19TH JUNE 2022
Reflection
Last Sunday we celebrated the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. This feast taught us the kind of a God that we worship and believe in: a Triune God - one God in three divine persons: Father,Son and Holy Spirit. We noted that the knowledge of the Trinity is the highest knowledge that a human can learn; gladly or is given by God Himself in what we referred to as Self Revelation.
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Corpus Christi- The Body and Blood of Christ.
In our country we have a day dedicated to our heroes and heroines- men and women, young and old who were maimed, fatally injures, shed their blood and died for us to enjoy our freedom.
In our faith we have our Hero par excellence , Jesus Christ Our Lord, Master and Saviour who shed His blood on the Cross for our redemption. On this feast we celebrate Jesus' self sacrifice, self giving, self forgetfulness and great love for His people.
He has left this feast as a memorial/memory of His presence in the Eucharist- a meal, a feast a family get together festival/meal of joy, love, unity and communion. Only friends can share a meal. Indeed our readings talk about feeding: the prophet Elisha feeding 100 people with 20 barley loaves and Jesus feeding thousands with 5 loaves and a few fish. The words used: took, blessed or gave thanks, and gave to be distributed allude to the Eucharistic celebration which in turn is a prelude of the beatific vision in heaven.
At the Eucharistic feast we demonstrate our unity, love , communion and oneness in the spirit of the same faith, hope and love.
The prayer that the priest says during the Eucharistic celebration just before invoking the Holy Spirit to come down for consecration of the bread and wine into the Body and blood of Christ "Holy Holy" - as he mixes water and wine is realized/answered; he says: By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled Himself to share in our humanity!".
Thus, In the Eucharistic celebration humanity is elevated- the communicant is "divinized"- elevated to be a shared of the divine life of God and to be an apostle ( lover and preacher) of divine qualities
of: holiness, love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, joy, peace, self control.
With St Thomas of Aquinas let us pray:
O God who in this wonderful Sacrament have left us a memorial of your Passion, grant us, we pray, so to revere the sacred mysteries of tour Body and Blood that we may always experience in our lives the fruits of your redemption- who lives and reigns with God the Father in the Unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever Amen .
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