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Introduction
Shortly after my priestly ordination,
I was making First Friday communion calls for the first time
in the parish to which I was newly assigned. I was to make about
20 home visits to sick & homebound so time was of the essence.
Now, this was 33 years ago, long before there were cell phones & GPS
devices. Naturally, I got lost. As I struggled to find my way
on unfamiliar streets, I realized it was a good thing I had been
called to be a priest instead of an airline pilot. I was badly
off course and was running very late.
When I finally arrived
at the home of a very wonderful parishioner, she smiled at me
and said, “Father, I was worried you wouldn’t get here. You know,
I can’t live without the Eucharist!”
I’ve thought of her words
many time but especially on this day, Corpus Christi, when the
whole Church in a special way gives thanks for the gift of the
Eucharist and celebrates the real presence of Christ – Body,
Blood, Soul, and Divinity – in the wondrous sacrament of the
altar. This is the principal gift which Christ gave to his Church
on the night before he died. This is the gift that encapsulates
and makes present to us Christ’s gift of self his incarnation,
his life and preaching, and especially his death and resurrection.
The Church lives by the Eucharist, is refreshed by the Eucharist
and made new by the Eucharist!
Our lives of faith and our unity
with one another depends on living, contact with our Savior who
fulfills his promise to remain with us always principally through
the Eucharist. He is the source of life, the source of truth,
the source of love. Truly, we cannot live without the Eucharist.
The Sacrament of Marriage
The Eucharist is central to every
vocation. The Eucharist is not only the most important thing
the priest does, it is also at the heart of his identity. We,
your priests, exist so that you may have the Eucharist and the
sacraments.
But the Eucharist is also central to the vocation of marriage
and family, a vocation which we celebrate so joyfully on this
Corpus Christi Sunday. Pope John Paul II described the relationship
between the Eucharist and marriage thus: “The Eucharist,” he
said, “is the sacrament of our redemption. It is the sacrament
of the Bridegroom and the Bride.” Pope John Paul II & Pope
Benedict XVI want us to understand that every celebration of
the Eucharist is really a wedding feast. It celebrates the spousal
love of Christ, the Bridegroom, for his Bride, the Church. At
every Mass, Jesus gives himself anew to his people the Church
by renewing his sacrifice of love through the ministry of the
priest. Thus the Church is filled with new life & she responds
with praise and thanksgiving.
As married couples, you cannot
live without the Eucharist. The Eucharist, which celebrates the
love of Christ for his Church, is the source of the strength,
the wisdom, and the love you need to remain faithful to your
wedding vows, to strengthen you love as the years pass by, to
bring new human life into the world, and to establish a home
based on faith & love. Far too many Catholic couples try
to go it alone. They claim to be too busy to take part in Mass
on Sunday. Yet they cannot fully live their vocation without
the Eucharist.
I will go a step further. Catholic married couples
cannot “become what they are” without the Eucharist. The whole
point of Christian sacramental marriage is to be a living symbol
of Christ’s love for the Church … to reproduce in flesh, blood,
and spirit Christ’s gift of self to his people the Church. Your
love for each other is to be a sign of Christ’s love for the
Church and that means it has to include the essential dimensions
of that love: it is to be faithful, perpetual, and fruitful.
Just as Christ is faithful to his promises, so too you are called
to fidelity. Just as Christ loves his Church in an unbreakable
covenant of love, so too you are called to love one another until
death. And just as Christ’s love for his Church has given the
new life of grace to countless men and women over a span of 2000
years, so too your love for one another must be open to new life
and so generous that you make the sacrifices necessary for begetting
and nurturing your children.
Just as Jesus won for himself a
people by his death and gathered them together as a community
of faith by the power of the Spirit, so too you are called to
form families, small communities of faith, which are the original
building blocks of both the Church and society. Truly, you cannot
live without the Eucharist because you symbolize the sacrificial
love at the heart of the Eucharist.
Conclusion
How fittingly
on this feast of Corpus Christi do we celebrate your love for one another, a love that spans decades with untold stories of
love, devotion, and sacrifice, a love that has endured in spite
of cultural obstacles and human weakness. With you parish priests,
with your families, in the name of the Lord, I thank you, dear
Jubilarians, for showing us in your lives the unfailing love
of Christ.
We congratulate you and offer our prayers, even as
each one of us is renewed in our love for the Eucharist – without
which we cannot live!
May God bless you and keep you always in
His love!
Return to the Writings of Bishop
Lori
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