This Is My Body
Corpus Christi
Announcements for June 18, 2022:
If you need anything at all, please be in touch with me.
Bishop Sweeney has asked us to collect pasta, pasta sauce, and toothpaste for the annual diocesan-wide Corpus Christi Food Drive. Items can be dropped off in the church narthex this weekend. You can also contribute financially: checks can be made payable to Catholic Charities or you can give online.
Vacation Bible School is coming to OLMC! Join us for a special summer program: Cathletics, Training to be Champions for Christ. Registration forms for the program, which runs during the week of July 18th, are available in the church narthex or the rectory office.
Save the date! The Feast of OLMC marking the 175th Anniversary of our parish will be celebrated on Sunday, July 17, 2022. Stay tuned for the details of the day, which will include food, fun, and the Rosary procession with Our Lady of Mount Carmel through town.
Visit the OLMC Parishioner Portal for all of our recent announcements.
Dear Saints,
This Sunday we celebrate Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.
The Feast reinforces what the Church teaches about the Eucharist, especially the reality of transubstantiation: that Jesus' words, "This is my Body... This is my Blood...," change bread and wine into his Body and Blood.
And so, Jesus is present whole and entire - body, blood, soul, and divinity - in the Eucharist.
When we receive Holy Communion - whether we only eat the sacred host (or any tiny piece thereof), or only drink from the chalice (or any small drop therefrom), or we both eat and drink - what we receive in the Eucharist is nothing more and nothing less than the actual body, blood, soul, and divinity of our risen Lord in its entirety.
This truth and more is contained in the great hymn of Saint Thomas Aquinas composed for the Feast of Corpus Christi at the request of Pope Urban IV. Check it out here in anticipation of hearing it again on Sunday:
Thomas Aquinas: Laud, O Zion
(Corpus Christi Sequence)
That's the skinny on the what of the Eucharist, but what can we say about the why of the Most Blessed Sacrament?
Saint Augustine, I think, said it best. Preaching in the 4th and 5th centuries, he reflected on "one of the deep truths of Christian faith: through our participation in the sacraments, we are transformed into the Body of Christ, given for the world."
The point is that every time we receive the Body of Christ, we are transformed - or should be transformed - a little more fully into what we receive, so that the divine love that flows into us by our communing with Jesus might flow through us into the world.
Here's to our being and becoming the Body of Christ! What a tremendous gift... what a tremendous calling!
In the Love of our Eucharistic Lord,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ
PS Want more on Sunday's feast? Give my bulletin article a look. How about the Real Presence? Check out this collection of teachings from the Fathers of the Church (dating back to 90AD) on the Eucharist.
Preparing for Mass?
Check out this weekend's readings:
The Solemnity of the Most Holy
Body and Blood of Christ
The Last Supper
Juan de Juanes, ca.1562