Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for Corpus Christi (B), Vigil
June 5, 2021
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us tomorrow on Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord.
- In some ways, it’s the most important conversation we have. Jesus takes bread and says to the apostles, and to us, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he takes wine in a chalice and says, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.” These words would have been shocking to the apostles on Holy Thursday in the Upper Room. The wonder should never wear off.
- Do we believe Jesus when he says, “This is my body?” and “This is the chalice of my blood?” If we do, these words should change us. They should blow up our earthly priorities.
- That’s the impact they had on me when I was a college freshman. I was away on campus, living on my own for the first time. I was fortunate to have grown up in a very faithful Catholic family, had always gone to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, and was very involved in my hometown parish. From the time I was four, I had believe in what the Church calls the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and had never disbelieved the truth that after the words of consecration, there’s only Jesus under the appearances of bread of wine. But the consequences of the reality of the Eucharistic Jesus hadn’t struck me. But that September day in 1988, I asked myself, “If it is really Jesus, the eternal Son of God in the Holy Eucharist, is there anything more important that I could be doing on a Monday than receiving him in Holy Communion? Is there anything more important on a Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, Friday or Saturday?” I recognized that the clear answer to that is that there was nothing more important in the whole world than receiving God inside. And from that day, September 24, 1988 until today — 11,943 days later — I have, by the grace of God, never gone one day without Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. St. Thomas Aquinas’ words from his famous Eucharist hymn, the Panis Angelicus, have always summed up my attitude of gratitude. We sing, “O res mirabilis! Manducat Dominum pauper et servus humilis.” “O what a mind-blowing reality: a poor and humble servant eats the Lord!” That’s what Jesus in the Eucharist makes possible. We creatures eat Creator. We sinners consume our Savior. We lovers become one flesh with the Beloved.
- There has to be consequences to the Eucharist. The Church teaches that Jesus in the Eucharist is meant to be the source and summit of the Christian life, the source, the starting point, from which everything flows, and the summit, the goal, to which everything goes. Jesus in the Eucharist is meant to be the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, of our whole life. We’re supposed to draw our life from Jesus in the Eucharist.
- Let’s get practical about five various ways:
- First, we should make Sunday Mass by far the biggest priority of our week. There’s the famous story of the martyrs of Abitene from 304. They were told by the Roman prefect that if they assembled on Sunday morning for Mass, they would be arrested and executed. They thanked him for the notice.… but then still all 49 Christians in the town came together on the Lord’s Day. When the flabbergasted prefect asked them why they didn’t heed his warning, one of them, Emeritus, simply said, “Sine Dominico non possumus!” “Without the Lord on Sunday, we cannot live.” Especially in an age in which, even before COVID, many Catholics treated missing Sunday Mass as no big deal, and after COVID, many have not returned to Church, we need a healthy kick in the pants of the Mystical Body reminding us of what really is going on. We have the awesome privilege to receive the Creator of the Universe, the Savior of the World, within us. How can we ever pass up that Gift of gifts?
- Second, we should prepare for Sunday Mass. At the beginning of tomorrow’s Gospel, the apostles ask Jesus, “Where do you want us to go to prepare for you to eat the Passover?” They wanted, they needed, to prepare for what they thought was just going to be a reenactment of the Passover Rite when Moses and the Jewish people ate unleavened bread, killed an unblemished lamb, consumed it and wiped its blood on their doorposts. Little did the apostles know that Jesus was going to inaugurate that night the new and eternal Covenant and have us eat him as the Lamb of God and drink his blood as he himself entered through the door our life to make us his abode! And if the apostles wanted to prepare for the Old Passover in the meticulous way Jesus instructed them, how much more do we need to be prepared for something infinitely more awesome? How do we prepare? We prepare by longing for Jesus! Something we can do by spiritual communions, telling the Lord in prayer how much we hunger to receive him. We prepare by cleaning and getting things in order, which is what happens in the Sacrament of Penance. We prepare by looking ahead to the Mass and tilling the soil of our souls so that we might receive the seeds he wants to plant. That’s what we’re doing now, as we prepare for the Gospel. But preparation for Sunday Mass is the second way we make our faith in the Eucharist practical.
- Third, we should try to make time to come to adore Jesus, to spend time with him, to pray. If we really believe what the Church professes, that the Eucharist is Jesus, then how incredible is it that we have the time to be with him? The more we adore Jesus outside of Mass, the more we will adore him in Mass, and adoring love is the only fitting way to receive Jesus. What a great movement of the Holy Spirit is happening in the Church, despite all of the challenges the Church faces, that so many parishes are instituting periods of Eucharistic adoration, including perpetual adoration, 24/7. It’s no surprise that parishes that keep Jesus in the center in this way thrive. They’re the ones that produce many vocations to the priesthood and religious life. They’re the ones that grow in size. They’re the ones in which parishioners grow so fast and so deeply on the inside.
- Fourth, I’d like to urge you to think about what happened to me as an 18-year-old college freshman. Is there anything more important that you could be doing any day of your life than receiving God inside? Now it may not be possible for you to go to Mass every day because of familial or work obligations or because, sadly, there are not enough priests near you to offer Mass every day. But a Catholic who knows and loves Jesus in the Holy Eucharist should have a ravenous hunger to want to receive him each day. The beautiful thing about daily Mass is that no one is there out of obligation. Everyone is there out of love. That’s the adequate response to the astonishing gift of Jesus in loving us so much that he has become the food for our soul and whole Christian life.
- Lastly, especially on Corpus Christi, our gratitude for Jesus in the Eucharist spurs us to want to do something extravagant for him. Throughout the centuries, Christians have had Eucharistic processions on this feast, taking Jesus out into the streets, showing our love for him and letting our faith overflow. One of the beautiful things that happened during the pandemic in many places is that priests in the back of pick-up trucks drove the streets of their parishes in processions, blessing the houses of parishioners and making sure that, if people were prevented from coming to Church, Jesus would at least come to bless and visit them. Now that the worst of the pandemic is over, how beautiful it would be to go out with Jesus into those streets. In the Sequence hymn he wrote for the first Corpus Christi celebration in 1264, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Quantum potes, tantum aude,” a beautiful phrase that means, “Dare to do all you can!” He was summoning us to pull out all the stops in showing our appreciation to Jesus for this great gift. Corpus Christi processions are one way to do it. Holy Hours on this day are another. Making a commitment to center one’s whole life on Jesus in the Eucharist is probably the most fitting of all.
- “Take and eat.” “Take and drink.” Those words of Jesus in tomorrow’s Gospel are repeated every day on the altar of our parishes. By them, Jesus is inviting us to enter into a dialogue with him, not just of words, but of lives. He wants us to become more and more like him whom we consume. Let us ask for the grace to make that conversation that echoes each day in our churches the most consequential of our life! God bless you!
The Gospel on which the homily was based was:
On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread,
when they sacrificed the Passover lamb,
Jesus’ disciples said to him,
“Where do you want us to go
and prepare for you to eat the Passover?”
He sent two of his disciples and said to them,
“Go into the city and a man will meet you,
carrying a jar of water.
Follow him.
Wherever he enters, say to the master of the house,
‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room
where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”‘
Then he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready.
Make the preparations for us there.”
The disciples then went off, entered the city,
and found it just as he had told them;
and they prepared the Passover.
While they were eating,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, gave it to them, and said,
“Take it; this is my body.”
Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them,
and they all drank from it.
He said to them,
“This is my blood of the covenant,
which will be shed for many.
Amen, I say to you,
I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine
until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
Then, after singing a hymn,
they went out to the Mount of Olives.
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