CORPUS CHRISTI - June 11, 2023

CORPUS CHRISTI – Celebrating the Real Presence of Jesus
Brothers and sisters in Christ: On this, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we welcome Rev. Fr. Steve Neier C.O. our newly ordained priest of the NY Oratory to celebrate his first Mass in the Church of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.

We thank God today for the gift of the Eucharist and the gift of  the priesthood of Fr. Steve. I am reminded of an old poem and the first stanza runs as follows:

We need them in life's early morning,

We need them again at its close;

We feel their warm clasp of true friendship,

We seek them while tasting life's woes.

When we come to this world, we are sinful,

The greatest as well as the least.

And the hands that make us pure as angels

Are the beautiful hands of a priest.

Our modern progress in scientific discoveries tends to make us marvel at the wonder and complexity of the world we live in. With our intellect, we can understand that God must be keeping the universe together, that God is the origin of everything, but reason will only take us so far. Then we need to add faith to our reason and intellect. As Paul says, in the Christian life we go by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7). We need to be humble and open to God performing a miracle every day in our church—the miracle of the Eucharist. Can you be humble enough to add faith to your intellect and reason, to admit that intellect by itself does not provide all the answers, and that God can perform miracles every day making it possible for bread and wine to become the Body and Blood of Jesus while keeping the same appearance? 

To help us believe, from time to time, God has allowed visible miracles of the Eucharist to occur, Eucharistic Miracles as we call them. These are miracles that occurred during Mass when the bread changed into flesh during the consecration and the wine changed into blood during the consecration. Many such Eucharistic Miracles have occurred in various parts of the world and throughout the two millennia of Christian history and over 100 of them have been authenticated by the Church.

In the year 1263 a priest from Prague was on route to Rome making a pilgrimage asking God for help to strengthen his faith since he was having doubts about his vocation. Along the way, he stopped in Bolsena 70 miles north of Rome. While celebrating Mass there, as he raised the host during the consecration, the bread turned into flesh and began to bleed. The drops of blood fell onto the small white cloth on the altar, called the corporal. This event was scientifically studied by the Vatican. In the following year. In 1264, Pope Urban IV instituted the feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus, today’s feast, Corpus Christi. The Pope asked St. Thomas Aquinas, living at that time, to write hymns for the feast and he wrote two, better known to the older members of our congregation, the Tantum Ergo and O Salutaris. That blood-stained corporal may still be seen today in the Basilica of Orvieto north of Rome.

Jesus is really with us in the Eucharist. Jesus comes to us in every Mass under the form of bread and wine. Saint Thomas Aquinas said that the Holy Eucharist is “the greatest of all [Christ’s] miracles,” and that, “No other sacrament has greater healing power.” He says, “here Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful than this?” Indeed, what could be more wonderful than this? That Christ himself is set before us, given to us as our food. This is the center and source of our life as Christians because the Eucharist is Christ, Our Lord, and Our Savior, human and divine, broken and given for all of us for the life of the world. Just as bread and wine are transformed, we, too, are transformed to be the Church, the visible presence of Christ in the world.

Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O