2 June 2013
Corpus Christi Sunday
The summer of 1968. I was a teenager spending the summer living in a German village, working in a factory. Friday was an unexpected holiday. I was awoken by the sound of a marching band. Throwing open the wooden shutters, there was a procession on the street, a canopy, a monstrance, a band.
My kindly Lutheran host family observed: “oh that’s the Catholics – they’re always up for some parade.”
But this parade was bringing the Lord of the Universe through the village, daring to say that the Eucharistic Lord is not just an inner experience however consoling: but that the Bread and the Wine, become His Body and Blood, are leading the charge of His army through this world! A hesitant army, perhaps, made up of the weak, the wounded, the dispossessed. But an army marching behind the victorious Lord whose body and blood alone have the victory over sin, death, and – as Luther himself might have said – over hell itself. At the service of no earthly state, government, lord.
So today we adore the Body of Christ, Christ the King, who gives Himself to us, and makes us members of that Body, joining the parade led by our Eucharistic Lord.