Friends,
as we celebrate this great feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus, and
as we lament the lost chance at our Eucharistic procession today, I am reminded
of one of the more memorable processions in which I participated while I was
studying Spanish in Antigua Guatemala.
There,
each of the major parishes take turns throughout the month of June to have
their own processions, but the Cathedral parish is always the first to hold
theirs. In Antigua, they celebrate the
feast on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, which is the traditional day on
which to celebrate it, and the Cathedral Mass and procession was in the
morning, during my lessons. My teacher
suggested that we join the celebration, however, so that I could get an idea of
how they celebrated these feasts in Latin America. As a devout seminarian, I was happy to agree!
The
Mass in the cathedral was celebrated by the bishop. It was beautiful and the cathedral was full
of people. Many more were gathered
outside to prepare for the procession and the path through the streets was
prepared, also. Homes and businesses
along the streets were decorated with banners and other festive adornments, and
in the streets were “alfombras”—colorful “carpets” made from pine needles,
colored sawdust, and flower petals with beautiful designs—placed there solely
to be walked on as the procession with the Blessed Sacrament passed over them.
At
the time of the consecration, I was fully focused on the altar and ready to
adore our Lord made present to us in the form of bread and wine. Then, as the bishop consecrated the bread and
showed it to us, I heard it: FOOMP, FOOMP… POP, POP. “Oh my gosh,” I thought, “Someone just blew
off fireworks outside the church during Mass! That was so irreverent!” And then, as the bishop consecrated the wine
and held it up for us to adore, I heard it again: FOOMP, FOOMP… POP, POP. This second time, my reaction changed. “Oh my gosh,” I thought, “This was
intentional. They intended to shoot off fireworks at the consecration. That’s so weird!” I knew then that my teacher was right. I was about to have an experience of how they
celebrated these feasts in Latin America!
As
Mass concluded and the procession began, I realized that the fireworks at the
consecration was just the beginning. As
the bishop crossed the threshold of the door to the cathedral carrying the
monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament, he paused and two more fireworks were
launched. Then, as the procession made
its way through the streets, at regular intervals, fireworks continued to be
launched ahead of it. In addition,
strips of firecrackers were lit along the sidewalks, usually mere feet from
those who were following the procession.
All the while musicians were playing songs of Eucharistic devotion and
the faithful were praying the rosary or other devotions.
In
spite of the fact that all of these loud displays assaulted my cultural sense
of reverence—that is, that quiet, reserved displays of devotion are most
appropriate—I came to recognize an important fact: No one in that city had any
doubt who was walking through the streets that day! ///
Today
we heard in our first reading these words from the book of Deuteronomy, “Do not
forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place
of slavery; who guided you through the vast and terrible desert… and fed you in
the desert with manna…” And so, we
celebrate this feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus to remember the
sacred humanity of Jesus, the Son of God, through which we were redeemed of our
sins and restored to friendship with God, and the Blessed Sacrament, the Real
Presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus, by which we “eat his
flesh and drink his blood”—the living bread come down from heaven—and so have
life within us. We do this to remember—or,
rather, so that we never forget—that the Lord, our God, has brought us out of
that place of slavery and fed us with miraculous bread to sustain us on our journey
to eternal life. We remember, not just
because it is an important doctrine—which, of course, it is—but also because it
has implications for everything in our lives.
Friends,
Jesus’ challenge to his disciples (and to his skeptics) in the Gospel is one
that cannot be ignored. One has either
to accept the teaching or to deny it.
Ignoring it is not an option. Rather,
as Father Luigi Giusani put it, it is a problem that must be solved. He likens it to a landslide that you
encounter while driving along a road on the way to your destination: you cannot
simply ignore it. Rather, it is a
problem that must be solved if you are to continue on your way to your
destination, even as the solution will affect the path you take towards it.
The
same is true for the incarnation and Jesus’ revelation in the gospel today: we
cannot simply ignore it. God has entered
human history and has said, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” If your destination is “life”, then this
revelation becomes a landslide across the road: you have to figure out how to
navigate through or around it, and the solution will affect the path by which
you continue. Many of those who heard
these words from Jesus turned back on the path (and, thus, away from their
destination). Many however, confused as
they may have been, continued to follow him along the path that this revelation
dictated and they entered the life he had promised.
My
brothers and sisters, our National Eucharistic Revival and our Mass and the processions
that are taking place in many other places today, are our call to confront this
problem once again and to push others to do so.
When we celebrate any Mass, and even more so when we take the Blessed
Sacrament out into the streets, we are performing a profound act of faith that
what we have encountered and what we believe is true—that is, that to follow
Jesus and to eat his flesh and drink his blood in the Blessed Sacrament is the
solution to the “problem” that God’s incarnation presents. Our task is to make our lives continual encounters
with this “problem”, so that those who may never encounter a Mass or a
Eucharistic procession might nonetheless encounter the Incarnate God in a
personal way and, thus, have the chance to choose life—the life that his Body
and Blood make possible for us.
Regardless of how each of us chooses to do this, I’d like to remind you
that fireworks are always an available option 😉.
No
matter how God calls us to witness to this truth in our lives, our first task
is always this: to worship God “with our whole heart, and with our whole being,
and with our whole strength” (Deut 6:5), which begins and ends always here, in
the Mass. May our worship today, and our
efforts to witness to these truths in our lives, bring glory to God and
salvation to all those around us.
Given in English and Spanish at St. Maria Goretti Parish:
Westfield, IN
June 11th, 2023
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