THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI

I was about to write some comments about the Feast of the Holy Trinity when I was reminded by one of my friends that Holy Trinity was LAST weekend and that this weekend we celebrate Corpus Christi!  Just in the nick of time.  Technically, the feast day was actually Thursday the 4th, but in America we generally celebrate it on Sunday.  It became a feast day in about 1247, at the urging of St. Juliana of Mont Cornillon in Belgium.

"Corpus Christi" is translated as the body of Christ, and it refers to the Holy Eucharist which Catholics receive at every mass (with one exception during Lent.)  Saint Juliana was exceedingly devoted to this sacrament and worked hard to influence the Catholic authorities to make a feast day for it.

Why the Eucharist is a central aspect of our faith goes back to Christ himself. In fact, every doctrine in the Catholic Church goes back to Christ and the Bible.  Those unfamiliar with the Catholic Church often claim that men in The Church made up a bunch of rules that have nothing to do with Jesus or the Bible.  If you read the Catechism, each and every teaching refers back to the precepts originally found in the Bible.  Don't believe me, though.  Pick up a copy and read it. You'll see for yourself.

The Eucharist in the Catholic Church is definitely not the same thing that one may receive in a Protestant Church. First of all, the Protestant Churches do not have the apostolic succession by which the power to confect the Eucharist is conveyed.  So, it is a good thing that most of the thousands of Protestant offshoots view communion as a symbolic gesture and not Jesus Himself.  Churchgoers are being cheated by this, because it is no small matter.  The Eucharist goes to the heart of what Jesus came to earth to do.

Protestant communion plates with grape juice

and pieces of bread

Jesus did not wander around giving intellectual treatises to the intelligentsia of his day.  Nor did he come as a king or a high priest, something he could easily do, given that He was God.  He chose to be born in a poor family.  He was lowly, humble.  The popular story is that he worked as a carpenter with Joseph, his foster father.  But a "tekton," which is what he was called, simply meant someone who worked with his hands, whether it was with wood, stone or mud.  It was a gritty, earthy job, in any case.  His closest friends were fishermen, hard working, physical laborers who worked up a sweat with the stink of fish and sea in their nostrils.  Theirs was a primitive job, the most basic.

When giving talks, Jesus took care to feed the people real food in addition to the spiritual food he spoke to them.  There was the miracle of the 5,000 people and the miracle of the 3,000 people.  Small amounts of fish and bread miraculously fed them all, with some left over.

He came to us physically, engaged with us physically, baptized people not only with words but with water. In addition to the fish and the bread, he miraculously produced wine for the wedding at Canna.  He walked on the waters of Gallilee.  He touched earth and sea.  He touched us and healed us.  He gave us his breath when he breathed on the disciples, just as God had breathed life into Adam.  He was a hands-on guy.  So, when he said that this bread is my body and this wine is my blood, he wasn't giving the disciples some intellectual symbol.  He was showing them how He planned to come to all his disciples after His ascension into heaven; in a real way, a physical way, a nourishing and earthy way.  He was announcing that He was going to come to us in the guise of bread and wine.

He admonished us that anyone who did not eat of his body and drink of his blood had "no life in him."

Jesus gave his disciples authority and power, saying that whoever listened to them thereby listened to Jesus and the Father who sent Him.  He told them that the sins they forgave on earth would be forgiven in heaven, something only God could do, according to the Jewish understanding of the day. The apostles were the agents of God, with the authority of God.  With that authority, they could transmit the power that Jesus had given them to each succeeding generation of priests in the Church. This is apostolic succession, and this is how Jesus ensured that His commandments would be kept inviolate, and The Church would remain a place that was in harmony with Him.  This is how he ensured that his presence as bread and wine would continue to be given to the faithful, down through the ages.

What Jesus transmitted to them was not some intellectual idea or symbol or philosophy.  He transmitted an actual thing of some substance to them, and He gave them the power to transmit that substance to others.  Remember, he was a hands-on man, fully engaged with the physical world.  He smeared spit on the eyes of one man to cure his blindness.  You can't get any earthier than that.

When Jesus ascended into heaven, he re-entered the timeless world of God.  While we are conscious of almost 2,000 years passing since his ascension, Jesus is equally present at all times.  No time has passed for Him.  His Church is not an old, desiccated relic, dissolving into the sands of a middle-Eastern country.  It is still fresh and alive because He is still with us as much as He ever was, and perhaps more.

When we consume the Eucharist, the timelessness of God intersects with our puny, time-shackled world in this miracle that is Jesus, by the power of Jesus, by the express wish of Jesus, and by the specific intention and direction of Jesus.  That is what today is all about.

Silver "Rose" Parnell
(c) 2015

MEDITATION ON GOD'S TIMELESSNESS AND THE EUCHARIST

I once read that the definition of time is "the measurement of the movement of particles through space."  We measure the earth's rotation around the sun to arrive at our concepts of days, weeks, months, years, minutes, seconds, etc.

God, however, is timeless.  We know this instinctively, and logic confirms it. God, the creator of all things, the originator of our time, is omnipotent, omnipresent, and is not confined by the time in which we live.  He cannot be defined or limited to the powers of the planets as we are.  Even for us, time is not absolute.  Einstein demonstrated this for us in his theory of relativity.  Time is, in a simplistic sense, a function of where you are in the universe.  You can't pin down God.  He is everywhere and nowhere.

If you haven't read Einstein's Theory of Relativity in its entirety, by the way, I recommend slogging through it.  I once had a small book that contained it and made the mistake of lending it.  I will have to get another to read it again.  My mind couldn't contain all of it, but I found it spiritually enlightening.

One day, while meditating on the timelessness of God, I realized that the moment the priest confects the Eucharist is the moment when God, in his timelessness, intersects the time of our world.  This is what is meant when we are told that we are participating in the sacrifice of Jesus and not recreating the sacrifice that we feel was completed "a long time ago."  We are not crucifying Jesus over and over again.  We are participating in the one and only sacrifice of Jesus.  It is hard for most of us to grasp this because we are limited by time and our minds are ordered in a linear fashion because of that immersion in time.

The incredible meeting of the timelessness of God with the time-bound souls on earth which IS the confection of the Eucharist is not some magical hocus pocus that anyone could do if they only had the right words and performed the right movements.  It isn't witchcraft or a skill that one can develop.  If anyone other than a validly ordained priest in the line of apostolic succession  were to imitate every action that was performed during the sacrifice of the mass, the body and blood of Christ would not be present.  Why?

The power to confect the Eucharist is transmitted to a priest through the apostolic succession that extends back to Jesus himself.  Jesus created the church and gave authority and power to the apostles.  He created the hierarchy by naming Simon Cephas, "the rock", which was later translated to "Peter," and saying that on that rock he would build his church.  It is interesting to note that Cephas was not a proper name until Jesus gave it to him, so his moniker would be quite striking during his lifetime.  This word, the logos, Chephas' name, was meant to convey Jesus' intention that he would be the head of the church by being its foundation.  On him, Jesus' church would be built and even the gates of  hell could not stand against it.

When Jesus appeared to the apostles after His resurrection, he first said, "Peace be with you," then identified himself by showing them the wounds in his hand and his side.  Then he said, "Peace be with you, as the Father has sent me, so I send you."  His church was already formed, with the 12 disciples, one of whom was named as the leader, the foundation of the church.  The teachings had already been given to them, but something else was needed.  They had to "graduate" in a sense and carry Jesus' teachings out into the world, so he sent them out as the Father had sent Him out.  This sending of the Apostles into the world was Jesus' confirmation of their authority and a continuation of the mercy of the Lord in sending Jesus among us to begin with.

Then, Jesus breathed on them and said, "receive the Holy Spirit."  So, they had first, their marching orders; second, their bona fides; and third, a new life in the Holy Spirit.  In addition, Jesus told them, "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."  In those days, it was clearly understood that only God could forgive sins, yet Jesus had transmitted this capacity to the apostles.  The apostles were to stand, teach and speak "in persona Christi," on behalf of Christ.

The Catholic Church has an unbroken line of spiritual transmission from the time Jesus breathed upon the Apostles until today.  The power and authority that was given to the apostles is the same power and authority that is transmitted to a Catholic priest when he becomes ordained.  In our minds, the power has come "full circle," returning to the altar to confect the Eucharist, but in reality that power is the exact same power transmitted to the apostles.  It is not some old, dusty memory of something that happened once, a long time ago.

When I attend the Divine Liturgy, I often remind myself that nowhere else can I receive the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.

If I think about the timelessness of the Lord at the moment the Eucharist is confected, I picture the congregation rising up to meet the Holy One while he comes down to meet us.  The angels and saints glory in that moment, and there is music and singing like nothing we have ever heard, I am sure.  When I am paying proper attention, I am more than a little moved and in awe.  I try to hold onto that mystery in my mind while it is occurring and leave my heart completely open to the limitless Lord with whom we are making the most extraordinary contact.

Jesus himself ordained this miraculous contact between us, this stunning experience of unity and salvation.  He said, "Whoever does not eat my flesh and drink my blood has no life within himself."  Some people think we are just eating crackers and drinking wine.

Glory to Jesus Christ!  Glory to Him forever.

Silver Rose Parnell