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A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
✛
Good Manners
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen
The Feast of Corpus Christi, officially “The Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ,” stems from one of the bright periods of Church history, the High Middle Ages of the thirteenth century in Western Christendom.[1] The natural day for this commemoration would of course be Maundy Thursday, but the memory of Christ’s Passion on that day makes a separate day to focus on the Eucharist desirable. A devout French nun led a one-woman campaign to have the Thursday after Trinity Sunday set aside for Corpus Christi. She prevailed upon the Pope, who authorized the service of Corpus Christi in 1264.[2] The proper prayers and hymns for Corpus Christi, such as the beloved hymn we sang at the beginning, were drawn up by Saint Thomas Aquinas himself.[3]
Aquinas’ words summarize what we celebrate: “Word made flesh, the bread he taketh, by his word his Flesh to be; wine his sacred Blood he maketh, though the senses fail to see; faith alone the true heart waketh to behold the mystery.” This is the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, specifically and substantially, under the forms of the consecrated bread and wine. As Queen Elizabeth I, the architect of classical Anglicanism, reputedly testified, “Christ was the Word that spake it; he took the bread and brake it; and what his words did make it, that I believe and take it.”
The Book of Common Prayer requires that the consecrated bread and wine never be returned to common use or treated in a common way. The consecrated elements are either to be consumed or otherwise reverently disposed of; or reserved for the communion of the sick and others absent of necessity from the Eucharist – which we do at Saint Thomas in the Chantry Altar Tabernacle or in the Aumbry cabinet at the High Altar. A white light indicating the presence of the consecrated Sacrament encourages reverence, prayer and adoration. Printed on the back of our user-friendly cards are pastoral directions for receiving Holy Communion. Underlining these directions is the desire to show proper reverence to the Real Presence. Similarly the working sacristy of our Altar Guild is organized around the principle of devotion to the Real Presence, down to the last detail of care for the vessels and linens that are used in the consecration and distribution of the Eucharist. It is a careful system of reverence towards the great gift the Lord has given us, his own Self, his Body and Blood, for our salvation.
Saint Paul admonishes that we are to be careful on this score. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” (I Cor 11:27ff) But the Apostle is not just talking about discerning Christ’s Presence in the bread and the wine. He is talking about the whole mystery of Corpus Christi, which includes the members of Christ’s Body, the People of God. He is speaking about us, starting with our neighbors in the pews here. The reverence shown the Sacrament is of one piece with acts of kindness towards our fellow members and our neighbors.
Eucharistic reverence is a glorious thing. The sacramental devotion evident at Saint Thomas moves and attracts. And this graciousness necessarily reaches out into our fellowship and beyond. The work of the Altar Guild and the acolytes is intrinsically the same as the ministry of welcoming the newcomer and the stranger. Now, buckle your seatbelts: What do we project at our doors and gates? Do we communicate a warm welcome, or cold stiffness? Do we regard “our pew” as our own property, resenting the need to move over for a stranger? [If this is what we want, we should consider reinstituting pew rents; but those who would want this wouldn’t pay the prices! Here it is relevant to note that generosity goes with welcoming; while stinginess goes with grouchiness.] And what about coffee hour? Do we simply hang out with our friends and those we know, or do we welcome the stranger? Coffee hour is an extension of the Eucharist. Rudeness to a visitor is the same as profanation of the sacrament. Or going beyond our doors: The Soup Kitchen is really an extension of the mystery of the Eucharist, taking food out into the streets every Saturday as a gesture of kindness towards New York’s poor. The soup kitchen volunteers are like the Altar Guild and the acolytes. They all are part of the Corpus Christi. And the Soup Kitchen itself is a symbol of what should characterize all of us: out in the world, at home or at work, on the street or wherever we discover God has led and placed us.
About a century ago, a great missionary bishop in Africa, preaching at an Anglo-Catholic Eucharistic congress in London, said these words to his fellow Englishmen as he spoke out of the experience of bringing the Body of Christ to what we now call the Third World: “You have your Mass, and you have your altars, you have begun to get your tabernacles. Now go out into the highways and hedges, and look for Jesus in the ragged and the naked, in the oppressed and the sweated, in those who have lost hope, and in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus in them, and, when you have found him, gird yourself with his towel of fellowship and wash his feet in the person of his brethren.”[4] As a young priest studying in England, I met old church people who witnessed this sermon and its potent effects on the hearers. They said it was a moment of a lifetime.
What we do and commemorate today is that same moment: Christ made really present in the holy sacrament of the altar and in the persons and lives of the children for whom he gave his body and blood. Let our beloved parish be the place where, in the glory of Corpus Christi, we love one another as the Lord has loved us.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
__________
[1] See the great Jewish scholar Norman F. Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages, p. 565. “The medieval world we know was far from perfect. Life expectancy was short, and disease was mostly incontestable. It was a world burdened by royal autocracy and social hierarchy inherited from ancient times. Its piety and devotion were affected by fanaticism and a potential for persecution. Its intellectuals were given to too abstract and not enough practical thinking. But it exhibited as elevated a culture, as peaceful a community, as benign a political system, as high-minded and popular a faith as the world has ever seen.”
[2] Dante Alighieri was born in 1265. It was a bright period.
[3] There is a certified relic of Saint Thomas Aquinas beneath the mensa in our high altar. Beside it are relics of Saint Thomas Becket, Saint Athanasius, and Saint Justin Martyr.
[4] Frank Weston (1871-1924), Bishop of Zanzibar. See Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness, Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson, and Rowan Williams, editors, p. 561.
