In just a couple of days, I will be celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of the Sacrament of Priesthood. My ordination day was 7 June 1958.In just a couple of days, I will be celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of the Sacrament of Priesthood. My ordination day was 7 June 1958.

Today’s feast, Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, is like an opening bar to a symphony of praise and thanksgiving that I will be living in the coming days.

But the symphony is not about me. The praise and thanksgiving is part of all of us. The Eucharist is at the centre of my life as a priest. It is also at the centre of all Christian life. 

We call it a sacrament, a visible sign of invisible grace! That’s what a sacrament is.

In the Greek language, the word sacrament is mysterion, mystery. The Eucharist is mystery, not merely in the sense that it is beyond our comprehension, but it is ‘mystery’ in the active sense of an ongoing action into which we are baptized, in which we move and live and have our being.

Our modern age, at least in the West, doesn’t handle mystery very well, for there is no way we can control or  manipulate it.  However, our God-given honor and mission is to consent to the ongoing action within us, through us, and for our world – the saving action of God in Christ. We link ourselves to the unending act of Jesus, surrendering in love and obedience to the God whom he called “Abba.”

It is an act of unconditional love between creation and the creator. The words of the offertory tell us this:                                  

Blessed are you, God of all creation. 

We offer you this bread, this wine, fruit of the earth and the vine -- the work of human hands!

It is an act of unconditional love between humanity and the God beyond all names:

through him, with him, and in him, with the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God, the Father;

It is an unending act of worship from the rising of the sun to it setting: it gives complete expression to the unspoken desire within the human heart for truth, honesty and goodness. It bespeaks the mystery of God, “the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum, by whom the human heart is terribly awed and irresistibly attracted.”

Do this in memory of me!   

Yes, Lord, today, tomorrow, and as long as breath is within us!

We are to live it day in and day out; it is our very identity. It is who we are: Eucharist – Thanksgiving – the worship of a faithful and grateful people!

Conclusion:

Finally, let me share with you a personal experience that was like a wake-up call for me. 

Some years ago, I spent a week with a community of Quakers in Philadelphia. Each morning we would gather in a room with seats around the four walls and an emptiness in the middle. We sat there in silent prayer for thirty minutes during the week and for an hour on Sunday. 

I have to admit my ignorance of Quaker faith and this showed when I asked the leader of the community, “Do you have a Eucharist?” 

“Of course!” he said, “The morning silent prayer together is our Eucharist! The silence awakens us to the truth and mission of who we are: The Body of Christ!

I was stunned!

How long would we as a parish community need to sit together in silent prayer for us to realize who we are: the Body of Christ, nourished by the Word and the Sacrament of The Eucharist, and missioned to be who we are: The Body of Christ given in love, the blood poured out through our service to humanity and in worship to our God.

This is the Mystery we live. This is the Sacrament we are for the world, in the silence of our heart and in the silence of the heart of the community. 

Can we allow the consecration that has taken place deep within us at our baptism, and nourished year by year through the Eucharist, to surface in a new and awakened consciousness of what we celebrate and who we are called to be for the world?