Dear Friends,
This second weekend of June brings us the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, and with it, the patronal feast of our parish. In just a few short weeks, we will mark the third anniversary of the merger of the former St. Mary Parish and the former St. Agnes Parish into a new parish, the Parish of the Precious Blood. In those months, we have made some great strides in bringing two separate communities of faith into a single community of faith. There have been some bumps along the way, but things have gone rather well and I thank everyone for their understanding and cooperation.
For your meditation, I share with you some words written by one of the great saints of the early Church, St. Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, who died in the early part of the third century. He wrote these words as a part of his great work, his treatise Against Heresies, and in that work, he touched on what the Church believes about the Eucharist. These are his words:
“If our flesh is not saved, then the Lord has not redeemed us with his blood, the Eucharistic chalice does not make us sharers in his blood, and the bread we break does not make us sharers in his body. There can be no blood without veins, flesh and the rest of the human substance, and this the Word of God actually became: it was with his own blood that he redeemed us. As the Apostle [Paul] says: In him, through his blood, we have been redeemed, our sins have been forgiven.`
We are his members and we are nourished by creation, which is his gift to us, for it is he who causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall. He declared that the chalice, which comes from his creation, was his blood. He affirmed that the bread, which comes from his creation, was his body, and he makes it the nourishment of our body. When the chalice we mix and the bread we bake receive the word of God, the Eucharistic elements become the body and blood of Christ, by which our bodies live and grow. How then can it be said that the flesh belonging to the Lord’s own body and nourished by his body and blood is in-capable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life? Saint Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians that we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones. He is not speaking of some spiritual and incorporeal kind of man, for spirits do not have flesh and bones. He is speaking of a real human body composed of flesh, sinews and bones, nourished by the chalice of Christ’s blood and receiving growth from the bread which is his body.
The slip of a vine planted in the ground bears fruit at the proper time. The grain of wheat falls into the ground and decays only to be raised up again and multiplied by the Spirit of God who sustains all things. The Wisdom of God places all these things at the service of man and when they receive God’s word they become the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ. In the same way, our bodies, which have been nourished by the Eucharist, will be buried in the earth and decay, but they will rise again at the appointed time, for the Word of God will raise them up to the glory of the Father. Then the Father will clothe our mortal nature in immortality and freely endow our corruptible nature with incorruptibility, for God’s power is shown most perfectly in weakness.”
As we celebrate this feast of the Eucharist in these times when public Masses have been so limited, may we grow in our faith in the Lord’s presence under the forms of bread and wine, and reverence his presence there, not only when we receive him at Mass, but also in tabernacle where he waits for us. May we grow in our longing for this sacred food that sustains us in this life and leads us to that life which will never end, where we shall see God face to face, be made like God, and enjoy the happiness God always intended for us.
Have a blessed week!