Recently the Cathedral Parish celebrated the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. As part of the celebration a procession occurred around the Cathedral precinct, following Adoration and the 10am Mass.

Below is Bishop McKenna’s Connect@home written for Corpus Christi 2024.

Today’s feast is about more than the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is about more than the Eucharist. The Eucharistic moment expands back in time to include the Last Supper and beyond time to the Heavenly Banquet. The Mass is always, then and now the Supper of the Lamb. In it, we take part in the perfect sacrifice of Christ and enter into communion as his Body, the Church, on earth and in heaven.

Our full participation in the Mass requires our willingness to offer ourselves with Christ. The floor plan of many churches is in the form of a cross, which symbolizes who we are as the Church. We bring our limited self-offering to be completed in Christ’s.

In his catechesis on the Mass, Pope Francis said “the Passover is made present and active each time we celebrate the Mass… Participating in the Eucharist enables us to enter the Paschal Mystery of Christ, giving ourselves to pass over with him from death to life, meaning there, on Calvary. The Mass is experiencing Calvary; it is not a spectacle.”

Full participation in the Mass extends beyond the liturgy. It means living a Eucharistic life. It enables us to grow in communion together: reflecting on the Word of God; helping each other when the events of life test our faith; working together in service for the Church and the world; communicating the Gospel by what we say and how we live.

The perfect sacrifice of Christ, as today’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews teaches, “can purify our inner self from dead actions so that we do service to the living God.”

Jesus, help me learn that in the Mass I offer myself with you, and truly receive you in communion with my brothers and sisters to go out and share your love in the world you have entered to redeem.

 

+Michael McKenna
Bishop of Bathurst

Corpus Christi 2024

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