This Sunday is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ - in the U.S. It is the great feast in which we celebrate the gift of the Eucharist, but also the special blessing our the presence of our Lord with us in the Blessed Sacrament. In the Gospel, Jesus offers the most consoling good news: “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
Thursday is the Memorial of Saint Barnabas, Apostle. Friday is the solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
During the week, we begin a three-week period of looking at the Books of Kings. Elijah follows the Lord’s direction and changes the hearts of many. The week ends as Elijah calls Elisha into service for the Lord.
This week, we begin reading the Gospel According to Matthew, starting with the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is the new Moses and offers us a radical new teaching. It begins by his telling a small group of followers that they are blessed - not because they have their acts together, but because they are spiritually poor, meek, those desiring justice, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. Salt and light explain who they are as disciples. They are to obey the law and prophets, which Jesus came to fulfill. Whereas the law forbade killing, Jesus calls his disciples to be reconcilers. The law forbade adultery, but Jesus warns about lust and whatever is an occasion for sinning. The law forbade taking false oaths, but Jesus calls his disciples to a deeper fidelity and integrity.
On the eleventh Sunday, Jesus summons his twelve disciples and sends them out.
Daily Prayer This Week
The Sermon on the Mount can help us be contemplatives in action this week. The Beatitudes are not eight new commandments. Rather, Jesus saw those following him and saw their weakness and their need, their goodness and their desire, even the cost they pay to follow him. He looked at them and called them “Blessed.”
Let us all begin this week by letting Jesus look at us and call us blessed. Each morning, we can practice choosing to focus on some way we are spiritually poor or desiring justice, some way we are merciful or a peacemaker, or some way we might be experiencing the cost of being a believer, and simply ask our Lord to convince us of our blessedness there. It is likely that each of us, every day, can be attentive to some aspect of our daily lives, some part of our relationships or responsibilities, that places us right there, in a place where Jesus can tell us that we will be comforted, satisfied, blessed beyond our imagining.
Some day this week, each of us will have the opportunity to be the salt that gives relationships and faithful living their flavor. We will have our chances to be light in the midst of the darkness that crosses our paths. We can ask Jesus those days - whether in the morning, or in brief background moments during the day - to have us not lose our flavor or to cover our light. And, all of us will face the greater responsibility of a disciple of Jesus, to avoid anger and find the path to reconciliation, to turn from lust and greed, and to love genuinely and honestly.
It is a wonderful week to remember the tremendous gift of the Body and Blood of Jesus, given to us for our nourishment and an example of self-sacrificing love. We can take time to express our gratitude and humbly ask for the grace to be able to be broken and given, shared and poured out, as our Savior is for us.