Dear Parishioners & Friends

June 4

What a beautiful occasion it is to celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, The Feast of Corpus Christi.

Saint Thomas Aquinas said that the Holy Eucharist is the Greatest of all miracles, and no other sacrament has greater healing power. He wrote Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful than this? Indeed, what could be more wonderful? Christ himself is set before us at each mass, he is given to us as our spiritual food for the journey through life. At every Eucharist celebration, our Father in Heaven gives us his Son — fully and completely, truly present in the Host when we receive Holy Communion.

Every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist, we enter into a wonderful exchange: we give ourselves to God and God gives himself to us through his son so he can save us from our sins. At each Mass we celebrate the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ, as we join the Lord’s table. We “Take and Eat” as Christ asked as we celebrate in memory of Jesus.

Recently, as I was distributing Holy Communion I noticed a woman, weeping/crying. After mass she came to me to say it had been over a year since she was able to receive Jesus due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The woman proceeded to tell me that the reception of the Holy Communion warmed her heart, dried her tears and renewed her strength in God, allowing her to accept that God’s love for her is never ending, she concluded by saying “absence made my heart grow fonder, from now on I will never miss mass again — unless I am with the Lord in Heaven.”

I pray we may all accept the love of God as this lady does. That we may receive Jesus with reverence and love as we accept his unending love of us, on our journey to eternal life.

-Fr. Brendan McCarrick SAC