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So, you’re
in
a hurry to get home after shopping at King of Prussia Mall.
But, on the way home, you have to stop at the Giant food store
located at the intersection of Trooper and Egypt Roads to pick up a
few grocery items for dinner. Upon exiting Route 422 onto Trooper
Road, traffic is backed up and the police are re-directing traffic
to make a left turn at Audubon Road.
Why?
Trooper Road―from Egypt Road to Audubon Road―has been shut down for
a “parade” that’s originating at Egypt and Trooper Roads.
So, what’s
the first thing that pops into your mind?
Quite likely, you wouldn’t be too happy, perhaps due simply to the
inconvenience. No one enjoys driving a mile or so down to Pawlings
Road, making a right turn onto Pawlings Road and driving another
mile or so to Egypt Road, only then, to make a right turn on Egypt
Road to drive yet another mile get to your destination, the Giant
food store.
Inconvenience? That’s a three mile, out-of-the-way drive for what’s
otherwise a one mile trip! Forget inconvenience. How about
perturbed?
But, then, you park your car and see that the so-called “parade” is
a bunch of St. Teresa of Avila parishioners dressed in their “Sunday
best” and singing hymns. There’s
also
a couple of decorated floats carrying our church's statues of the
Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, and St. Teresa of Avila. And, to
top it off, Fr. Golias―bedecked in a gold cope and carrying a
monstrance containing the Body of Christ―is flanked by an honor
guard comprised of the parish’s altar servers and the 4th degree
Knights of Columbus―who are bedecked in their red, white, and blue
plumed hats and hoisting their unsheathed swords upward toward the
sun?
Yep! That’s the “parade” that has shut down Trooper Road
between Audubon and Egypt Roads!
Really, what would be the very first thought that would be going
through your mind?
I dreamed up that scenario this week when I read Pope Benedict XVI’s
sermon for this year’s Corpus Christi festival in Rome. It’s quite
a sermon, if only because the Pope critiques something he believes
that Catholics have allowed to happen to worship of the Eucharist
during the past five decades. That is, we have come to think of the
Eucharist as something that’s proper to and belongs in this church
building where, the Pope said, “the Lord convokes his people,
gathers them around the twofold table of the Word and the Bread of
life, nourishes them and unites them to Himself in the offering of
the Sacrifice.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with this way of thinking about the
Eucharist. But, Pope Benedict XVI warned, it’s
an incomplete and, thus, unbalanced understanding of the Eucharist.
What has happened during the past five decades, Pope Benedict XVI
said, is that by accentuating the festive celebration of the
Eucharist in the church building, many of us have also made the
presence of Jesus Christ irrelevant to “the rest of time and the
existential space” where we live our lives. This imbalance has
repercussions for our spiritual lives, in that we perceive less “the
constant presence of Jesus in our midst and with us, a concrete,
close presence among our homes, as ‘beating Heart’ of the city, of
the country, of the territory with its various expressions and
activities.” In short, we don’t
allow the “Sacrament of the Charity of Christ” to permeate the
entirety of our daily lives.
In many places across the globe, the “parade” I described earlier is
called a “Eucharistic Procession.” It’s
intended to remind people once each year―people just like you and
me―that the Body and Blood of Christ that’s truly present in the
Eucharist that we celebrate here in this church is equally present
in Audubon and Trooper and Port Indian as well as on the Westover
and Jeffersonville golf courses, too, although you might not think
so judging from the language that’s
oftentimes used.
The Eucharistic Procession symbolizes how we invite Jesus Christ
himself to process with us from our homes and places of
commerce and recreation to his home in our church...the
reverse of what we do following Mass on Sunday.
And that’s
the Pope’s point about an “unbalanced” understanding of the
Eucharist.
Yes, if we were to see a Eucharistic Procession as I’ve
described it, many of us might be perturbed and even upset, if not
irate, at being inconvenienced by such an obvious public display of
faith. We’d think all of that pageantry as being somewhat weird, if
not entirely irrelevant in today’s
world. Our society rewards graphic “public displays of
affection,” but penalizes “public displays of religion” and many of
us think that appropriate.
Perhaps we’d
even be embarrassed to be in any way associated with a Eucharistic
Procession, saying as St. Peter did, “I don’t even know that man.”
However, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us:
The encounter with Jesus in the Holy Mass is truly and fully acted
when the community is able to recognize that, in the Sacrament, He
dwells in his house, waits for us, invites us to his table, then,
after the assembly is dismissed, stays with us, with his discreet
and silent presence, and accompanies us with his intercession,
continuing to gather our spiritual sacrifices and offering them to
the Father.
Think of your best friend.
Pope Benedict XVI said we all know that if we’re to really
communicate with that person, we must know that person, be able to
be in silence close to that person, to listen carefully to that
person, and to look at that person with love.
True love and true friendship always live of the reciprocity of
looks, of intense, eloquent silences full of respect and veneration,
so that the encounter is lived profoundly, in a personal not
superficial way.
When this contemplative dimension is lacking, even sacramental
communion itself can become, on our part, a superficial gesture.
Why?
We
no longer appreciate or are awed by the sacredness of the Eucharist
as we were, say, when we approached receiving our First Holy
Communion.
A mature spirituality, then, balances “Communion”―meeting Jesus
Christ physically present in the Eucharist celebrated in this
building―and “contemplation”―meeting Jesus Christ physically present
in the existential reality of our daily lives. These two
dimensions cannot be separated; instead, they go together.
And, we need to redress the imbalance that has crept into our
spiritual lives during the past fifty years.
Pope Benedict XVI believes this loss of appreciation and awe for the
Eucharist can be traced to the desire for novelty in liturgy,
especially as that was influenced by a secularist mentality in the
1960s and 1970s. Novelty―making the sacred “relevant” and meaning
more
“profane”―accorded
greater importance to ourselves and our feelings than to “Christ
himself, in his person, in his life, in his paschal mystery.” It is
important to recognize what has happened, namely, how the secular
has replaced the sacred, and this is reflected in the way many of us
leave Christ behind in this building when we process out at the end
of Mass.
Yes, we may have “gone to Mass.” Yes, we may have even received
Christ in the Eucharist. But, Pope Benedict asks, “Have we met
Christ as we would a friend? Do we desire to be with Christ as we
would with a friend?” Do we bring Christ home, to school, and to
the workplace, as we do a friend?
Might the real truth be that, in the name of a secularized faith, we
now allow the idols of a consumer society―things like cell phones
and IPods―to keep us connected to everything and everyone that gives
us meaning in life...except Jesus Christ?
Indeed, greater balance is needed. Not necessarily an annual
Eucharistic Procession, but certainly a greater awareness that while
the Eucharist is worshiped in this building, we adore the Eucharist
as we allow it to influence and shape how we live our daily lives
beyond this building.
We
are not without hope. Let me close by quoting Pope Benedict:
God,
our Father, has not acted thus with humanity: he has sent his Son
into the world not to abolish, but to give fulfillment also to the
sacred. At the height of this mission, in the Last Supper, Jesus
instituted the Sacrament of his Body and his Blood, the Memorial of
his Paschal Sacrifice. By so doing, he put himself in the place of
the ancient sacrifices, but he did so within a rite, which he
commanded the Apostles to perpetuate, as the supreme sign of the
true sacred, which is Himself. With this faith, dear brothers and
sisters, we celebrate today and every day the Eucharistic Mystery
and we adore it as the center of our life and heart of the world.
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HOMILY
