The Eucharist is a Communion with God and with one another, not a free lunch.

With today’s feast, Bishop Salvatore Matano has inaugurated the Year of the Eucharist as a major part of our diocesan celebration of our 150^th anniversary in 2018.  In the most recent edition of the Catholic Courier, you will find a copy of the Bishop’s pastoral letter on the Eucharist.  During the course of the coming year, may we affirm in prayer and in action that the Eucharist is the source and the summit of our prayer life.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.  As we reflect on the mystery of the Sunday Eucharist, we are reflecting on the central prayer of our faith tradition.  We are part of a tradition that is nearly 2000 years old.  The Sunday Eucharist is our participation in the paschal mystery of Christ Jesus.  The Sunday Eucharist satisfies the deepest hungers of the human heart.

 With our physical nutrition needs, a good nutritionist would emphasize the value of a healthy breakfast to begin the day.  If you are skip a meal, breakfast would not be the meal t to skip.  And yet, some of us, myself included, often begin the day simply with a cup of coffee.  Regrettably, I don’t miss eating breakfast.  My physical hunger often doesn’t kick in until later in the day.

If skipping breakfast is relatively easy to do, it is also easy to skip spiritual food.  It’s too easy to skip daily prayer and the weekly celebration of the Eucharist.  We often don’t seem any worse for the wear and tear.  But over the long haul, we can get out of touch with our deepest spiritual hungers.

The thrust of Bishop Matano’s pastoral letter on the Eucharist is that far from being a pit stop for fast food and entertainment in the journey of life, the gift of the Body and Blood of Christ is the necessary sustenance for the spiritual growth of each member of the community and for the community itself.  The way we are wired is that for us to satisfy the deepest hunger of our human hearts, we need to be connected to the mystery God’s love that is within us.  It is in the mystery of the Eucharist that we encounter the Lord most deeply.

Physically, sometimes it takes a cardiac event or some other scare to wake us to the physical exercise and diet that is necessary for our health.  This is regrettable.  So too in the spiritual life, the busyness of life can keep us from being connected to our deepest spiritual hungers.

As a Eucharistic community, we gather with an attitude of gratitude.  We gather to give, to give thanks to the Lord our God.  We give thanks because we have been fed and nourished at the Table of the Lord with a food that enables us to live as Jesus lives, to love as Jesus loves, to forgive as Jesus forgives.   We have a spiritual need to give thanks, to love as Jesus loves, and to forgive as Jesus forgives.  This spiritual nourishment is abundantly shared with us at the Table of the Lord.

In the first Scripture reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, what Moses wanted the people to remember was that in their wandering when they were fed up with God and afraid they would die, God remained with them, putting up with their complaints and seeing to it that both their basic and deepest needs were met.   Moses’ message to his people was not to forget how the Lord led and fed them with the manna from heaven.  They needed to recognize God’s loving presence through their times of trouble.   In the Exodus journey of the Israelites, it is God who seeks communion with His people, not the other way around.      

   

What St Paul tells the Corinthian in today’s second reading offers us a commentary on Jesus’ offer to be living bread for us.  Speaking of the community’s Eucharistic meal, Paul reminds his people that eating and drinking in the name of Christ implies being united with him in his self-giving, in his dying and his rising.  It is communion, not a free lunch.

So too for us, it is such an important message for us as we celebrate the Eucharist.  It is communion, not a free lunch.  While receiving the Eucharist is beneficial to ourselves, we are called to be missionaries to the world.  The effects of the Eucharist are to be shared, not hoarded.  We are to be Christ to and for one another.  I would mention four wonderful examples of how are to share the grace of the Eucharist with one another: 

• ·         After Mass today, you are invited to become a member of the Knights of Columbus to engage in the works of mercy sponsored by the Knights.
• ·         This Tuesday Evening at 7:00 pm The Director of Mary’s Place is giving a presentation on the refugees in the Rochester area and what we can to help.
• ·         Next weekend, Father Damien Milliken will be preaching and asking for our financial and spiritual support to support a high school for girls in Tanzania.  This education opportunity for these deserving girls gives than an opportunity for employment that they would not otherwise have.
• ·         On this Father’s Day, we honor and thank our fathers, living and deceased, for the love that have shared with them.  And we pray and bless all the fathers of our faith community for witnessing to us so beautifully examples of unselfish love and service to your children and to all the children of St Joseph’s Parish.  Thank you.    We have so many opportunities to make a difference in people’s lives.

Between the 13th and the mid-20^th centuries, Catholics often celebrated this feast of Corpus Christi with elaborate public processions that focused on Christ’s miraculous presence in the consecrated host carried aloft.  That custom of the Eucharistic procession is most beautiful.  But it is also important to note the readings the Church has chosen for this feast changes our focus from the symbolic procession to a contemporary Exodus journey.  Today’s Scriptures lead us to realize that celebrating the Eucharist calls us to go of our ourselves, to move beyond our preferences and appetites, and to take up Jesus’ offer of communion with Him.  This is a journey that will be every bit as frightening and grace-filled as the one on which Moses led his people.  Our advantage over our Israelite ancestors is that we can learn from their experience and go beyond it.  Christ promises us not just his presence, but the communion that gave him life.

The Mass is our greatest prayer; we gather to give thanks to the Lord our God.  Yet it is what we do outside the Mass that also determines the genuineness of the offering we make at the altar each Sunday.  By our mutual love and, in particular, by our concern for those in need, we will be recognized as true followers of Christ.  Go in peace glorifying the Lord by our lives in all that we say and do this day and every day.   As you journey on your contemporary Exodus journey of the beauty and the challenges and the joys of your week, may you be connected with the Eucharistic life of Christ that is within you so that you may recognize and encounter the Lord in each and every person you share life with this week.

Have a blessed day.