June 19, 2023
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) on June 11, 2023 at the Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Psalm 147; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; and John 6:51-58.
Today, we celebrate that Christ is really, truly present in the communion that we share at every Mass. Jesus made this teaching explicitly clear as recorded in the gospel passage that we’ll hear tonight. The earliest Christians took this teaching on faith, even though it continues to defy our scientific understanding. Even if we struggle to believe in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, we are still encouraged to come forward at communion each week with hands extended, praying, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”
In our first reading, Moses points out that throughout the hardships of the Israelites’ 40 years of wandering in the desert, they were sustained by the manna provided by God. Like the Israelite’s daily bread, the individual grains and grapes of the bread and wine represent all of our joys and all of our hardships. Like those grains and grapes, we have each been crushed in our journey. Like the processes of baking and fermentation, we have come in contact with others and then have been transformed in irreversible ways. Then, through a process that also defies science, together we have been made into Christ’s body and blood to be shared with others.
For those times when we’ve failed to see Christ in ourselves or in others, we ask for God’s forgiveness.
In St. Paul’s time, people were familiar with the metaphor of many parts making up one body. Menenius Agrippa had written a fable about the hands, the mouth, and the teeth of a body deciding to go on strike to stop procuring food for the belly. Of course, as the belly starves, the hands, the mouth, and the teeth suffer. The moral was a classic principle of Stoic philosophy: accept the hand that is dealt to you. Some people are superior to others. Shut up and do your job. Paul takes this analogy and turns it upside down. All the parts of the body are important, says Paul. All of us are interdependent on one another.
The pandemic has made us more aware of our interdependence. In 2020 and in early 2021, and to a lesser-but-still-significant extent today, our vulnerability to covid-19 is wrapped up in how well the people around us are committed to protecting one another. At the same time, Pope Francis has invited all Catholics around the world – including those who feel most alienated from the institutional Church — to become more interdependent. He’s implemented a 3-year process, asking all of us to listen to one another. What are the hopes, the dreams, and the gifts that we have to enrich one other? What are the fears, the sorrows, and the wounds that we need to carry for each other on our journey?
The pandemic and the synodal process invite us to push back against those same narratives advanced by that old Roman fable of the relative importance of the various parts of the body. According to Jesus Christ and to Paul and to Pope Francis, as well as what we have learned from the pandemic, we should not stoically accept the hand that is dealt to us. Despite the claims of some leaders who purport to be Christian, we do not believe that some people are superior to others. We do not believe that the impoverished, the disempowered, and the marginalized should simply shut up and abide by the status quo. All the parts of the body are important, says Paul. All of us are interdependent on one another.
This week last year, the General Assembly of the Paulist Fathers, looking at all the ideas and feedback generated through a consultative process over the previous 6 months, concluded that we needed to find new ways to express our charism. (Charism is the fancy Church word for “special sauce.”) What is the Paulist charism, or charisms? For decades, we’ve expressed it as evangelization, reconciliation, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue. That’s at the heart of what we do, but we and our closest collaborators concluded last year that it was time to express the old truths of the gospel in new forms relevant to our specific times and circumstances.
Some Paulists were questioning if our public communications needed to more obviously highlight our discipleship in Jesus Christ and our devotion to the Holy Spirit. Maybe it’s my contrary nature, or maybe it’s because of my engineering background, but I pushed for us to express it more pragmatically. To me, the Paulist Fathers and the Paulist Center are fully dedicated to the entirety of Catholic teaching even while welcoming those who question it. We have sufficient confidence that the Catholic tradition is robust enough that we can bring legitimate concerns out into the open without becoming overly rigid or defensive. I cannot tell you how many good and holy people seek counsel from the Paulists and the Paulist Center after being rejected by their local parishes for asking questions or for talking about how their personal experiences seem to be at odds with the homilies they hear. After we talk with them and assure them that they have done nothing to place themselves outside the Catholic communion, they report that we have renewed their faith in God and in Church teaching. We have restored honor and dignity to a part of Christ’s body that has previously felt rejected or neglected.
For over 50 years, the Paulist Center has been a haven for those who feel marginalized. Probably the group that we’re most associated with welcoming, and whom we’ve had the greatest influence in inviting the universal Church to welcome more openly, are those who are separated, divorced, or remarried. In the last year, the Paulist Fathers have become more explicit in their support of four marginalized groups within the American Church that we at the Paulist Center are already explicitly committed to embracing: women, young adults, racial minorities, and people identifying as LGBTQ+.
From the Last Supper onwards, the Eucharist has been intended as a sacrament of healing and unity, not as a source of pain or division. And so I say to all of you who question if there is a place for you at the Eucharistic table: you are a beloved child of God. We in this community love you, exactly as you are. We are more fully who God calls us to be when you are with us. And if in any way, you do not feel welcome here, I hope you’ll make an appointment with me or with someone else on the pastoral staff so that we can better incorporate your hopes and fears, your dreams and sorrows, your gifts and your wounds into how we are the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ for one another.