We really have two celebrations, two big festivals or feast days this weekend.  We have the feast of Memorial Day, the civic holiday and the great Church holiday, Corpus Christi, the body and blood of Jesus.  Memorial Day goes way back.  It began right after the Civil War in the 1860’s, way back.  Corpus Christi goes back 800 years to the 1200’s.  How’s that for going way back?

I want to tell you a true story.  It’s old but it’s not that old.  It just happened in the 1950’s.  A priest was visiting from Germany, this is a true story, to Detroit and he was staying at the Cathedral in Detroit and went over each morning to say Mass.  The first morning he went over to say Mass and now you have to remember in those days in the 1950’s the priest would say Mass with his back to the people.  He was saying Mass in Latin and he had two very proper alter boys, not alter girls, serving him.  Well what happened when he got to the words of consecration, he leaned over the chalice and said “Hoc Est Enim Corpus Meum” and then he genuflected.  He raised the host, he put it back down in the center of the altar, and genuflected.  Then he took the chalice and then he said “Hic Est Enim Sanguinis Mei” and he genuflected and raised the chalice and he put it down right on top of the host and genuflected.  Well about five minutes later, when he was supposed to pick up the host from the chalice he couldn’t find the host.  So he looks over his shoulder to the alter boys and the only English he had was “Where is God?”  Now the alter boys had been trained to say nothing but “Et Cum Spiritu Tuos”  so there was absolute silence so he turned around a little louder and said “Where is God?” One of the alter boys who had been trained in Catechism had the answer said “God is everywhere.”  So a third time he banged the altar and said “But where is God?”  The older alter boy looked up and he said “You just put Him under the chalice”

You know God is everywhere; that is Catholic faith and Catholic teaching.  The problem with God is everywhere; we say God is everywhere and we think God is elsewhere.  We think God is out there, up there, way off.  The God of the universe is also as close as our own hearts.  When we say God is everywhere, we mean God is here too.  God is here.  God is near.  And Jesus is present.  That’s our faith and there are some problems around believing the presence of Jesus.  I’m just going to point out one.  I think in our generation and in our lifetime we don’t share as much awe and sense of the sacred about the presence of Jesus that we would expect in the Eucharist.  We still have the tabernacle set aside.  We still have the custom of genuflecting when we pass the tabernacle but I’m sure there’s a whole generation that don’t know what the tabernacle or genuflecting is all about.  I’m willing to bet a lot of people come in and genuflect and they’re genuflecting because of the cross or the altar.  They don’t even think about the tabernacle.  Now I’m not for going back to a sense of sacred that comes from being quiet.  Having the loudest noise in church is “ssshh” is not being sacred.  The apostles of the last supper had a sense of the sacred that Jesus was with them but they didn’t shut up.  I don’t think it’s just silence.  In fact when you have a sense of awe about something, a sense of the sacred, you come in say “Wow!”.  You come in and you share it with someone or you sing about it or you celebrate it.  There is a place and time for silence but we have to find a sense of the sacred in a lot of different ways.  It’s not by going back to nobody touches the bread or the host or does anything but the priest.  It doesn’t mean losing the multiple ministries that we now have.  It doesn’t mean losing the sense that not just the priest but all of us offer Jesus together.  It’s not losing the sense that as a community we are the body of Christ.  Somehow we have to regain and retain that sense of the sacred.

I’ll tell you a story.  A woman, a few years ago in a parish different one from here was very hesitant.  The pastor was asking her to share the sacred blood of communion.  She didn’t want to do it.  “I might spill it, I’m not holy enough, I don’t want to do it”  She finally gave in and the first Saturday night she was doing it.  She was holding the chalice of the blood of Christ and she was so moved by the prayerfulness of parishioners coming up to accept the chalice.  She just could not forget that.  In that gesture, she was sharing Jesus.  The next Sunday afternoon she went to ladle soup,  to the elderly poor at a local shelter and she realized it was the same gesture.  It was the same body of Christ.  The kitchen stove became her alter too.  There is a sense of the sacred.  One theologinist recently written, “Jesus did not institute the Eucharist to change bread and wine into his body and blood but to change us into his body.  The mass is not meant to transform elements but to transform people.”  The real of presence of Jesus becomes real in three ways.  First of all in the Scripture, when we allow it to get into our heart to challenge us and change us, Jesus is truly present.  Then in the consecrated bread and wine of the sacrament, Jesus is truly present.  And then in the believing congregation, Jesus becomes truly present.  God is everywhere.  That doesn’t mean God is elsewhere but the same God who is beyond all the galaxies of the universe is as near as our own hearts.  Jesus is present, not just to be near us or to be adored but to change us.  That’s a lot to think about.  That’s a lot to celebrate.  That’s a lot to digest.  That’s a lot to give thanks for.  Let us give thanks to the Lord who is so good.  Amen.