Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
Zion, to thy Savior sing, to thy Shepherd and thy King.
Let the air with praises ring.
All thou canst proclaim with mirth.
Far higher is his worth than the glory words may wing.
So begins the great sequence for Corpus Christi,
written by Thomas Aquinas, the Laudation.
And with this first stanza,
of the sequence, we are reminded that
on this day when we celebrate
the real presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament
with songs of praise, hymns of praise,
and with solemn liturgical gestures
and pomp and circumstance,
nothing in the end that we can do is of
some sort of a consequence to the
sufficient gratitude.
So much so that we really don't even begin to understand.
Even with our full embracing of the teaching of the Church,
we don't fully understand, really,
the gift that we have received in the Eucharist.
This is why the Church refers to the Eucharist
as the inestimable gift of God.
Because the Eucharist is the gift of God.
Because in the Eucharist we have Jesus himself,
body, blood, soul, and divinity,
second person of the Blessed Trinity
who feeds us with his own body and blood.
God became a man and lived among us,
and he continues to dwell with us,
fulfilling his promise that he will be with us all days
until the end of time.
But even that doesn't sufficiently describe
what he's done for us,
because he comes to us with a promise.
He comes to us in this form of bread and wine,
sacramentally,
and feeds us with his own substance.
So we praise God as best we can,
and yet we know that we don't praise him enough
and thank him enough for the gift that he has given us.
In the Old Testament reading today from Exodus,
we hear about how after God revealed
the Old Covenant to the Israelites
through the Ten Commandments by Moses,
they formalized the agreement,
this covenant, this mutual promise
that God would be the God of this people
and that the people would serve him.
They formalized the covenant with this ceremony
and the building of the altar
and the splashing of the altar and the people,
with the blood of the covenant.
And they repeated a number of times,
we will do everything that the Lord has told us,
all that the Lord has said we will heed and do.
And this promise that the people made to God
came after their deliverance from Egypt
through the signs and wonders
that God worked there in Egypt.
And when...
This process began when God appeared to Moses
in the burning bush.
God told Moses that he had witnessed
the sufferings of the Israelites.
He had seen how they had been enslaved.
He had seen how they were suffering and oppressed
and how they felt abandoned.
And God told Moses,
I saw and I decided to come down.
And there he revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush.
And he gave Moses his name, I am who am.
And that name, St. Thomas Aquinas,
who was the author of all these texts
for the Feast of Corpus Christi,
says God is saying that I am existence itself.
I am who am.
It's of my nature to exist.
I cannot not exist.
Everything else that does exist, exists because of me.
I gave it existence.
And this is in fact a scriptural,
I am who am is theologically immense.
And it tells us everything we need to know about God.
Not everything we need to know,
but the attributes of God,
that he is omnipresent, for example,
that everywhere there is anything, God is there.
And creation is not simply a matter of God having created
in the beginning as we read in Genesis,
but nothing would exist if God stopped holding it in existence.
God is present everywhere
because everything that exists requires God's immediate attention.
And that's...
And that's his real imminent presence
in the things that he has created.
God is transcendent.
And he also revealed himself in this way to the Israelites
when he appeared to them in cloud and fire and thunder
and trumpet blasts,
so much so that they were terrified of him.
He manifested himself in his infinite transcendence and power.
And yet at the same time,
God is everywhere present in his power.
And in his providence.
But that name of God, I am who am,
came to mean more than that
when he, in the history of the Israelite people,
accompanied Moses before Pharaoh,
the enemy of the people.
And Moses, who was of no particular stature,
he had a speech impediment, in fact.
He had to have Aaron speak for him
because he couldn't speak well.
God accompanied Moses and Aaron
and worked signs and wonders before the Pharaoh
until they finally, you know, sent the Israelites off.
And then as soon as they had gotten out of Egypt,
then God had to accompany them again
through the cloud of fire by night
and the pillar of fire by night and cloud by day
and delivered them through the Red Sea.
And over and over again, the people would recognize
the power of God and his providence
and would see the miracles
and see how God was delivering them.
And then right afterwards, they would fall into sin.
They would reject the providence of God,
whether it was because, you know,
they felt that they were not getting what they wanted
and decided they would worship, you know, the golden calf
or they were hungry and they're complaining against God
because, and Moses, because God,
they should have stayed back.
They should have stayed back in Egypt
because at least they had something to eat there.
And then God fed them with manna and with the quail
and brought water from a rock.
And all the time God did these things,
it was because the people were complaining.
They would not have what they wanted
and they'd complain and God would give them what they wanted.
And sometimes he would punish them as well,
but he would deliver them from their punishments.
He would abrogate.
He would deliver them, you know, mitigate,
mitigate his punishment to his people,
all the while showing them the signs and wonders,
showing them his presence, his providence,
showing them also his law and his fatherly punishment.
But this lesson, you'd think that they would learn,
you know, after a few times, but they didn't.
Finally, when they got to the Jordan, again, you know,
God promised them, you know,
through Moses that they would be fine
if they crossed the Jordan into the land of Canaan,
but they refused because they were afraid of the people there.
So God had to send them back into the desert for 40 years.
And God was faithful to his covenant,
his side of the bargain God was faithful to.
Even though sometimes he had to punish them
for generation after generation, he had to punish them,
he was nevertheless with them.
He kept his promise.
He was always to be with them.
So when God said, I am who I am, that also means I am with you.
You know, not just because he creates all things
and holds them into existence,
but he actually intervened immediately in their daily lives.
He intervened into their history in a very extraordinary way.
And if we look at this story of the people of the Old Testament,
we realize it's really our story as well.
And if we think about the fact that this is the Old Testament,
we can come and realize that really things have not changed very much,
except for the fact that we come at the end of this whole process
and we have a greater miracle on our altars
than any other miracle that's ever been performed.
It's great.
It's great.
It's great.
It's greater than the parting of the Red Sea.
And you think about how the Israelites saw the Red Sea part
through the power of God at the hand of Moses.
And then they walked through the Red Sea on dry ground
with the water on their left and the right
so that they had no horizon.
They were underwater, yet they were going through this miraculous channel
cut right through the water.
And they came out the other side and they saw the Egyptians lying dead in the water.
They sang God's praises.
And no sooner had this happened that they started complaining again.
And it was, although God had never worked this miracle,
they had never done anything.
And we can also sometimes forget what God has done for us.
And the Eucharist is the inestimable gift.
And it comes at the end of the line.
After God has done all these other things,
he suffered and he died on the cross.
And he gave himself for us in the holy sacrifice of the mass.
So it's like he did everything he could possibly do for us.
And when that wasn't enough, he became a man and he suffered
and he died on the cross.
And as if that weren't enough,
he remains a prisoner in our tabernacles day in and day out.
And he comes down upon our altars at the words of the priest.
He's obedient, he's humble, he's eager to be of service to us.
And that's the way our Lord is.
Our Lord makes him vulnerable.
We try to honor him as king in our churches and especially on Corpus Christi.
We try to accompany him and glorify him
and publicly display our honor of the blessed sacrament.
And yet our Lord is completely and totally at our mercy.
We can adore him or we can forget him.
We can receive him with honor to our own sanctification
or we can receive him sacrilegiously to his infinite dishonor.
And to our own condemnation.
And he will come to each and every one of us,
the good and the bad, without any preference.
I mean, of course he wants to, but I mean, he doesn't manifest himself
as preferring some and not preferring others.
St. Thomas says,
both the wicked and the good eat of this celestial food,
but with ends how opposite they are.
Amen.
And he says that with this most substantial bread unto life or death,
they're fed in a difference infinite.
There is an infinite difference.
And yet our Lord doesn't show any difference.
He makes himself vulnerable no matter what.
Why?
So that he can be approachable.
So that we can with confidence come and receive him.
None of us in the end are worthy.
None of us are worthy.
Nobody could have ever presumed to think that God would have done this for us.
But he has done it for us.
And he's done it out of love.
And this is the sacrament, we say, of God's divine love.
And it's something for which we can never be grateful enough.
We need to be ever more grateful for what our Lord has done.
And if we understood the mystery
and were as grateful as perhaps we ought to be,
then we would all be saints.
Because one communion, one holy communion,
is enough to save and to sanctify an infinite amount of worlds.
Every grace that we could possibly desire,
the grace of repentance,
the grace of greater faith,
the grace of patience,
of chastity,
of being able to carry our cross,
of being able to deal with things that we struggle with in life,
being able to be faithful to our vocation,
bearing the burdens of other people.
Whatever grace we possibly could need,
every grace is there for everybody in one holy communion.
And if we don't experience that grace,
if somehow we're not transformed,
it's because we don't completely understand,
we don't completely embrace it,
because we haven't knocked down all the obstacles.
And so in our gratitude for the grace that our Lord has given us
in this wonderful sacrament,
we need to knock down those barriers.
We need to beg our Lord to be as grateful as we should.
We should think about our Lord.
We should make visits to the Blessed Sacrament.
We should make spiritual communions throughout the day if we're able.
We should come to Mass as often as we can.
And everything that we need is here.
Everything that we need is in the Blessed Sacrament.
And our Lord wants to give us everything we need.
At Fatima, before Our Lady appeared to the children,
the angel came and prepared them for the coming of Our Blessed Lady.
And that whole preparation was Eucharistic.
The angel taught the children how to adore our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
And he taught them how to pray,
My God, I believe in You, I adore You, I hope in You, I love You.
I beg pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, do not love You.
Most Holy Trinity, I adore You.
My God, my God, I love You in the Blessed Sacrament.
All these prayers that the angel taught the children were Eucharistic.
And then the angel gave Lucia her first communion with the host.
And he gave Francisco and Jacinta, who were going to die soon,
communion by means of the precious blood.
But that was the grace they had received.
And then they had this profound sense of who Jesus was in the Eucharist.
And Francisco used to spend hours on his knees before the Blessed Sacrament,
referring to our Lord as the hidden Jesus,
who needed to be consoled, who deserved to be consoled.
On Holy Thursday, we have a procession around the church.
And that's a Eucharistic feast, Holy Thursday.
It's the celebration of the intercession.
It's the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist.
And we accompany our Lord to Gethsemane.
You know, the whole celebration there is the Last Supper.
And at the end of the Last Supper, of course, as the Easter Triduum has begun,
our Lord goes into His agony before Good Friday.
So at the end of Holy Thursday Mass, the Mass of the Lord's Supper,
we accompany our Lord from the sanctuary to the altar of repose.
And that represents our sort of being with our Lord in His agony.
We're going to the Garden of Gethsemane with Him.
And not allowing ourselves to forget, you know, that He suffered for us.
And today, we accompany Him, if we have the opportunity to go to a procession,
we accompany Him through the streets into the public
and proclaim our faith that our Lord is with us all days until the end of time.
And everybody needs to know that.
You know, in New Bedford, the friars and the lay people that go through there,
go through some of the more, the rougher part of town, you know.
And people come out on their porches and on their doorsteps.
And some of them probably are drug pushers.
And, you know, the whole spectrum of humanity is represented.
And there needs to be this witness because nothing else is going to change the world.
Nothing else is going to change our hearts.
Nothing else is going to make the kind of difference
that will open the minds and hearts of men to the truth
and to the saving message of Christ.
So today, we honor our Lord and we try to be grateful.
And we ask for the grace to be ever more grateful
and to make use of the sacraments, especially confession,
in such a way that we,
we can truly benefit from our Lord's real presence in the Eucharist.
We need to pray for the grace to be truly repentant of our sins.
We need to pray for the grace to make firm resolutions.
We need to pray for the grace to love with the love of our Lord.
Our Lord is here present in the Eucharist because he loves us.
Not because he has to, not because he has to be here,
but because he wants to be here.
And the freedom of the children of God,
which is the fruit of God's grace,
is the ability to serve God, not because we have to,
although we do,
but because it is our desire to do that.
God wants us to have that desire,
but we need to pray for it.
We need to struggle for it.
We need to fight for it.
We need to make use of the sacraments in a very fruitful way,
which is frequent confession and frequent Holy Communion,
with the intention of becoming a saint,
of giving God the glory that he truly deserves.
Jesus, shepherd mild and meek,
shield the poor, support the weak,
help all who thy pardon sue,
placing all their trust in you.
Fill them with your healing grace,
source of all we have or know.
Feed and lead us here below.
Grant that with your saints above,
sitting at the feast of love,
we may see you face to face.
Amen. Alleluia.
Et estum benedictum,
fructum ventris tui.