Corpus Christi

Last week, on Trinity Sunday, I reflected a little on a lecture I had heard Cardinal Walter Kasper give in Oxford the previous Monday. Well, today, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, I would like to begin by going back to that lecture and quoting, word for word this time, something the Cardinal said in it. It’s not the easiest of passages. But you are all intelligent people. So here goes! “Because the 19th and early 20th century promises of salvation in this world – the Western ideology of progress and the marxist utopia of a classless society – have proved deceptive, - in other words, they have not delivered the happiness they promised - the so-called ‘mega-narratives’ – by which the Cardinal means the big solutions or the big explanations – are no longer trusted, neither the idealistic nor the materialistic interpretations of reality. Instead, we find the ‘weak thought’ of post-modernism, which admits defeat in the face of mankind’s great questions, including the question of God, declaring itself to be incompetent or indifferent. The truth no longer exists, only truths. So the self-assuredness of militant atheism has turned into a resigned defeatism, scepticism, agnosticism, often even nihilism” (the idea that nothing has any meaning) all of which, the Cardinal says, “has left behind an inner spiritual void.” Or, as the first reading today put it, ‘Man does not live on bread alone but on everything that comes from the mouth of God.’

What Cardinal Kasper and the author of today’s first reading from the book of Deuteronomy are saying, each in his own way, is that nothing material; no ‘ism’ – neither Marxism, capitalism or any other theory that claims to be the answer to society’s big questions - can do what it says on the tin. They will all sooner or later let us down for the simple reason that we are made for something greater and only that greater thing will, in the end, satisfy us. We are spiritual beings, created to share the life of God, which means that anything based on material things alone will ultimately turn to dust and slip through our fingers if it does not have a spiritual element to it. And the evidence for this is everywhere. In the West, materialism and market forces have been allowed to run riot and, as a direct result, the very future of the planet is under threat. All over the world the rich become richer at the expense of the poor and those who ‘have’ dominate and exploit those who ‘have not’ causing tensions to build up which are already resulting in terrorism and violence and will do so increasingly as, in the future, countries fight to control the world’s diminishing resources. And in the midst of all this, deprived of genuine spirituality, people rush around frantically seeking meaning in things like fame, money, success, material possessions and so on. And when these fail to deliver, as they inevitably will, the void Cardinal Kasper speaks of deepens. And so we rush around, even more frantically, seeking refuge in the very things that have already failed us. And so, as the song says, ‘when will they ever learn?’ ..that we really do not live on bread alone: that there is so much more to life than that.

The more, of course, is Jesus. He is the Word that comes from the mouth of God, the Word made Flesh living among us, and it is his teaching, contained in the Gospels, which offers us the spiritual nourishment we need if we are to live fully human lives. And if, at this point, I tell a story against the Church of Scotland, there is no offence intended. The story, in fact, is about a Church of Scotland minister and when I have told other ministers about it they have always seen the truth in it.

The minister in question was Professor Allan Lewis who, at the time, was part of the theology faculty of Edinburgh University. For some reason he was in my house in Sanquhar for a meeting of the local ministers’ fraternal and in the course of the discussion said something about his own Church which I have never forgotten. ‘The Word was made flesh’ he said, ‘And the Church of Scotland turned it back into word again’ a comment which enabled me that day to see something with great clarity. There’s no doubt that the great debt we owe the Church of Scotland is the way, over centuries, it has kept bible, the Word of God, at the centre of Scottish life. But there is no doubt either that our own great contribution has been the Eucharist. The two, of course, belong together – Word and Eucharist, the two parts of the Mass – but only now, after centuries of emphasising one at the expense of the other – Protestants with their bibles and Catholics with our missals – are we learning to give each their proper place. And so, on this feast of Corpus Christi, I invite you to recognize the incredible gift which is the Eucharist, a gift that generations of Catholics here in Scotland have treasured and often suffered for. Some of my own earliest memories are stories about my mother’s mother trecking through three feet of snow to attend morning Mass, stories which undoubtedly planted in me the seeds of the vocation I exercise here each week.

Properly understood – and we don’t need to go into obscure explanations of it – the Eucharist is the most amazing gift from God. In it, Jesus, the Word made Flesh, continues to be present among us under the appearances of bread and wine. His flesh, as we heard him say today, is real food, his blood real drink. When we receive Holy Communion Jesus lives in us and because he lives in us, we draw life from him. He nourishes that spiritual part of us without which we cannot live fully human lives and, bearing in mind that not only does God work in mysterious ways but that the Spirit blows where it wills, only those who, in the very broadest sense, are nourished by him can have live in us.

I mentioned my Grannie a few moments ago. But her story is repeated all over Scotland. I think of the priests who, during penal times, risked their lives to provide Mass for Catholics in this country. I think of the people who, in their turn, risked so much to attend those Masses. Our ancestors in the faith really did hunger for the Eucharist and would do almost anything for it. It meant everything to them and, on the feast of Corpus Christi it’s important that we remember both them and the sacrifices they made. But above all, it is important that we honour their memory by treasuring the Mass which meant so much to them.


BIDDING PRAYERS


In an age where, for many people, seeing is believing and, in our arrogance, we think that a thing can only be true if it makes sense to us, we pray for something of the faith which, for more than a thousand years, made the feast of Corpus Christi a day of celebration and rejoicing all over Europe. We ask God to stir in us something of the sense of wonder at the mystery of Jesus’s real presence in the Eucharist which which filled the hearts of people over so many centuries………………...Lord hear us

The real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is not something to be looked at from a distance. It is something dynamic and alive with power to influence the lives of those who share in it. In receiving the body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion, men and women of faith become more and more like the one they receive. We are nourished and strengthened to go out into the world as witnesses to Jesus presence there and we pray for the insight we need to understand this today……...Lord hear us

To be a witness to Jesus in the world is to live according to his teaching. In this way, we are called to show the men and women of our time that this teaching is as relevant today as it has always been. It means reaching out to those in need. It means radical change in the way live. It means addressing the great problems of hunger and poverty throughout the world. It means working for peace. And so we pray that, every time we come here for Mass, we will have an ever deepening understanding of what it is we are doing……………………………Lord hear us

At the heart of Mass lie the Word and the Eucharist. Sadly, one part of the Christian Church in Scotland has spent centuries emphasising the Word while the other part emphasised the Eucharist. And so we pray that, in our own time, we will continue to discover the intimate relationship between these two great pillars of the Christian Life, so that, noursihed by both Word and Eucharist we can, together rather than apart be more effective witnesses to the Gospel in Scotland………Lord hear us

Although we can look back today with appreciation and gratitude to those who, often at great cost to themselves, kept the celebration of the Mass alive in Scotland during very difficult times, we also have to recognize that the world today has changed dramatically. Thousands of young Catholics in Scotland know nothing of the faith that sustained those heroic men and women. Born into a world dominated by materialsim and consumersim, Mass means nothing to them. And so we ask God to guide us as we struggle to come to terms with this new situation………...Lord hear us

And we pray in a particular way for the young people who come this year for Confirmation and First Communion. We pray for a deep sense of our responsibility to them and for the commitment we need to be faithful to the promises we so often make whenever children come to us for Baptism, Confirmation or Eucharist. May we never see their presence among us as an intrusion into our Sunday Liturgy but as a central part of what it means to be a parish community…………………..Lord hear us