Each year the Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati offers up a tour of newly built or newly renovated homes. It’s called Homearama and features outstanding homes in a variety of architectural styles. The homes are pricey: from $1,000,000-$2,450,000. They’re also large: from 5,800 to 12,500 square feet. That doesn’t stop ordinary people from joining the tour to pick up new ideas on cabinetry, color, kitchen design or landscaping. But, when it comes to learning new insights and concepts for preaching, there’s a better approach.
This alternate approach is not as fancy. In fact, it tends to be a bit blunt with elements of pride and swagger thrown in. I call it the Two-Farmers-In-A-Pickup approach, a learning technique that compares your corn field to that of your neighbor and asks basic questions like: What top dressing did you use?, How deep did you plant? and Where’d buy your seed?
Last week, Deacon Arnold Schwernter of the Diocese of Amarillo (who also happens to be a farmer), posted a comment about this blog saying, “Sounds like a good idea. Not sure how it works.” Well, Deacon Arnold, here’s my answer: Think of this blog as a chance for homilists to climb into the cab of a truck and talk about their work the way you do with another farmer. Simple as that.
There’s nothing wrong with the homearama approach to preaching. Many of us gather good ideas from reading and listening to other homilists. But farmers show us that asking questions, comparing yields and sharing insights is more productive. It is in this spirit that this blog provides a forum not much different from the cab of pickup truck. So, below is a homily for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. I hope it offers some unique angles on an important feast. Most of all, I hope it starts a discussion—either in the comment section or one-on-one with colleagues whose parishes, like corn fields, neighbor your own.
The Body and Blood of the Lord: “Receive Your Truest Self”
Communion—like the word love—is overused.
“I love hotdogs. I love baseball. I love my truck. Oh, yeh, I also love my wife.”
The word, communion, like love, is overused.
For instance, when I hear people talk about taking communion I wince.
This phrase makes the Eucharist sound like a take-out order when, in reality,
its purpose is to convey
the deepest possible experience…of the deepest love of God.
Perhaps we should be whispered the word but once a year,
in candlelight, at midnight, in a darkened church!
Communion.
Holy Communion.
________
In the early centuries of the Church
St. Augustine attempted to explain something of the meaning of Holy Communion.
He pointed to the Eucharistic Bread on the altar and said to his people: BE WHO YOU RECEIVE…RECEIVE WHO YOU ARE!
In other words:
Your deepest reality is Christ.
Christ is your truest identity.
You and Christ…One and the same.
How might you define the term, Holy Communion?
You might describe communion with Christ
by saying that it’s those times when:
when your heart beats in rhythm with his,
when the two of you are on the same page;
When you pull together instead of apart
when toil together under the hot sun
like workers on a roof,
like a father and son working cattle,
like a mother and daughter canning tomatoes.
Or, maybe, when your spirits embrace like teammates in the end zone
or you high-five each other like kids on a baseball team.
Let’s consider that last example for a moment:
two youngsters go to school together and become friends
Later, they sign up together to go to war
This, too, is a type of communion,
when you put your life on the line or,
as St. Augustine would say:
when you put your life on the altar.
Which is what St. Augustine was talking about centuries ago.
And it’s what we’re talking about today,
something that takes place in church Sunday after Sunday.
We’re not talking about “going to church” or “attending Mass.”
Rather, we’re talking Communion.
True communion.
You and Christ.
One and the same.
His hands washing the dust off the feet of his disciples?
Those are your hands washing your child in the bath tub.
His hands feeding the hungry?
Those are your hands feeding your father in a nursing home.
Lord weeping over the City of Jerusalem?
His tears, are your tears when love pain runs deep,
so deep that eyes can’t help but weep.
Like that night you refused to leave the side of that bed in the ICU.
Like the morning you that call that from your sister…
Like that day you walked off the job because you won’t work for a crooked boss!
His blood spilled on the cross?
Yes, that’s your blood!
________
How it can be?
How can this make sense?
Only through Communion. COMMUNION with the Son of God.
As when you offer your life—your entire life—to God.
Your marriage, your family;
each sunrise, each sunset,
every ache in your back,
every beat of your heart,
every tear, every kiss, every embrace…
placed on the altar, this altar, in this church.
The way He offers his life for you
on the wood of the cross.
_______
This is you. This is who you are.
Your life and his life…together.
We call it communion.
Be who you receive…receive who you are.
Behold the Lamb of God…Behold your truest self.