Sunday word, 23 Jun 19

Solemnity of Body and Blood of Christ C (23 Jun 2019)
Gn 14. 18-20; Ps 110; 1Co 11.23-26; Lk 9. 11b-17

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J., 8-day retreat

Nothing Private

Before mass:

Today’s solemnity allows us to celebrate in another key the Easter event. “‘Easter innovates [thoroughly],’” a living Catholic philosopher and theologian reminds us. The Easter “‘innovation has a name—Jesus Christ—[his] own body, breaking through death to a life no one had ever lived before, has become a people, a new creation, a community thrown forward in a world so freshly minted that its citizens’—us—‘must relearn everything, like children (or rather, like an old person overcome by newness.)’”*

Whether one’s core-self is sprightly as a youth or ‘overcome by newness,’ let us ask for felt-knowledge to notice Christ freshly creating us.

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*Jean-Luc Marion, “The Gift of a Presence,” Prolegomena to Charity, trans. Stephen Lewis (NY: Fordham University Press, 2002), 124. Cited by: Nathan D. Mitchell, Meeting Mystery: Liturgy; Worship; Sacraments (NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 182.

Homily:

“Work is one of my best defenses against my mental illness.” Elyn Saks admitted that. Elyn is University of Southern California Gould School of Law professor. She has “joint appointments in law, psychology, and psychiatry.” “To keep her schizophrenia symptoms at bay, she stays on medication and sees a therapist four or five times a week.”¹ Saks’ academic work serves her good health. Her remark reminds me that liturgy is work: liturgy means people’s public work. Her remark reminds us Christian liturgy serves the world’s ultimate health. Christian liturgy flows from Christ’s love for the world. He gave himself to give life to the world.² His is ongoing work.

A frequent, human preference avoids that work—even in the gospel. After a day when Jesus taught and healed many his disciples wanted Jesus to send away his hungry listeners. Jesus responded differently: give them food yourselves. I often wonder how he sounded his response. Did Jesus speak with a telling pause? Give them food—yourselves. Sharing our possessions—of whatever sort—always extends ourselves. Our pattern for living, Jesus, did precisely that.

The Solemnity of Christ’s Body and Blood cele-brates Jesus’ self-giving. It is beyond devotional; it revolutionizes our living and gives it direction. Eucharistic revolution has always challenged Christian living. The desire not to work to give life to the world—to give ourselves generously— easily flows from a private notion of eucharist. Each generation has struggled against privatizing the eucharist. Early in the Christian experience St. Paul struggled with eucharistic privacy: each one goes ahead with each one’s supper with a tragic result, one remains hungry while another becomes drunk.³ Later St. Augustine exhorted: Christian, become what you receive.⁴ We hear his words as encouragement, and they are. With them Augustine also defended unity in the diversity of the Body of Christ. To become Christ is work: our work to grow as spiritual beings.

In our time Jesuit Robert Taft was asked about the relationship of our work to grow as spiritual beings and liturgy. The man who breathed liturgy and spirituality for more than 40 years responded with words that both challenge me and encourage me:

The purpose of the Eucharist isn’t to change bread and; wine into Jesus Christ, it’s to change you and me into Jesus Christ…. We are supposed to become the word of comfort and forgiveness, we are supposed to become the bread of life for the world, we are supposed to become the healing oil.⁵

The health of the world depends on Jesus’ self-gift in his eucharist. Becoming Christ Jesus and joining him are gift before they are work; and about his gift to us and our work with him—nothing is private.

In your daily 15 minutes with Jesus this week

• Rest in our triune God with worship to help you: trace the sign of the cross on yourself several times as you say the Divine Name slowly.
• Ask the disciples, who cooperated with Jesus in their imperfection, to present you to Jesus.
• Chat with him: praise him for dying, rising and giving us his Spirit; ask Jesus to help you experience your baptized life nourished by his eucharist in a more loving, active and generous fashion.
• Ask Jesus for grace to cooperate more readily with his Spirit abiding in you.
• Close saying slowly the Lord’s Prayer. Saying Jesus’ words, Our Father, reminds us Jesus revealed God personally and that like risen Jesus, his Father brings us more alive by Holy Spirit in us.

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1. Working with schizophrenia. 
2. John 6.33.
3. 1Corinthians 11.21.
4. Sermon 272.
5. I’m grateful to brother Jesuit Joe Kosczera, who heard Fr. Taft respond to the question.

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