Sure, we're celebrating Corpus Christi three days late because American Catholics will do anything it takes to be holy except go to Mass in the middle of the week, but the bright side is, everyone else has done the lovely Eucharistic posting for me, and I just have to put up the links and photos. Our parish held a Eucharistic procession for the first time the parish historian can recall --marched all around the neighborhood singing hymns, we did. (You should have seen the looks on the faces of the folks coming out of The Yoga Space.)
Here's the Pope leading the Eucharistic Procession last Thursday, kneeling on the back of a pick-up truck before the makeshift altar --all the way from Piazza San Giovanni to Sta. Maria Maggiore. More photos here --scroll down a little, and you'll find excerpts of his homily, too. A particularly lovely one, but not yet translated, alas.Meanwhile, Hermeneutic of Continuity celebrated on the Isle of Wight. And the Anchoress found a live adoration site. She makes an interesting point, too. If Jesus could not explain the Eucharist such that people would understand it, how can we expect to persuade by words? She's thinking of John 6, beginning at v. 53, when Christ said
Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him....
Many, perhaps most of Christ's disciples disbelieved at that point:
many of his disciples who were listening said, "This saying is hard; who can accept it?"
Which would have provided an opening for Christ to explain what he meant if he didn't intend to be taken literally. But instead he reiterated:
"Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe."As a result of this,
many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.The Anchoress puts it well. Or as well as one can, I think.
His Presence in the Eucharist cannot be talked…it must be experienced. A half-hour before the monstrance, an hour before a closed tabernacle in an empty church nothing compares, nothing instructs so sweetly, or sears me with such unrelenting gentleness.That is true to my experience, and the reason I joined the Church. Make whatever arguments you like against her: bad priests, bad liturgies, bad history, bad homilies, and I will probably grant your argument. But it is still worth it to have Him...always, until the end of the world.
