Corpus Christi   June 7, 2026    SJU 11:00 AM

 

     This feast of Corpus Christi always has a special place in my heart because it is the anniversary of my First Mass some 54 years ago.   The Feast, the Mass, and my ordination the day before all came together to make a coherent celebration.

 

     And over all these past years the Body of Christ in the Eucharist accompanied me in thousands of places.

 

E. g. I concelebrated at a  Corpus Christi Feast Day Mass in a small town in Mexico.  Firecrackers were going off actually inside the church.   This was, I am told, accidental but the noise and the burst of color added to the explosion of praise and song led by the mariachi band.

 

And as grace would have it, my one opportunity to visit the great Gothic Cathedral of Chartres in France occurred on the Feast of Corpus Christi.   I surprised myself arriving at the doors of this Cathedral dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God at exactly the hour when the Sunday Mass of Corpus Christi was beginning. 

 

     And those of us present 50 years ago at the 1976 Eucharistic Congress here in Philadelphia remember it for several reasons.    Our Jesuit Father Ed Brady, so active in justice issues here at SJU, was conscious of the broad meaning of the Eucharist.   He helped Cardinal Krol and the local church organize a shipment of grain and emergency food sent that summer to a drought stricken part of the world.  That Congress, too, was memorable because three saints, each short of stature but tall on holiness and hope appeared together on the same stage in Philadelphia: Dom Helder Camara from a poor area of Brazil, Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe who founded Jesuit Refugee Services and  Mother Teresa who founded services for the dying poor in several continents.  All three witnesses of terrible human suffering; all three proclaiming a message of hope and God’s love.

 

     And still just yesterday in our City a prayerful Corpus Christi procession with great devotion took part in South Philadelphia through the streets between two of the Latino parishes (Annunciation and St. Thomas Aquinas) and ending at the Shrine of St Rita of Cascia on South Broad St.   I was blessed to join a part of the walk in which the monstrance displaying the Body of Christ was carried led by a dozen young altar servers with flower petals, incense and the Cross.   Teenage girls scattered the flower petals along Tasker St. to beautify the Lord’s path.  We called upon Jesus and his Mother in song and prayer to protect our Latino families from deportation and ended with Mass at St. Rita’s.   Among the hundreds in the procession were many young people, many Latino families, parents with their children of all ages.   The event was organized by a prophetic local group called Faithful Philadelphia which has been proclaiming the need for just paths to citizenship for our neighbors.   

    

     To summarize these events that I describe: Catholics who have an experience of their community as the Body and Blood of Christ find support in their lives from both the word of God and the sacrament of Holy Communion.   The sacrament invites us into a culture of solidarity far different from a contrasting national Christian culture which sometimes acts as a cover for white supremacy.   To be fed by the Body of Christ is to take part in the willingness of the community to contribute to the common good.   We are one body in the one Lord living together and guided by Catholic Social Teaching.   Its most important principle: the dignity of every single human being created in God’s image.   Just this morning P:ope Leo while celebrating Mass for over a million people in Madrid expanded this message preaching that God identified with the poor, the downtrodden and those who are alone and forsaken.

 

     I mentioned in the opening remark that my own First Mass took place years ago on the Feast of Corpus Christi, a Sunday like today.   At any First Mass Families like my own go out of their way to provide extra music and flowers and very often a reception afterwards.  Such celebrations actually introduce a tension between their optimistic richness and the basic original Eucharistic event at Jesus’s Last Passover Supper when he foretells the tragedy to come.

 

Let me complete my homily by a short presentation about this tension.

 

               Scripture commentators in their discussion of the Last Supper as reported in the gospel of Mark, remind us that yes, Jesus’ shares his body and blood in the bread and wine at that table meal.    But this sharing is sandwiched within words of Jesus that on one side predict the betrayal of Judas who helps the Temple authorities arrest him.   And on the other Jesus tells of his imminent abandonment by the disciples.  Further the last words of Jesus at this Supper are these: “I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I will drink it new in the kingdom of God.”   The commentators write that Jesus’ vow of fasting is a prophetic symbol of his coming death.  In fact one commentator goes so far as to say this: “At the Last Supper Jesus neither ate of the Passover lamb nor drank of the wine; probably he fasted completely.

 

     Jesus’ Last Supper was not a happy event.  There is a foreboding starkness.   I quote in summary: “Mark’s somewhat sober account stresses above all the sacrificial death of Jesus ‘for many’… We recall not only a meal, but the final meal of one who was to be executed as a criminal for our sake.”   

 

But thanks to the return of the risen Jesus to his disciples the report of the last supper in the gospel of Mark can generate hopeful feelings of a redemptive solidarity.   The risen Jesus sends the Spirit who helps us understand the importance of finding solidarity in the sharing of the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist.   The celebration of the Mass and the sharing of the Eucharist becomes the way in which the Catholic Church takes part in his complete saving action, his life, death and resurrection.   Indeed this celebration gives us the courage to be for and with others in their sorrows as well as their joys.

 

Finally, I imagine, in solidarity with the suffering of this world, Jesus is still fasting from the fruit of the vine.   He will so fast until that time when together with him we bring about the victory of the common good.    Then with us he will drink the fruit of the vine new in the kingdom of God.

 

We thank Jesus for inviting us to the celebration of Mass…. as always an encouraging preview of the Kingdom of God.   And we commit ourselves to joining in his mission so he may drink from the fruit of the vine once again.