By: Fr. Christopher Peschel, Class of 2014
Only one other time in a dozen years as a priest can I recall the anniversary of my ordination coinciding with Corpus Christi Sunday. In 2015, completing just one year, I recall this tremendous feast of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ being on the Seventh of June. For any priest, especially in the celebration of the Holy Mass and the handling of the Eucharistic Species on a daily basis, our familiarity with and relationship with Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament is not merely one of coincidence, but of providence. The same Jesus who chose any of us unworthy priests for the grace of the Sacrament of Orders is the same One whom we hold in our hands, day after day, Mass after Mass.
Falling deeper in Love with the Eucharist was something that my time in Seminary formation helped me to do. While certainly having exposure to and appreciation for Mass and Adoration from school days and the Adoration chapels at parishes growing up was an integral part of life, the scheduled hour, 5-6pm every afternoon at St. John’s forced me to slow down, pause, and sit before my Lord in silence. Slowly, that hour became one of the most cherished parts of my day, allowing the cares or worries of whatever class I may have been taking, or whatever events were going on in life, to slowly be replaced by the life, the eternal life, that Jesus Christ’s Body and Blood present in the Sacrament were bringing to that moment. The joy, the energy, the renewal of Spiritual life that I had seen in the life of parishes or individuals centered around the Eucharist, slowly became something that I was privileged to receive.
Today, in many of our parishes, the prayers of the Mass look a bit inward, and it’s not for the mere act of navel gazing that we engage in this Eucharistic reflection. It is rather like an examination of a foundation, which we know is always there, but might sometimes just take for granted. As priests and ministers in the church, one of our most sacred duties is to safeguard the Holy Mysteries that are the core and foundation of our Church’s existence. God the Father gives us such Mysteries as food to sustain and nourish our weary bodies on the pilgrimage of life itself, reminding us that the Bread that came down from Heaven which we encounter and receive in this life, will sustain us forever in the next. It’s almost as if the inward reflection which the prayers of the Mass direct us to pray today, help us see the perspective of what lies ahead, life to come. Perhaps this is among the reasons that the tradition of a procession, even outdoors, with the Most Blessed Sacrament, for this is not a mere Mystery to keep hidden from the world, but rather a Mystery for the entire world to encounter. In fact, in 2005 the Pope had famously said of the Corpus Christi Procession, “we walk with the Risen One on his journey to meet the entire world, as we said. By doing precisely this, we too answer his mandate: "Take, eat... Drink of it, all of you”. It is not possible to "eat" the Risen One, present under the sign of bread, as if it were a simple piece of bread. To eat this Bread is to communicate, to enter into communion with the person of the living Lord. This communion, this act of "eating", is truly an encounter between two persons, it is allowing our lives to be penetrated by the life of the One who is the Lord, of the One who is my Creator and Redeemer.”
We all are thankful for this reminder, as priests and as faithful members of the body of Christ, that our encounter with the Eucharist today is an encounter with the person of Jesus Christ Himself. In thanksgiving for twelve years of priesthood, I look back in gratitude to so many great teachers, formators,and priestly mentors. Every priest thanks God for the many collaborators and faithful parishioners encountered thus far on the journey, and I certainly echo that thanks. Reflecting, especially on the day in which the Church asks us to look back to the Eucharist, I cannot help but thank God for this sublime privilege while thinking of the short anonymous passage from the medieval play Everyman, chosen for the prayer card on the occasion of Ordination.
“God will you to salvation bring,
For priesthood exceeds all other things;
To us Holy Scripture they do teach.
And convert man from sin heaven to reach;
God has to them more power given,
Than to any angel that is in heaven;
With five words he may consecrate
God’s body in flesh and blood to make,
And handle his maker between his hands”
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