Message from Abbot Paul - Corpus Christi
Message from Fr Paul for Sunday, 14th June 2020
Today we celebrate Corpus Christi, the day set apart by the Church to give thanks to God for the gift of the Eucharist and the Real Presence of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Many of us have happy childhood memories of great processions of the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of towns and cities up and down the UK, and this is still the case is many countries throughout the world. However, this year, the Year of the Virus we could call it, sadly there are unlikely to be many public manifestations of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. One of the good things to come out of the lockdown is that we have had to interiorise our faith in so many ways. This has made us realise that the Mystery of the Eucharist takes place and is present deep within each one of us and that we have probably been unaware of this extraordinary grace. St Paul tells us that each one of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit. If that is so, then each one of us must also be a tabernacle of the real presence of Jesus Christ. It is through the grace of the Holy Spirit that Jesus lives in our hearts through faith. We are probably so convinced of our own unworthiness, that we find it hard to believe that Jesus could possible want to live in any of us, but he does and said so often to his disciples.
Today’s Gospel reading comes from the Discourse on the Bread of Life found in John 6: 51-58, which is summarised in the very first words that Jesus speaks. “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Jesus, incarnate Word of God and Son of the Eternal Father, has come down from heaven to earth, so that we might go up from earth to heaven, becoming one with him, members of his Mystical Body, through receiving his Body and his Blood as real food and real drink. In fact Jesus warns us, “I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you.” Jesus is quite clear in what he says and the Church, from the very beginning, took Jesus at his word and believed that in the Eucharist it is truly the Body and Blood of Christ that we receive under the species of bread and wine. St. Ambrose wrote, "If the word of the Lord Jesus is so powerful as to bring into existence things which were not, then a fortiori those things which already exist can be changed into something else" (De Sacramentis, IV, 5-16). In fact, Jesus said,
“For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.” Nothing could be clearer and Jesus adds the promise that, “Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day.” So eternal life and the resurrection of the flesh depend on our eating and drinking the Body and Blood of the Risen Christ.
Faith doesn’t come easy and I have difficulty with many things, but the one thing I have never doubted is the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament. I believe you share my faith.
