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| Back to Archive 2000
05/07/00 Easter time and Jubilee: preparing for Corpus Christi A new evangelization and renewed charity are the goals of the jubilee celebration this year. They are taking shape, as the Church moves through the year 2000, in Pope John Paul II’s Lenten confession of sins which have divided peoples historically, in his calls to reduce the foreign debt which divides rich and poor today, and in his recognition this week of this century’s martyrs, who gave their lives out of love for Christ and others. On May 7, the Pope celebrated in the Roman Colosseum the Church’s identity as the Church of witnesses, the Church of martyrs. John Paul has reached out to include the witnesses or martyrs of other Christian faith communities, for in this past century the seed of martyrdom is often found in believers’ alliances with the poor, the excluded, the oppressed; and these alliances reach across denominational boundaries. The poor have many faces, but faith tells us that each is the face of Christ. Chicago’s “colosseum” is Soldier Field. On June 24, the feast
of the Body and Blood of Christ, this local Church will assemble
in Soldier Field to strengthen our unity in Christ and our solidarity
with all those He loves. This feast and this celebration, when
we receive again the greatest gift Christ gives his people, the
Holy Eucharist, will be more intense to the extent that we have
learned to share all the gifts Christ has given us. Our archdiocesan
jubilee celebration continues to call us to share our spiritual
gifts as evangelizers and our material gifts as stewards. Sharing
the Body and Blood of Christ in that context will make this coming
feast of Corpus Christi one of the great days of this jubilee
year. The risen Lord creates a new people by inviting us into personal intimacy with himself. Preparing to celebrate Corpus Christi in the jubilee year should include meeting Christ this Easter time in the two sacraments through which he accompanies us through life: Penance or Reconciliation and the Eucharist. For many years, these two sacraments were received together. Each time they received Holy Communion, many Catholics went to confession. Because this practice kept many from receiving Communion as often as possible, catechists explained that only mortal sin should keep one from participating fully in the Eucharist by receiving Communion. This is good teaching, but the battle has now been won. Everyone understands that union with the Lord in the Eucharist forgives our venial sins and that only grave sin should keep us from receiving Communion. What has to be brought back to our practice of the faith now is a greater sense of how using the sacrament of Penance is necessary for deepening our unity with the Christ whom we receive in the Eucharist. The Sacrament of Reconciliation gives us the grace which overcomes our own powerlessness, trapped as we often are in patterns of sin. Through our use of this sacrament, God’s power rather than our weakness gradually comes to shape our lives. Penance sets us free. Part of our preparation for the Soldier Field celebration this June should be the confession of our sins to a priest in the sacrament of Reconciliation. Confessors will be available in Soldier Field itself a couple of hours before Mass begins on June 24. Also part of our preparation for celebrating Corpus Christi should be time spent before the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the tabernacles of our parish churches. Each week I receive the Catholic paper from the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, where I served as archbishop before returning to Chicago. That local church is also celebrating Corpus Christi in their Memorial Coliseum in Portland and, in anticipation, parishes and religious communities throughout western Oregon have scheduled Eucharistic adoration. They are creating a “Eucharistic prayer chain” to prepare for Corpus Christi in this jubilee year. Although it is too late to organize it from the Pastoral Center, something similar would help us prepare for June 24 in our Soldier Field. Objections to Eucharistic adoration come from a misreading of history and from erroneous sacramental theology. Because adoration of the Lord in the Eucharist arose in an era when people did not receive Holy Communion every Sunday, the practice of adoration is sometimes dismissed as an aberration, a substitute for receiving Communion. This is not a Catholic reading of history. The development of devotion to the Lord in his Eucharistic presence is not a “falling away” from some imagined pristine purity; it is evidence of a greater appreciation of who the Eucharist is. Likewise, adoration of the Lord in the Sacred Host is not in competition with the liturgical action of the Sacrifice of the Mass. To speak disdainfully, as some occasionally have, of “objectifying” Christ in the Host is to speak heretically. Pope Paul VI wrote: “The Catholic Church…offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession” (Mysterium fidei, 56). It seems strange to me that we should lift high the book of Gospels, which remains only a book, but be embarrassed to elevate the consecrated host, which is the Body of the Lord. It is a good thing to find a prominent and visible place in the church for the blessed oils and consecrated chrism which are used in the sacraments, but they remain oil and chrism; how strange it is that we should be fighting over whether or not people should be able to spot without too much inconvenience the place where the Eucharist is reserved. The Eucharist is a mystery of faith; to dismiss Eucharistic adoration is to weaken the faith. Many young children in the Archdiocese receive Holy Communion
for the first time during the month of May. Normally, they also
confess their sins for the first time before receiving their first
Communion. Let us keep these youngsters of the Archdiocese in
our prayers this month, that their journey of faith may bring
them over the years to great holiness through the reception of
both Penance and Communion on a regular basis. And let their example
instruct the rest of us as we prepare for the Solemnity of the
Body and Blood of the Lord on June 24 in Soldier Field. God bless
you. Sincerely yours in Christ, Francis Cardinal George, OMI
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