The feast of Corpus Christi, today, is the finale of the liturgical year. We have moved patiently through Advent/Christmas, a short ordinary time, the intensity of Lent, the Paschal Mystery of Holy Week, a prolonged Easter season that culminates in Pentecost. The culmination, Pentecost, overflows into Trinity Sunday and then Corpus Christi. Corpus Christi is the fulfillment, the completion, the final and lasting ecstasy of communion.
With this feast, Christ is fully, finally, perpetually with us...physically, spiritually, institutionally. There is simply no more to be given. The remainder of the year, about 23 weeks or almost half year, we celebrate that fulness, including consequences like the Assumption and All Saints. With this feast our cup is overflowing...and continues to overflow right up to the feast of Christ the King.
The center of our Catholic faith...the physical, institutional, synergistic, dramatic, eventful, generative heart/ground/goal/origin/foundation/promise of our Catholic life...is the Body of Christ...that arrives in every Mass and remains perpetually in the Eucharistic chapel.
There are two inseparable dimensions of the Eucharist: it is an Event in the liturgical, remembering Act, and it remains with us as an abiding Presence.
Both occur, paradigmatically, in the parish Church. The institutional, perpetual center of Catholic life is the parish Church...wherein is celebrated the Sunday and daily liturgy...wherein dwells Christ bodily in the tabernacle always and forever... attached to which is at least one priest...out of which and into which flow, at once centripetally and centrifugally, all Catholic activities, engagements, energies, torments and joys.
Since Constantine: the Eucharist, in the local parish, is the center of the world.
Catholicism is a multiverse of orders, movements, associations, monasteries, hermits, missionaries, visionaries, mystics, ascetics, devotions, activists, quietists, artists, martyrs, virgins. sinners and saints. But all of this flows from and moves toward the Center: the plain, parochial, Eucharistic Presence.
Reformers of various stipes bemoan the corruption which accompanied Roman acceptance of Christianity. They grieve the loss of apostolic purity and innocence that characterized the primitive, martyred Church. And genuine renewal is always a return to that fount of apostolic zeal, faith and love. But the Catholic imagination boundlessly rejoices in the permanent, institutional presence of Christ in the liturgy and tabernacle.
Whatever the violence, corruption, betrayal, sin and evil of society...and even the institutional Church...the Eucharistic presence is the Sovereign of the World...until Christ returns in glory.
This Presence is white, round, thin, plain, silent, simple, small, sober, serene, subdued, ordinary and perfectly monotonous. Monotony...meaning sameness of tone...implying tedium, boredom, fatigue, lack of variety/interest/excitement...is highly negative. But this meaning is turned on its head here: under the appearance of small/silent/simple/subdued is the perfect communion of God and Man. Hidden here is the infinite Happening-Permanence of eternal love. Under the disguise of dull, boring, tedious...is boundless Delight, endless Drama, unending Event.
In the tabernacle, the mass, the parish...as well as in the priest, associations, music, activities...Christ is incarnate under the appearance of monotony, boredom, annoyance, and poverty of excitement and interest. This is part of the Mystery.
Like others, I have spent a lifetime searching for spiritual arousal. With an aversion to the boring parish, I moved from Maryknoll College Seminary, into flirtation with the Catholic Left, to the study of theology, to the charismatic renewal, into Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, devotion to the Divine Mercy, in and out of the Neocatechumenate, and participation in Our Lady's Missionaries of the Eucharist. I have benefited from this journey and value all these engagements.
BUT...I always come back to the parish. That is where we are baptized, married, buried, catechized and sacramentalized. It is analogous to blood family: much as we treasure our friendships, somehow we always return to family. The two...family and friends..do not oppose each other; they enrich and infill each other. But there remains a primacy to blood...that of family and that of the crucified Christ. There is a dullness to our family...but also a depth, density, and durability. And so it is with the parish.
To arrive at a profound, passionate, intelligent, mature, enduring love for the Eucharistic Christ... many of us need that journey in and out of renewal movements, retreats, associations of the faith, devotions, pilgrimages, penances, missions, bible studies, scrutinies, deliverances, healings, discernments, revivals. But all of the above...all the ecstasy, adventure, drama, serendipity, activism, and devotion of Catholic life...lead back to quiet Communion with the small, silent, simple, monotonous Eucharistic Christ.
When I travel...for work, vacation, visits of family...I need to know where I will sleep, where I will eat, and where I will find the Eucharist. The sacrificial table/altar of worship and the tabernacle of the Eucharist is always and everywhere and forever (until Christ returns) the center of The World, the center of every local world, the center of every personal world.
Jesus, crucified-risen-ascended, bodily, reigns forever from heaven...invulnerable and invincible...and from every tabernacle and altar of worship. He reigns sovereignly...silently, simply, serenely, secretly. Our entire life flows from Him and to Him.
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