I PRAY THEE, HAVE ME EXCUSED

A SERMON FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF CORPUS CHRISTI

The Gospel story today tells us of a noble lord who carefully prepares a great supper.  But when those he invites fail to show up, a crisis ensues.  The noble lord is highly offended and decides to fill up his house with a new set of invitees—the poor, the maimed, the halt and the blind, until finally the homeless who live in the highways and the hedges are brought in.  Not exactly the cream of society, and yet, the lord prefers them to those ungrateful others who had come up with every excuse under the sun for refusing his generosity.

The meaning is quite clear.  The noble lord represents God.  The great supper is none other than the continuation of the Last Supper—Holy Mass and the Sacrament of Holy Communion.  The people who refuse the invitation to come to the supper are all those countless thousands of people who don’t come to Mass.  And they have equally an equally countless number of excuses why they shouldn’t.  The excuses are too many to mention, but a couple of examples will suffice: there are the non-Catholics who don’t believe in the Real Presence or the Sacraments. They claim to love God, but when he invites them, and even commands them to eat his Body and drink his Blood, they suddenly have a hard time believing the words of Scripture, and have only one thing to say: “I pray thee, have me excused.”  Then there are those who claim to be Catholic, and yet who prefer the Novus Ordo Mass, either ignorant or indifferent that it’s probably invalid, and that the Communion they receive is probably nothing more than mere bread.  We all have family and friends, I’m sure, with whom we’ve had this conversation.  We try to persuade them to return to the Mass of the apostles, but the answers are always the same, “It’s more convenient, it’s better now that it’s in English, it’s shorter, it’s friendlier, it’s more suited to the modern world.  I pray thee, have me excused.”

As for those unworthy rascals that have been dragged in from the highways and hedges, I’m afraid that’s us!  Unworthy though we may be, we have been brought in to fill the house of God and replace those who, with one excuse or another, have refused to come.  We should thank God often and intensely that we have been given the grace to answer his invitation when so many of our family and friends have not.

Most sadly of all, there are those who attend Mass without receiving Holy Communion.  They too present their excuses, but the bottom line is that they offend the loving God who invited them.  Let’s remember that there are very few valid reasons why we should not be at the communion rail every Sunday:  Are we not baptized Catholics? Are we public sinners?  Are we fasting?  Are we sick? Are we in the state of mortal sin? None of these need be permanent problems.  Each one can be fixed.

It is our divine Creator himself who has prepared this great feast that we are attending this morning.  He began his preparations by creating the entire universe, along with everything and eventually everyone in it.  After we showed our ingratitude by our disobedience in the Garden of Eden and many times after that, even so, his Only-Begotten Son was ready to die a terrible death on the cross for us.  Despite our manifold offences against him, he chose to re-open the gates of heaven so that we poor sinners, when we die, can be united with him in heaven forever.  And he gave us this incredible gift of the Blessed Sacrament so that we can unite with him in this life and receive the infinite graces that cost him every drop of his Most Precious Blood.  So we must have very cold hearts indeed if we’re to callously refuse his most generous loving-kindness in giving us this means of salvation.

As I’ve been explaining recently, there are three requirements for us to save our souls.  The first is that we are members of the True Church.  The second is that we are temples of the Holy Ghost, free from mortal sin and in the state of grace, at least at the moment of death. And today, we learn the third requirement—that we MUST attend the great supper of the Lord.  We MUST obey God’s invitation to eat his Body and drink his Blood by receiving him in Holy Communion.  If we do not, we have it from the mouth of the Saviour himself, that “none of those men which were bidden, shall taste of my supper.”  If we do not answer his invitation now in this life, and receive Holy Communion as he commanded us so solemnly to do, then we need not bother hoping for Eternal Life.  There will be none for us.  I’m not making this up, these are the words of Christ himself:  “Except ye eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.  Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

Unite with God in this life through Holy Communion, and he will allow us to unite with him in the next life.  It’s simple, it’s straightforward, there is no ambiguity, and it’s the third requirement essential for our salvation.

You see, it’s all about the love of God.  It’s the natural end of love to unite with the object of our love.  In vulgar terms, if we love bacon and eggs, it’s not enough to just think nice thoughts about bacon and eggs—we want to unite with those bacon and eggs over at the diner after Mass!  Or in the case of the love of friendship, we want to spend time with our friends, go on vacations with them, invite them over to the Sunday barbecue.  When we “fall in love” we want to marry that person and spend our whole life with them.  Marital love is the highest natural form of love there is, which is why the abuse of it is such an offence against God.

Higher even than the natural love between man and wife is the supernatural love between ourselves and God.  Alas, so often, it is a love that travels in only one direction, from God to us.  So many of us fail to respond by loving God in return.  And even when we do, our own lukewarm love is so very inadequate to give to a God who has given us so much.  And it’s true, we’ll never be “good enough” to deserve heaven through our own merits.  But here, in Holy Communion, our Lord himself makes up the difference for this inability to love God enough.  By our own means, we can never love God literally with all our heart and mind and soul and strength.  We simply can’t approach the kind of love for our Lord that would allow us to unite with him.  We are so totally unworthy.  And so he comes to us.  If union with God is outside our grasp, he reaches down to us instead, coming to us in Holy Communion, uniting his body and blood, soul and divinity with our own body and blood, soul and humanity.  He raises that humanity to his divinity and we are one.  We know our unworthiness, and yet we obey God’s command to receive him.  Domine, non sum dignus, “O Lord, I am not worthy… say but the word, and my soul shall be healed!”  We should be filled with awe at such tremendous humility on the part of our Lord, and at the unbelievable gift he has given us.  We should be uncontrollable in our desire to come to Mass and receive Holy Communion as often as we can.

And yet, how often, when it comes time for Communion, do we complacently mouth those terrible words, “I pray thee, have me excused.  I cannot come.”  If we do happen to have a valid reason, we should be filled with disappointment and grief at our inability to receive our Lord, promising to make up to him by some act of kindness or extra prayers.  We should at the very least make a spiritual communion, and that’s something we can even do during the week when we can’t get to daily Mass.  Let’s never miss an opportunity again of uniting ourselves if not with the Real Presence, then at least with the Supernatural Presence of God within us.  Whatever we’re doing, however busy we may be, let’s never forget God’s greatest gift, the Holy Eucharist, constantly reminding ourselves that the only reason we exist is to be one with him!