Fr. Simon's Letter - June 11, 2023

We couldn't have asked for more than what we were lucky to have last Sunday – perfect weather, a festive atmosphere, good food, people having fun, and, of course, the Batmobile that called for everyone’s attention.

I want to thank the members of the Men's Club – the whole army of grillers, servers, coordinators, and the person who makes sure everyone enjoys a hearty meal, Ben Camarda of Joseph’s Meats. I am also grateful to the members of FACA for the desserts, the Scouts for their help, the Girls Scouts for the face-painting, and all who, under the leadership of Roman Viere, Jeremey McKenzie, and Cullen Shelton, made this day memorable for every one of us. THANK YOU!!
 

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On this Corpus Christi Sunday, I want to draw your attention to the efforts of the Catholic Church in the United States, which began a three-year process called the National Eucharistic Revival. Last year on the Feast of Corpus Christi, dioceses around the country kicked off the revival in various ways, often with a Mass and a public eucharistic procession. The stated mission of the revival is “To renew the Church by enkindling a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.” The vision statement reads, “To inspire a movement of Catholics across the United States who are healed, converted, formed, and unified by an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist—and who are then sent out on mission ‘for the life of the world.’ "

In our Easter celebrations, we remembered Jesus’ liberating death and celebrated God’s vindication of his son’s death by raising him to life. Now that Easter has passed, it is appropriate to think about the Eucharist in the context of that death and resurrection, knowing that the Eucharist holds them both and draws us into living contact with them. This year when the National Eucharistic Revival invites parishes to help their members to enter into personal encounters with Christ by fostering Eucharistic devotion and strengthening our liturgical life. Through Eucharistic adoration, missions, resources, preaching, and organic movements of the Holy Spirit, we hope to convert hearts and minds to fall more deeply in love with Jesus Christ, who is truly present in the Holy Eucharist.

There were tendencies in the early Church to spiritualize Jesus. One heresy said that Jesus wasn't human like us. Another claimed that Jesus did not die by crucifixion. For some early Christians, human flesh and blood were too earthy for God to get involved in. Those reactions seem strange to us, yet they reflect a human instinct to set Jesus apart, make him too holy, and, in the process, sanitize Jesus. Stressing the difference between Jesus and us is less demanding than the alternative in which, motivated and energized by him, we immerse ourselves in the continuing Gospel project of setting captives free and bringing the good news to the world’s poor. In other words, living with Christ up to our elbows in the messiness of life. We must beware of any move separating the eucharistic Jesus – the sacramentally present Jesus – from the Jesus flogged and crucified precisely because he threatened established interests.

Eucharistic devotion can help keep the record straight. We know that we are dealing firstly with the real flesh of the real Christ, broken on the cross because of his profound respect for all God’s creation, and secondly, the real blood of the real Christ that he poured out to break the stranglehold of the entrenched power of sin in our world. Jesus insisted, "My flesh is real food. My blood is real drink." Effectively he was saying, "Don't get carried away! Keep anchored in reality!" So, we eat Christ's broken flesh and drink Christ's painfully spilled blood to be filled with the life of Christ and be changed according to his mind, heart, and spirit.

This is what devotion to the Eucharist is about. We don't withdraw from life. Instead, we draw life from the flesh and blood of the still-living Christ. Filled with this life, we allow our hearts to be stretched by love. Hand in hand with Jesus, we work to break the power of sin wherever it takes shape in our world, whether in our families, workplaces, local communities, leisure pursuits, or even the Church. 

In today's changing world, the global village, we become Christ’s voice and hands on behalf of the underdeveloped and over-exploited peoples, the unwilling citizens of nations destroying each other through war or terrorism, and our anguished world awash with refugees. Closer to home, instead of the free pursuit of self-interest, we work with Christ to fashion a nation that respects life from conception to death, acts with warmth and compassion to asylum seekers, and prefers caring for each other.

With Christ, we seek to move against the increasing trend to assist those capable of supporting themselves while penalizing those brothers and sisters who, for one reason or another, cannot help themselves. Deepening our Eucharistic devotion can be a difficult and arduous journey – like the journey of Jesus. By the end of this endeavor of the Catholic Church in the United States, will we have become more like the flesh and the blood we have ingested? Will we have become more Christ-like? And will our world become warmer, more just, and more compassionate through us? It will move in that direction to the extent that we let the Eucharist take hold of our imaginations and set fire to our wills. 

Blessings!!