SUNDAY HOMILY: SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST (YEAR A)

SUNDAY HOMILY: SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST (YEAR A)

HOMILY THEME: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” (John 6:54)

BY: Fr. Robert deLeon, CSC

 

HOMILY: John 6:51-58

Kneeling before the altar in the carpeted sanctuary, eyes of the congregation in the pews behind me focused on the ornate gold monstrance, we sang the traditional Latin hymn, “Tantum Ergo,” to close the period of adoration held every First Friday at the parish. While the monstrance held the white host, the very Body of Christ, and while the voices of the devout sang his praises, my whole attention was focused on the sizzling carpet next to me.

The best I could do to remedy the situation was speed up the hymn and finish the service as quickly as possible. From even the first pew, the devout couldn’t have known that the smoke rising next to me at the altar was not from the burning incense but from the smoldering carpet. As we began the hymn, I had spooned incense into the censer and swung it before the monstrance. Partial to its fragrant aroma, I continued swinging the censer, billows of smoke clouding the sanctuary, not so subtle choking coughs from the congregation telling me that I’d overdone it. Setting the censer down on the carpet beside me with a bit too much force, the bowl overturned and the white-hot charcoal inside tumbled out onto the blue carpet to begin a sizzling smolder.

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Rushing through the concluding prayers and, with the last words of the hymn, “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name,” echoing through the church, I shouted for help from Julie, the sacristan. Rushing to my side, I pointed down to my feet, where a smoldering circular indentation marked the deep burn in the carpet. With customary calm, Julie scooped up the smoldering charcoal and disposed of it. Her years of experience as sacristan took it in stride.

Quickly forgotten by everyone but me, and invisible to all but those who came close to the mark, the burn in the carpet remained an ever-present reminder of my carelessness. Over weeks, though, that small mark came to mean so much more, taking on larger significance. As daily I passed the scorch, it reminded me that we are all wounded in some way. Simply because we are human, we carry the mark of imperfection. For some, it may be an obvious physical characteristic; for others, the mark is internal, some flaw not at once visible but present nonetheless.

In my mid-teen years, it having become apparent I needed glasses to augment my near-sightedness, our next-door neighbor, Gil, a licensed optician, measured me for the frames I’d picked from the assortment on the wall in his store. Jotting down figures on the notepad before him, Gil proclaimed that one of my ears was slightly lower than the other, he seeming to have little appreciation for what this comment might mean to a body-conscious teenager. Horrified at the gross deformity of my body, he could do little to comfort me in the knowledge that no one’s ears are perfectly even. It took almost forty years for me to get used to the idea that it was okay to have uneven ears.

We celebrate today the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. In the gospel passage, Jesus asserts, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” (John 6:54) But this partaking of the Living Bread, while assuring eternal life in the world to come, does not annul the challenges we experience here on earth. When, on that First Friday, I knelt before the monstrance, I gave more attention to the sizzling carpet next to me than to the presence of Jesus on the altar before me.

God’s Son lived in a body like mine, one ear lower than the other, perhaps, one eye fixed on heaven, the other on the wounded earth. That sizzling carpet was a reminder, too, that the church, the broader Body of Christ, is also wounded, divisions and scandals marking its history from the earliest days. A living body like my own, the church grows, generating new cells while sloughing off dead ones, always changing, always tending toward the perfection God has in mind. That burned carpet in the sanctuary has remained consolation for the earthly journey and the promise of perfection at journey’s end.

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