The Body & Blood of Christ

A reflection on the Feast of Corpus Christi ... Dominican Republic

By Fr. Lionel Walsh, S.F.M.
September 2005

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There are so many things we could recall about the Eucharist in our lives; our going to mass as children with our parents, our First Holy Communion, benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, nourishment, and our appreciation of the Real Presence.

Among the memories that I treasure most of my years of service in the Dominican Republic are those related to the celebration of mass with the people, sometimes in the parish church, sometimes in schoolrooms or private homes and sometimes in the open air, under the shade of a tree.

One evening I went to offer mass in the small community of La Palmita. We were to celebrate in a one-room school by the side of the road, but it had been raining and the earthen floor of the school house was wet and a bit muddy. Someone mentioned a house across the road; someone else said we shouldn’t have mass there because the couple were just living together, not married by the Church. We did go there and were well received by the man and woman and we celebrated the Eucharist in comfortable surroundings.

Some months later a couple came to see me in the parish office. “Do you remember us Father?” the woman asked. I hesitated a bit and she continued. “We are the couple from the house where you celebrated mass that night in La Palmita. On that occasion, I felt so bad. Mass was being celebrated in my own home and there I was, unable to receive Holy Communion because we had not received the sacrament of matrimony. Since then Pedro and I have talked a lot and we’ve decided we want to receive the sacrament. That’s why we’re here today.”

Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter written to the Church in this the Year of the Eucharist, pointed out something that is of particular interest to us as missioners. The two disciples of Emmaus, he tells us, once they had recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, set out immediately to announce to others what they had heard and seen.

We, too, says John Paul, once we have truly met the Risen One by partaking of the Body and Blood, cannot keep to ourselves the joy we have experienced. The encounter with Christ, constantly intensified and deepened in the Eucharist, moves the Church and every Christian to feel an urgent summons to testimony and witness. Then, too, we remember that the dismissal at the end of each mass is a charge given to us, inviting us to work for the spread of the Gospel and the imbuing of society with Gospel values: “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.”

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