Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Corpus Christi (B), Vigil

June 5, 2021

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.5.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us tomorrow on Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord.

* In some ways, it’s the most important conversation we have. Jesus takes bread and says to the apostles, and to us, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he takes wine in a chalice and says, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.” These words would have been shocking to the apostles on Holy Thursday in the Upper Room. The wonder should never wear off.

* Do we believe Jesus when he says, “This is my body?” and “This is the chalice of my blood?” If we do, these words should change us. They should blow up our earthly priorities.

* That’s the impact they had on me when I was a college freshman. I was away on campus, living on my own for the first time. I was fortunate to have grown up in a very faithful Catholic family, had always gone to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, and was very involved in my hometown parish. From the time I was four, I had believe in what the Church calls the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and had never disbelieved the truth that after the words of consecration, there’s only Jesus under the appearances of bread of wine. But the consequences of the reality of the Eucharistic Jesus hadn’t struck me. But that September day in 1988, I asked myself, “If it is really Jesus, the eternal Son of God in the Holy Eucharist, is there anything more important that I could be doing on a Monday than receiving him in Holy Communion? Is there anything more important on a Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, Friday or Saturday?” I recognized that the clear answer to that is that there was nothing more important in the whole world than receiving God inside. And from that day, September 24, 1988 until today — 11,943 days later — I have, by the grace of God, never gone one day without Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. St. Thomas Aquinas’ words from his famous Eucharist hymn, the Panis Angelicus, have always summed up my attitude of gratitude. We sing, “O res mirabilis! Manducat Dominum pauper et servus humilis.” “O what a mind-blowing reality: a poor and humble servant eats the Lord!” That’s what Jesus in the Eucharist makes possible. We creatures eat Creator. We sinners consume our Savior. We lovers become one flesh with the Beloved.

* There has to be consequences to the Eucharist. The Church teaches that Jesus in the Eucharist is meant to be the source and summit of the Christian life, the source, the starting point, from which everything flows, and the summit, the goal, to which everything goes. Jesus in the Eucharist is meant to be the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, of our whole life. We’re supposed to draw our life from Jesus in the Eucharist.

* Let’s get practical about five various ways:

* First, we should make Sunday Mass by far the biggest priority of our week. There’s the famous story of the martyrs of Abitene from 304. They were told by the Roman prefect that if they assembled on Sunday morning for Mass, they would be arrested and executed. They thanked him for the notice.… but then still all 49 Christians in the town came together on the Lord’s Day. When the flabbergasted prefect asked them why they didn’t heed his warning, one of them, Emeritus,