LOVING IN DEED AND TRUTH

A SERMON FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF CORPUS CHRISTI

Life’s tough.  We all feel the pinch at some point.  This current year has been especially hard on many people: businesses have been forced to close and a record number have been driven into undeserved unemployment.  Some businesses were hurt so badly that they cannot recover and have closed permanently.  We can only hope that the harm done to individual workers will not be so drastic, and that all may find jobs when the time comes.  Meanwhile, people are hurting, and as Catholics we cannot turn a blind eye to them.

In today’s Epistle, St. John asks the following very blunt question:  “Whoso hath this world’s good” (in other words, who amongst us are still doing okay financially, in spite of this current crisis), “and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up the bowels of compassion from him: how dwelleth the love of God in him?”  It’s a rhetorical question because the answer is quite obvious.  The love of God does not dwell in those who refuse charity to those in need.  We sin against the second of the two great commandments when we do not love our neighbor as ourselves.  It’s quite straightforward, but sometimes we prefer to forget about this commandment because it is an inconvenient reminder of our duty as we lead our nice, smug little lives, where we sit back like Ebenezer Scrooge, counting our money, surveying our goods and property, and spending our lives worrying that maybe somebody might take it from us.

Thus it is that on this Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi, when we make our prayers to Christ truly present amongst us in the Blessed Sacrament, we waste our time and our prayers are truly worthless, if we do not remember the words of our Saviour when he described how he will one day judge us.  The day when he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left, and shall say to the sheep, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”  You all remember, I’m sure, how the righteous replied?  Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?  Or naked, and clothed thee?  And so on.  The words of Christ our Judge should ring in our ears today: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

So let’s not pretend our prayers to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament have any merit if we ignore the needs of our neighbor.  Because the love of God does not dwell in us if we do not love our neighbor.  To love our neighbor is to love our blessed Lord himself.  After all, our Lord was and still is our neighbor, dwelling in our midst in this Blessed Sacrament.  We must see our neighbor in that Blessed Sacrament, not because our neighbor is God, but because God is our neighbor.  Our real love for God is not made with our prayers, with our tongue, but as St. John says, “in deed and in truth.”  And if we truly love our brethren in deed and truth, we shall know, he tells us, “that we have passed from death unto life.”

This has been the practice of the Church throughout the ages.  How many of our saints gave away all they possessed to the poor?  How many saintly kings and queens, how many of the rich who had an abundance of the goods of this world, loved to give alms to those in need?  Think of St. Martin, giving his cloak to the beggar, or St. Wenceslas tramping through the snow to bring logs for his poor peasants to burn during the cold winter nights.  Or St. Lawrence, giving away all the Church’s treasures to the poor rather than into the hands of the pagan Emperor.  All acts of kindness and Christian charity.  These holy men and women were not saints because they gave alms to the poor.  They gave alms because they were saints.  They didn’t love their neighbor to score points with God.  They did so because they saw God in their neighbor—as we should, no matter how unpleasant some of those neighbors may seem!

There’s a reason the Blessed Sacrament is called the Sacrament of Love.  It’s not the reason our Novus Ordo brethren think, because they have lost their understanding of what “love” is.  It is not the lovey-dovey huggy-kissy love where they slobber all over each other for the “sign of peace” at Mass.  That’s not love.  Love is not the exhibition of our own sentimental emotions.  Love is where we put the needs of others above our own needs.  The sacrifice of our time, our efforts, and yes, our money too when it’s needed.  The love that our Lord talks about when he commands us to love our neighbor is not the love of fellowship but the love of sacrifice, and what greater sacrifice has their ever been than when our Lord offered up his own body, the Corpus Christi, to his heavenly Father?

We can’t love God if we don’t love our neighbor.  As our Epistle today tells us, “He that loveth not his brother abideth in death; whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”  So when we whisper our prayers to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament this morning, let’s make sure we whisper them for our neighbors as ourselves.  Let’s make sure we are ready to make those sacrifices for them as soon as we know of their needs.  “Let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”

O FOOD OF MEN WAYFARING

A HYMN FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF CORPUS CHRISTI

O Esca Viatorum, by St. Thomas Aquinas

Translated from the Latin by Athelstan Riley, 1858-1945

O Food of men wayfaring,
The Bread of Angels sharing,
O Manna from on high!
We hunger; Lord, supply us,
Nor thy delights deny us,
Whose hearts to thee draw nigh.

2 O Stream of love past telling,
O purest Fountain, welling
From out the Saviour’s side!
We faint with thirst; revive us,
Of thine abundance give us,
And all we need provide.

3 O Jesu, by thee bidden,
We here adore thee, hidden
’Neath forms of bread and wine.
Grant when the veil is riven,
We may behold, in heaven,
Thy countenance divine.

BEHOLD, THE BREAD OF ANGELS

A REFLECTION FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF CORPUS CHRISTI

One of the most basic natural requirements of the human body is food.  The first thing a newborn baby learns is to cry when it wants to eat.  It’s a habit acquired from our first day of life, and one that we never seem to lose.  If there’s one thing that never fails to bring people together, it’s a good meal.  Conversely though, the inability to satisfy our hunger is guaran-teed to take us past the boiling point.  Deprive the people of bread and there’ll be a revolution.  We see this with the French in 1789, when the mob supposedly asked Queen Marie Antoinette for bread, and stormed the Bastille after they were told that they could go and eat cake.  In 1917 Russia, Lenin and his revolutionary mobs took over the streets, chanting the slogan “Power to the Soviets, Bread to the Starving!”

We even see this spirit of revolution in the Old Testament, when the Hebrews who had followed Moses out of Egypt rebelled against him, bitterly complaining that he had led them into the wilderness only to die of starvation.  God’s response was to rain down bread from heaven, Manna, which our Lord would later refer to as the Bread of Angels, a foreshadowing of the Holy Eucharist, the true Bread of Heaven.  The miracle of the Manna was reflected again in the New Testament, when our Lord performed the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand with only five pieces of barley bread.  Once again, our Saviour reminds us of the importance of relying on Divine Providence, by telling us to stay calm and simply ask God to “give us this day our daily bread.”

Bread has formed an important part of history.  It represents food in its most basic aspect, and is one of those things that are essential to the survival of the human body.  As such, it is the perfect symbol for something far more important, something that is essential to the survival of the human soul.  It is no wonder then, that on the night before he suffered, our blessed Lord took bread into his sacred hands, and having blessed it, he gave it unto his disciples saying, Take ye, and eat ye all of this, for this is my Body!

The Body of Christ.  Corpus Christi.  No longer bread, but under the form of bread, this host we receive on our tongues in Holy Communion is truly the Body of Christ.  Like the Manna that falls from heaven, it drops down upon us, unfailing and inexhaustible, like the dew of the morning, instilling in us the infinite graces of God for our salvation.  Through the daily Masses offered by Catholic priests all over the world, the faithful are never deprived of their “bread”, we never need to rebel.  What depths of evil would it take for the Church to stop celebrating Mass and taking food from the hungry mouths of her children?  What kind of revolution would it provoke if the Church were to deprive us of our heavenly bread?  Vatican II and a new, probably invalid form of Mass perhaps?  Or maybe a global pandemic?  We should never forget how cunning the Devil really is, and how he tricks the children of God that the new Mass feeds them with the Bread of Angels when it is merely flour and water.  Or how he tricks people into offering up the deprivation of the sacraments during COVID-19, as though we were merely giving up candy in Lent.

The Body of Christ is our divinely provided and essential food.  We traditional Catholics may have rebelled against the evil powers who have taken over the Church, but we have not yet prevailed against them.  Let our slogan ring out, “Bread to the Starving!” and let us never cease to trust in Providence, asking that God never cease to “give us this day our daily bread.”