Saturday, June 17, 2017
Corpus Christi
Sermon
for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi
[Second Sunday after Pentecost
Year A June 18 , 2017
Year A June 18 , 2017
Holy
Trinity & St. Anskar
You gave them bread from heaven, containing within itself all sweetness.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
When we pray that our Father may give
us today our daily bread, we refer to The Bread of the Holy Eucharist. The word
translated as “daily” is unique in Greek, found only in the New Testament. It
appears to mean something entirely different, translated in Latin as
super-substantial. In the Greek and Slavic liturgies it is still called that,
in the West, following St. Jerome, it is interpreted to be a reference to the
Bread of the Exodus: the manna from heaven that appeared every day, saving the
lives of the Israelites in the desert, who commanded to share it equally among
themselves, because there was always more than enough.
16 This is the thing which the LORD
hath commanded: Gather ye of it every man according to his eating; an omer a
head, according to the number of your persons, shall ye take it, every man for
them that are in his tent.'
17 And the children of Israel did so,
and gathered some more, some less.
18 And when they did mete it with an
omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had
no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating.
19 And Moses said unto them: 'Let no
man leave of it till the morning.'
20 Notwithstanding they hearkened not
unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms,
and rotted; and Moses was wroth with them
The impulse to hoard, the view that
there may not be enough and I had better provide for me and mine, and forget
about everybody else produces stinking corruption. The life-giving manna from
heaven cannot be hoarded: everyone gathers just enough for each person in the
family. Every person gets an equal amount. This equality pre-figures the
Eucharistic Banquet, in which all communicants are equal.
In any case, when we utter this prayer
for our “daily bread”, we ask and not for daily sustenance, alone — “not for
bread alone” — but for “the Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” For
that is what this Super-substantial Bread is: the Word Of God, by Whom all
things were made, the Word made flesh, by Whose word, the Bread is become His
Body. By His Word also, we to become His Body when we eat it. No more
distinctions of any kind: neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, rich nor
poor, high nor low, neither better nor worse, educated nor uneducated, beginner
nor adept. All are equal in the New Adam, equally invited into the heavenly
banquet, where this collective Humanity, representing all of creation, joins
the three Divine persons around their table of mutual, self-forgetting Love.
No one who eats this Bread and drinks
this Cup receives any more or less than anyone else. All are perfectly equal.
Samson the Ethiopian reminded me of this supernatural fact the other day in the
gym. It was wonderful to have the testimony of one who is about as different
from me and my culture and history as anyone can be. Wonderful because of the
testimony to universal equality embedded in the core of the Christian
revelation, the Gospel received by an Ethiopian before any other Gentile, as
recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.
I call the Eucharistic equality a
supernatural fact, because it refers to the perfection of human nature in
Christ, a perfection already achieved in His Mystical Body, here on earth,
where we already participate in the Eternal Banquet. But this supernatural, or
super-substantial perfection is not to be put off until the Last Judgment, when
it shall be consummated in a Judgment that is not a condemnation, but the
vindication and perfection in all righteousness. The Holy Eucharist signifies
this Judgment of perfection. It begins now. Here and now, as our Lord said:
“Now is the Judgment of this world, now is the Prince of this World cast
out.” Here and now we are delivered from
Evil; here and now we creatures who bear the image of God, become also like God
as we forgive sin — the sin of those who sin against us; here and now God’s
Kingdom is come and God’s Will done on earth as in heaven, as we share
equally in the one loaf of super-substantial Bread. Here and now, the sin of
this world, which separates people into categories and levels of privilege, is
destroyed in the Communion of perfect equality and perfect love.
As we may not pretend that this blessed
state comes only at the end of time, neither may we imagine that it has nothing
to do with this world, except in the time-warp we call the Liturgy. We have
promised to pray, work ,and give for the spread of God’s Kingdom, here on
earth. That means to work for peace and justice in this world, which means
among other things to work for equality. Not just equality of opportunity, but
equality of life and dignity. It is well to remember that human projects to
achieve this equality without God have the nature of antichrist. Without God,
our attempts to improve society too easily lead to Auschwitz and the GULAG. On
the other hand, the recognition of that danger can too easily become an excuse
for what is called quietism, the heresy that counsels against any human effort
to advance the Kingdom of God.
In receiving the Super-substantial
Bread, our daily Manna from heaven, like the ancient Israelites we receive a
miraculous gift: the sustenance necessary to move on toward the Promised Land, the Kingdom in which God's will is done on earth as in heaven.
So mortals ate the Bread of Heaven.
You provided them food enough.
AMEN.
