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catholicregister.org June 7, 2020 9
What did Jesus mean by "this is My body"? These words of His seem to be everywhere in the New Testament (all three Synoptic Gospels, 1 Cor- inthians). Nor can we escape them in the fourth Gospel where we might wonder, with His original audience, what Jesus could possibly mean by saying "unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you will not have life in you" (John 6:53). He meant something serious enough that, though it caused many of His followers to leave Him, He kept saying it, more determinedly than ever. It's His body, His blood, the deep pulse and sinew and bone of Him, that He urgently wanted to give His friends, as He gave them bread and wine the last night He ate and drank with them (see Ephesians 5:30). And they received and handed it on in a way that has connected us down through the centuries. The Church has always seen here the wellspring of the Eucharist. During the Easter days when we laypeople had to fast from communion, we had a unique op- portunity to ponder these words afresh. What does eating Jesus' body mean for us? What did the Communion fast mean? It may be worth checking now while we still feel it. We are not the first, of course; Catholics in the Amazon have fasted from communion for years, as have many others on many occasions. We tasted a little of the hunger others have long known. Here was an opportunity to share a longing of the whole Body of Christ. Let's notice, while we can, where our search for His body leads us. It's bodies that got us into trouble in this pandemic, since the virus attacks them. In a way, though, they also mirror the inner trouble our souls are in; not that our spiritual illness caused the novel coronavirus, but that physical illness can be a doorway to the inner life. We might be tempted to conclude that virtual church is just as good if not better than live church, and that maybe God gave us the Internet instead of physical communion. Thank God, our spirits have connected over the Internet and in other ways, but don't we miss each other's bodies? Don't we long for physical connec- tion, too? If we don't miss Christ's body, we may be fooling ourselves that we miss the rest of Him. When you take a photo- graph, do you focus on the yellow daffodils in the foreground or the blue lake in the distance? The choice is yours, but it makes all the difference in the resulting picture. So for us, in this next chapter of the human race's illness, where will we focus? If we focus on money, everything re-organizes around that; if on physical health, or the environment, around that. Not that these are mutually exclusive, any more than the daffodils and the lake, but the focal point changes the picture. What if we focus on the body of Christ and let everything organize itself around that? As I heard in an Eastertide homily, we can learn by observing how the picture changed for Jesus' friends when the body of Christ became their focal point. The myrrh-bearing women went to His tomb out of a solemn, loving duty to the body of Christ. Presumably, they expected nothing but death, and they got more "nothing" than they dreamed: no body at all. The same with Peter and John when they went to the tomb. Out of this nothing they received more "everything" than they dreamed: the whole person of Christ returned to them beyond death, the same but different. The rest of the apostles, meanwhile, stayed at home under lockdown watching the news. Since they didn't go out to meet it, the body of Christ came to them. The risen Christ penetrated their locked doors and breezed through their walls. The apostles checked out different aspects of the body of Christ: feeling His wounds, eating with Him, hearing His words, seeing His face and body. What will happen for us if we go to the body of Christ, even where it seems dead or absent? Or if we let the body of Christ come to us, even when we would rather stay home and let somebody else take the risk? Did the apostles go "back to normal"? Could they? The body of Christ continued as their focal point. They were nourished and inspired by regularly repeating in their community life, as in the New Testament, "this is My body," not only in word but also in action and deed. It is in the breaking of His body, and the sharing of His body, that we recognize Him and make Him present. If we want to know what Jesus meant by saying "this is My body," the answer is: "Do this." (Marrocco can be reached at marrocco7@sympatico.ca)
Searching for the source of our hunger
QUESTIONING FAITH
MARY MARROCCO CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON
Fr. Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, may be an ideal prospective saint for the current age, said Carl A. Anderson, supreme knight of the international fraternal order. "We've been praying for years for this to occur, and finally this day has arrived," he told Catholic News Service May 27. First, he's a pro-life hero. The miracle recog- nized by the Vatican paving the way for his beatification occurred in the United States in 2015 and involved a baby, still in utero, with a life-threatening condition. He was found to be healed after his family prayed to McGivney. The Vatican announced May 27 that Pope Francis had signed the decree recognizing the miracle through the intercession of McGivney. Once he is beatified, he will be given the title "Blessed." McGivney (1852-1890), ordained a priest for what is now the Archdiocese of Hartford, Conn., founded the Knights at St. Mary's Church in New Haven, Conn., in 1882. The first council in Canada was founded in 1897 in Montreal, where McGivney went to seminary school. The fraternal order for Catholic men is the largest lay Catholic or- ganization in the world with two million members - about 230,000 in Canada - and sponsors a wide range of educational, charitable and religious activities The initial work on his sainthood cause began in 1982 on the Knights' centenary. His beati- fication ceremony will be held in Connecticut sometime this fall. "And sometime after that, we'll be looking for another miracle," Anderson said. Generally, two miracles attrib- uted to the candidate's intercession are required for sainthood - one for beatification and the second for canonization. McGivney was born Aug. 12, 1852, the eldest of 13 children born to Patrick and Mary Lynch McGivney in Waterbury, Conn. Young Michael left school at 13 to work in the spoon-making department of a brass factory. At 16, he began seminary studies and was sent by the bishop in Hartford, Conn., to the French-run College of St. Hyacinthe in Quebec. With increasing numbers of French- Canadian immigrants to the New England area, the idea was to have priests who would better serve that population. The seminary cel- ebrated its bicentennial in 2011 by building a monument to McGivney, who spent two years there. He also studied at Our Lady of Angels Seminary in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and at the Jesuit-run St. Mary's College in Montreal. He went home to Waterbury when his father died in 1873 and enrolled in St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, where he completed his studies and was ordained in 1877. "There was some thought that Fr. McGivney would join the Jesuits but when he had to leave Canada he ended up in the diocesan program because the bishop was paying for his seminary expenses," said Anderson. McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus with a small group of Catholic laymen in order to strengthen faith and to help families overwhelmed by the illness or death of their breadwinner. McGivney, who will be the first American parish priest to be beatified and has long been a hero of working-class Catholics, can be viewed as a martyr of a pandemic. When he died from pneumonia complications at age 38 in 1890, it was during an outbreak of influenza known as the Russian flu in Thomaston, Conn., where he was pastor for six years. McGivney's legacy includes "the empowerment of the laity" through service projects, Anderson said. "His work anticipated the Second Vatican Council. He created a universal call to holiness that gave the laity a way to be more faithful Catholics. He provided a mechanism for them to go into society and make a difference."
Knights' prayers for founder answered
Fr. Michael McGivney will be beatified this fall.
(CNS file photo)
Carl A. Anderson
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