Corpus Christ Sunday
Through stories: Instructional lessons on the Eucharist for Corpus Christi Sunday.
1. Carl A. Boyle, a sales representative, was driving home when he saw a group of young children selling Kool-Aid on a corner in his neighborhood. They had posted the typical hand-scrawled sign over their stand: "Kool-Aid, 75 cents." Carl was intrigued. He pulled over to the curb. A young man approached and asked if he would like strawberry or grape Kool-Aid.
Carl placed his order and handed the boy a dollar. After much deliberation, the children determined he had some change coming and rifled through the cigar box until they finally came up with the correct amount. The boy returned with the change, then stood by the side of the car. He asked if Carl was finished drinking.
"Just about," said Carl, "Why?"
"That's the only cup we have," answered the boy, "and we need it to stay in business."
The Eucharist is the renewal of our covenant relationship, and it is the chalice or cup that explicitly conveys this. In biblical accounts of the first Eucharist, and in our recollection at every Mass, each invitation to the chalice includes a reference to covenant.
When I receive the Eucharist, I sense such a relief knowing that I am leaning, not on another person's prayers or another person's faith, but upon the simple trust in God's covenant! Jesus is true to His covenant He established with His Body and Blood.
Ask God for your healing when you receive Holy Communion, but especially in Eucharistic Adoration. It’s an objective source of healing, not dependent on the gift of healing, e.g.
A Pentecostal writer wrote of a charismatic healer in the 1940's who was told by a skeptical preacher, "If you can really heal the sick, go to the local hospital and pray for them to be healed. Empty out the intensive care unit." The man answered, "You are a preacher. Why don't you go to the hospital and win them all to the Lord? Get everyone saved if you believe in salvation."
The skeptic replied, "A person must believe in order to be saved." The healing minister replied, "And a person must believe in order to be healed!"
Acts 19: 11 says, "God did extraordinary miracles through Paul." That is based on the gift of healing and the miraculous. But with the Eucharist, it does not depend on someone else with an extraordinary gift of healing. It happens by your faith in the words of the priest consecrating the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
Regarding Eucharistic Adoration and healing:
As one write noted, “Our eyes are meant to behold what is holy, good, true, and beautiful. Unfortunately, worldly things that are unholy, false, and ugly bombard our eyes. Gazing upon the face of Jesus and contemplating His beauty, purity, and goodness is the healing balm we need for interior renewal, healing and deliverance from evil influences.”
2). Pray for other people to become good Catholics and receive the Eucharist—
e.g. A prison in solitary confinement, called being “in the hole,” to Fr. Bob, a priest in Pittsburg, "Father, can you image a God who would come to a guy like me in a place like this."
In the Diary of St. Faustina: “From the ciborium came a voice: These hosts have been received by souls converted through your prayer and suffering.” (Diary, 709).
The Eucharist is our power in the battle of life and the power of my intercession for souls. As we receive Him in Holy Communion, he helps us to offer our little prayers and sufferings for the sake of souls.
3). The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith--
There is a story by Guy de Maupassant titled "The Necklace." The Necklace is a tale of a young woman named Mathilde who wishes she was rich and also wishes she was accepted in higher social circles. However, her husband is an ordinary French citizen without the resources to fulfill her dreams.
Finally this woman gets the chance to advance her dreams when her husband gets the two of them invited to an elegant ball. She spends a huge sum of money and buys a beautiful dress. She also borrows a beautiful diamond necklace from a friend, Madame Jeanne Forestier. The stunning necklace draws many compliments from the aristocratic guests at the ball. However, somehow, the worst possible thing happens. Mathilde loses the beautiful necklace.
What is she to do? It was so expensive. Panic stricken, she and her husband borrow thirty-six thousand francs to buy a new necklace so her friend will not find out what she has done. In order to pay back this vast amount of money, they are forced to go to such extremes as selling their home, dismissing their servants, working two jobs, even moving into a slum. After ten years of intense sacrifice, the debt is finally paid off.
One day after the debt is paid Mathilde happens to run into Madame Forestier, the friend from whom she borrowed the necklace. Forestier is shocked by how quickly Mathilde has aged. And Mathilde confesses what had happened--that she had lost he necklace--and what they had been through because of it. Quite shaken, her friend reveals to Mathilde that the diamonds which she had replaced at such great cost had been fake and that the necklace she had lost cost less than 500 francs, a fraction of the cost of the replacement necklace. All those sacrifices had been a tragic mistake.
The author's point is that this is meant to be a parable of contemporary life! People slaving for values that turn out only to be illusionary or end in heartaches. People worshipping idols that can never bring them real happiness.
The Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking," the Catechism says (140)
4. In receiving the Eucharist, a Christian is united to Christ and to the other members of the Christian community. The sacrament is rightfully called Holy Communion. The Catechism in paragraph 1375 states that we do encounter Christ in the assembly of the faithful, "Where two or three are gathered, there I am in their midst (Matthew 18:20).
After Mass, fellowship is important, especially in my part of the county where so many people are leaving and arriving constantly. A moving truck is a constant fixture in the street just in front of the parish.
A Sunday school teacher asked the boys in his class to define fellowship. One bright youngster blurted out, "It's two fellows in a ship!" Actually, that's not too bad. The church has often been likened the Barque of Peter, a ship sailing through the waters of time and space. Fellowship comes from the Anglo Saxon word for Fee-lowship. Fee was the word they used for cow. Fellowship happened when neighbors would talk to each other as their cows came together to eat grass in a common place.
St. Paul uses the world "Koinonia" for his idea of mystical fellowship, where the faithful join in "participation" in the Body of Christ. As we heard in our Sequence, "Thousands are, as one, receivers, One as thousands of believers..."
5. Pope Francis said that in breaking bread for his disciples, Christ gave an example of what it means to allow oneself to be broken for the good of others, explaining that it is the Eucharist.
Catechism 1325: "The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit."138
Catherine Marshall once told about a couple named Mary and Harold Brinig, who moved to Chicago many years ago. They had no friends there and were lonely. Irritable and unhappy with each other, they sought help from the Bible. They found it in John 15:16, where Jesus said: "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide." They wondered what mission Jesus had included them in. The first person they encountered after this discovery was the waitress who served them in a nearby restaurant, who also was new in the city and had apologized to them for the slow service. They invited her to their apartment after work. Next they befriended a lonely widower and soon a dozen people were meeting once a week for conversation and prayer.
Out of these meetings grew a project called "Adventures in Friendship." Soon several groups were involved in visiting the lonely and the shut-ins throughout the whole area. There was an interesting byproduct of this ministry. Mary and Harold became so absorbed in the needs of others that they soon forgot their own troubles. Their lives became immeasurably richer and fuller.
Like Bread broken for others. "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking." Catechism, 140.
