On the Feast of Corpus Christi, my favourite priest wrote this in the local church bulletin which a friend of mine asked me for a copy of so here it is for all who wish to read it:
"Today I celebrate the awesome reality of my Christianity. I put aside self-deluding notions rampant today, that life is about me bringing about my own self-achieved fulfilment; that my Christianity is good works alone without faith; that life is what takes place in the market place and has little or no need of Sunday rest and celebration; that I am what I decide and I decide my own nobility. But along comes Christ with a very different version of reality. I am one with him in startling intimacy when I partake of His body and blood. Likewise am I one with my neighbour since the one divine life courses through my veins. "Take and eat."
What am I nourishing? My own very life, which in the eucharist, is injected with and permeated by the life of the God who created me. "Bread" abounds in the Eucharist as an effective symbol that has not lost its significance over the centuries. "Blood" is an even more frequent word in the scriptures - in which is signified the commitment and fidelity of God in my life and my own commitment to the life given me.
That my faith finds its fruit in service to my world and neighbour cannot be denied. But what service can supplant the experience of the Lord's Day celebrated in the presence of God at the most intense, in oneness with my neighbour with whom I have a redeemed world. On Monday I will return to a life of contribution which will owe its validity to all that was given me in yesterday's Eucharist.
Sacraments are, together with prayer, the most powerful means of appreciating and living my true self. Perhaps the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ needs more prayer for me to realise what it has to offer. "
