Homily for May 29, 2005 Liturgical Year A - Cycle I Feast of Corpus Christi by Fr. John Carney Topic: The Gift +  +  +

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, has eternal life,unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.  This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever."

Hardly a week goes by when we don’t read the newspaper and we don’t read a warning of some other food that they just discovered was bad for us.  Can you imagine if we can go back in time 50 years to our parents and grandparents and tell them that milk is bad for them?  Butter?  Eggs?  Bacon?  Coffee?  Pastries?  Every week it is something new. 

I remember as a kid, on Sunday morning after mass, we’d have bacon and eggs.  Mom would cook a pound of bacon...excuse me.  My mouth is watering.  I love bacon.  She’d cook a pound of bacon and dry it and put it on the rack.  Then she’d cook the toast.  She took plain white bread; we didn’t use that multigrain nonsense.  We had Wonder Bread.  She’d cook the white bread right in the grease.  Do any of you remember that?  Man, wasn’t that good.  It probably took my mother’s life, may she rest in peace.  She died at 87.  She probably would have had a long life if it weren’t for all that bacon fat. 

A couple of years ago, I decided I was going to eat better.  That was before I even met Dr. Anthony Sandoval.  This guy, he’s on my case every second.  He looks at my belly and says, “It’s larger this week Father.”  Anyway, back to the story.  I went to Wild Oats.  You know, that’s the place you go where everything is good for you.  But I looked at all the people there and I said, "I’m not going to eat this stuff.  Look what happened to them."   That tofu will do that to you. So, I went to Burger King and had a hamburger and went home. 

I tried to find an article in the paper that I read about five years ago and I couldn’t, because I wanted to quote this story.  This article said that if you really want to live a long life, don’t eat.  The quote I had in my notes said, “Eating little food, maybe to the point of starving.”  This article suggested that if we did this in an organized way, we could extend human life to 150 to 170 years of age, but who would want to live that way.  There would be nothing to bury. 

We just heard the Gospel.  I think you can see where I’m going with this.  Jesus said, “He who eats my body and drinks my blood will live forever.”  Do you believe that?  What an amazing promise.  Not 150 years, not 170 years, but forever.  He not only says that, He repeats himself and repeats himself and repeats himself.  Redundancy is a human technique of bringing home the point.  It is also an Irish technique.  “He who eats my body and drinks my blood will live forever.”  That’s good news.  That’s the best dietary advice you and I are ever going to get.  John 6--read that chapter of the Scriptures.  It’s so important.

Yet, even with this food we have, people are starving to death spiritually in the world today, and they always have been. There are so many people starving, their lives are devoid of hope, devoid of meaning. Even ourselves. We go through periods, I’m sure every one of us, when we forget what we have here. We have the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Food for the journey that he promised will never end.  The Eucharist.  It is the source and summit of our faith as Catholic Christians. Yet people are dying spiritually for the lack of love.  That’s really what it is all about. 

About 5 years ago, when I was at my old parish, maybe on Memorial Day weekend, three boys were killed, shot to death.  One of them was a parishioner, Luis Garcia.  He was a wonderful young boy. 17 years old, loved soccer and he was looking forward to going to college. His whole life was in front of him.  I went to visit him after he was killed.  He was shot 22 times by unknown assailants and still to this day at large.  The motive was not apparent to anyone.  There was no drug connection, no money involved, just him and two buddies gunned down.  What happened?  Some gang.  It is just a terrible story.

In Espanola, there is a boy accused of killing his grandmother.  I hope it’s not true, although I’m afraid it is.  I hope it is not true.  How could you kill your grandmother?  What kind of hunger for drugs is that? I think he would say the same thing, even if he were guilty because his remorse will be with him to his grave.  I think that’s why drugs are so prevalent, because there is no other hope, there is no meaning, there is nothing.  Desperate loneliness.

How can we be lonely when we have the Eucharist?  How can we ever be lonely when we have Jesus Christ himself as a part of us?  Not only that, but if we believe that, this is not the Catholic secret.  We can tell others.  If others look at us and see loneliness and bitterness and estrangement in our lives, they are not going to ask where we got that.  If they see the love, the forgiveness, the mercy of Jesus Christ in our lives, they just might be interested in getting some of that, some of that spiritual nourishment.

There is a story that I think every priest and seminarian has heard.  I don’t know the basis of it. I don’t know if it’s true.  It is allegedly true. This story is about a soldier in Spain, who was wounded, I think, in the Spanish Civil war, a terrible war.  He was critically ill but he was expected to recover from his wounds in time and to be healed but he wouldn’t eat.  The doctors said that there was nothing wrong with him physically, other than he was starving to death.  He wouldn’t eat because of the emotional and spiritual devastation of his experience in war.  A friend of his knew his parents lived not too far away and went to visit them.  He asked the father and mother to come and visit.  The father was able to come. The mother baked a loaf of bread and she sent it to her son, and he ate.  Not because of the bread but because of the love and the sacrifice he knew went into the bread. 

I like that story.  It is an analogy of the Eucharist.  For God feeds us with the bread that is made with great love and incredible sacrifice.  We believe that in the Eucharist we receive the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ.  But we believe that we also participate in the mystery of his Passion, death and resurrection.  That bread is baked and given with great love.

On this one Sunday a year, this day of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, we focus on the gift that we have.  May we never neglect this gift.  May we never become so familiar with it that we fail to recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread. 

I ask you to bow your heads as we pray the beautiful poem; I think Thomas Aquinas wrote this.  The Anima Christi.  Let’s pray that together.

Soul of Christ, sanctify me
Body of Christ, save me
Blood of Christ, inebriate me
Water from the side of Christ, wash me
Passion of Christ, strengthen me
O good Jesus, hear me
Within your wounds hide me
Separated from you, let me never be
From the evil one protect me
At the hour of my death, call me
And close to you bid me
That with your saints, I may be, praising you forever and ever.     Amen.