by Joseph Nangle, OFM
Pax Christi USA 2023 Teacher of Peace
This Sunday we mark the the third celebration of Corpus Christi since the bishops of the United States inaugurated the National Eucharist Renewal in 2022. It is safe to say that despite the detailed timeline of proposed Eucharistic events set out by the bishops for these three years, the majority of U.S. Catholics have little or no familiarity with this renewal. From its official announcement of the revival on the Feast of Corpus Christi in 2022, to a Preparation Day in October 2022, to Focusing on Eucharistic revival in year 2023, to a “90-day formational opportunity” earlier this year – the entire enterprise has pretty much gone unnoticed in Catholic circles. And this is both unfortunate and disturbing.
It is unfortunate because it would have been appropriate and edifying as the People of God in this country emerged from the deadly effects of the COVID pandemic. No one had escaped from the scourge; the populations of the world had come together in an understanding that we are in the end one fragile family. For Christian-Catholics this terrible experience was felt keenly in our inability to celebrate the Eucharist together (or individually); to be physically around the table of the Lord. We had to watch passively via Zoom as Masses were said in isolation.
This stark reality was highlighted in Pope Francis’ dramatic gesture of walking alone through St. Peter’s Square on a dark and rainy evening in March 2020 carrying the Blessed Sacrament. And then, speaking for every human being, Francis said: “COVID has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air… We find ourselves afraid and lost.”
As the dreadful pandemic gradually passed, it became clear that a kind of new birth in Christian-Catholic understanding of the place the Eucharist has in our lives would be important – a renewed consciousness of the incredible gift we have in the Lord’s Supper. We could have used a catechesis, one that was received by the People of God everywhere. The disturbing fact that efforts in this regard have fallen dreadfully short in the U.S. Church makes one wonder if the hierarchy here has completely lost its influence in the lives of the people.
One example of what a true revival might have looked like – particularly for us who take seriously Catholic Social Teaching – would have been an ongoing reflection on Saint Paul’s first letter to an early Christian community. In Chapter 11, Paul recalls “what he [and they] had received from the Lord” – the Eucharistic meal. He writes the very words Jesus spoke over the bread and the wine at the Last Supper: “This is my Body; this is my Blood” and “do this in memory of me.”
We could have had an extended, prayerful reflection on Paul’s subsequent warning to that community that they were presuming to celebrate Eucharist while “one goes ahead with their own supper while another goes hungry…”. The apostle was pointing to an obvious contradiction within their Eucharistic “celebrations.” Then wouldn’t our renewed gathering “around the table” have provoked deep thoughts, remembering that, like among those early Christians, we witnessed astounding inequity here: most of us receiving preventative vaccinations while overwhelming numbers did not; and how global interdependence has been forgotten in the return to “normal life”?
Within this same social context, we could have reflected on Eucharistic renewal in the light of Jesus’ words: “If you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your sister or brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go be reconciled with them”? (Matthew 5:23-24)
We have lost an historic opportunity for a revitalized Eucharistic culture in Catholic America. May this year’s celebration of Corpus Christi begin to make up for it.
Joe Nangle OFM is a Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace and the 2023 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace. As a member of the Assisi Community in Washington, D.C., he is dedicated to simple living and social change. Joe also serves as the Pastoral Associate for the Latino community at Our Lady Queen of Peace, Arlington, Virginia.
Yes, indeed, Fr. Joseph, the Eucharist is the best-kept secret of the Catholic Church. Sermons, generally, bore and induce sleep and hardly ever connect the phenomenal power of the Eucharist to the world we live in. While the elders sleep through the sermons, the young, more sincere, opt out altogether. Our own clergy, dreadfully, is the worst enemy of the Eucharist.
David-Ross Gerling, PhD
Yes, COVID had taken over our lives and now we go back to the beginning of the human race and see that WAR had taken over our human lives and the Body of Christ was defiled from the outset and continues to be defiled today, Now.
There is a connection between War and Corpus Christi and it isn’t pretty. The pulpit doesn’t produce what the dead ears in the pews really need. They need a Jolt.
So we must deliver that Jolt at every opportunity. We humans cant deliver the message of Corpus Christi while immersed in killing each other.