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“Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you
have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal
life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (St. John 6:53-54).
It is our custom here at The
Good Shepherd on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday to keep the Solemnity
of the Feast of the Corpus Christi (the Feast of the Body of Christ)
which occurs on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. This Feast which
we celebrate today has been part of the Church’s life since the 13th
century. A Belgian Nun from the village of Liege named Juliana instigated
the establishment of a Feast in honor of our Lord’s Presence in the
Sacrament of His Body and Blood (the Eucharist, the Mass) which He instituted
on Maundy Thursday. She reasoned (and she was right) that Maundy Thursday
was a night shadowed with the darkness of betrayal, arrest, and trial
for Jesus which overshadowed the great gift He gave to the Apostles
that night – the Eucharist, the Mass. She believed that the Church
needed a Feast where there could be great joy for such a gift, and so
she petitioned the Church in Rome in the year 1230, and in 1264 Pope
Urban IV declared in a Papal Bull its observance.
But today on this Solemnity
of Corpus Christi, we have witnessed the confirmations of three young
people and one adult. As a bishop of the Church Catholic in the Apostolic
succession of bishops throughout history, I laid my hands on their heads,
prayed for the Holy Spirit to be stirred up in them, anointed them with
oil of chrism, slapped their faces to awaken them to the power of the
Holy Spirit, and had them kiss my Episcopal ring as a sign of their
submission to Apostolic teaching.
Are we mixing apples and oranges
this morning? Is it all very confusing? Is it a hodge-podge of things
that Anglo-Catholics love to do because of ritual, ceremony, sacraments,
and sacramentals?
Let me briefly answer this
by reminding you of what we did last Sunday at the 10 AM Mass. We recited
(as we do once a year on Trinity Sunday) the Creed of St. Athanasius
– that lung-expanding, concentration-demanding, and mentally challenging
corporate liturgical exercise to express the deep truth about God as
the Holy Trinity, but knowing as we were nearly being mathematical (M.I.T.ish)
about the Trinity, that we were just scratching the surface of the mystery
of God and the Life of the three Persons of the Godhead – the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
What we did recite (and thanks
be to God for this theological Creed) was that God is One, but He has
manifested Himself in three Persons – hypostases in Greek; meaning
that God comes to us in different ways at different times through the
instrumentality of the three Persons of the Godhead, but it’s one
God, the same God who is coming, acting, and effecting.
Corpus Christi is clearly a
Feast of the Church which is centered on Jesus, the Incarnate Second
Person of the Trinity. It is a Feast about the giving of His Body and
Blood to us to feed us for the Christian journey in life for eternal
life. The Sacrament of Confirmation is centered upon the action and
gifts of the Holy Spirit to quicken the baptized in their discipleship,
equipping them with the seven gifts of the Holy Sprit – wisdom, understanding,
counsel, strength, knowledge, godliness, and holy fear.
But both the Feast which sets
before us the reality of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and the
Sacrament of Confirmation are realities about the fullness of Christian
living. We partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus to be filled with
His divine life to be His people in the world. We are effectualized
and led by the power and operation of the Holy Spirit to be His people
in the world. One can’t and doesn’t exist without the other. And
both the Eucharist which was the great gift of the Son of God, and Confirmation
which is a great gift of the Holy Spirit both point to God the Father
who sent His Son to reveal Himself, and Who with His Son sent the Holy
Spirit to comfort, guide, sustain, and lead us into all truth.
So today in what we do, we
once again affirm, celebrate, and worship the fullness of God revealed
and taught by the Church Catholic as the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit.
So let us be so abundantly
thankful for the gift to the Church of the Eucharist (the Mass) which
gives us the Body of Christ, so that we may feed upon Him, and through
it a means of offering Him adoration, as we do when we offer the service
of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Let us be so abundantly thankful
for the gift of Holy Spirit among whose gifts bestowed is the gift of
faith, and only by whom we can confess Jesus as Lord, as St. Paul teaches.
As Christians we are clearly
to be men and women of intentional witness and action, but that has
its roots in what God has first given to us for such action to follow.
God loves us so much that He gave His Son; and after His Son’s Ascension
to Heaven from whence He came, the love of God kept coming with the
descent of the Holy Spirit. We in and through the Church eat and drink
the Body and Blood of Christ. We in and through the Church receive the
Holy Spirit. From such abundant, love-motivated, life-saving, and life-transforming
giving of God, who amongst us can find a reason not to return such love
in thanksgiving for what we receive, and for the confidence that God
puts in us to manifest His love and life to the world? What we do here
with each other with our eyes on Jesus and our hearts open to His being
the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, propels us forward with joy, peace,
purpose, confidence, and profound thanksgiving for what this life is
about and to where this life can lead. Praise God!
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