since that time, I was still deeply moved when, during the depth of the current pandemic, Pope Francis stood alone to raise the monstrance in blessing over a starkly empty St. Peter’s Square.
Certainly, all our neighborhoods today could use such a blessing. And, it is we – the People of God and living Body of Christ – who must carry Christ’s Presence to our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and commonplaces.
Our Responsorial Psalm today offers us this question:
How shall I make a return to the LORD
Psalm 116:12
for all the good God has done for me?
Maybe this is one way to hear that question on this Feast:
How will I carry Christ into my world today?
Poetry: Love’s Choice by Malcolm Guite
This bread is light, dissolving, almost air, A little visitation on my tongue, A wafer-thin sensation, hardly there. This taste of wine is brief in flavour, flung A moment to the palate’s roof and fled, Even its aftertaste a memory. Yet this is how He comes. Through wine and bread Love chooses to be emptied into me. He does not come in unimagined light Too bright to be denied, too absolute For consciousness, too strong for sight, Leaving the seer blind, the poet mute; Chooses instead to seep into each sense, To dye himself into experience.
Music: Pange Lingua written by St. Thomas Aquinas
Lavish Mercy 