My view with Father Paddy O'Kane: Celebrating the feast of Corpus Christi

This is what I might say next Sunday-hopefully in five minutes!

You would think that God’s divine memory is in danger of slipping looking at many of the prayers made by the people of the Old Testament as they try to remind God of the promises he made.

When the chosen people faced new trials their insurance against disaster was the promise of God to see them through their pain. Every new experience of want or suffering served but to keep alive their memory of God’s promises. Thus their pleas of intercession seemed as though they were trying  to jolt His memory to keep  his  promises, to hold him  to his word.

Poor Memories

But what happens when people come into plenty? Remember the days of the Celtic Tiger? In next Sunday’s  first reading Moses reminds his  people of the need to remember God for  as  people get richer, their memories get poorer. In the midst of plenty and comfort God can appear as unnecessary and irrelevant as a fire brigade at a picnic.

If we do not want God to forget us in those hard times when  we are brought to our knees by pain and  affliction, neither does God  want  us to forget him  when life is good. So, God reminds the Israelites who it was who hauled them through the wilderness when they had no baggage but the cruel memory of slavery, and nowhere to go but just  get out of  Egypt as quickly as possible . If that memory is not kept alive, then it will be as if God no longer existed because people often forget how they were adopted and cared for in their need. Prosperity should not make us thankless.

Remembering to eat

In their desert experience they were taught that they could not live on bread alone: when the bread ran out and the water dried up, their very survival depended on the word of God making new life possible for them. It was the creative word of God which brought them the manna – their daily bread – referred to as ‘the grain of heaven’. The people collected as much as they needed for the day; they were forbidden to hoard it. The next day the arrival of the bread was seen as a new sign of God’s continuing favour.

In next week’s Gospel John tells us that in the person of Jesus there is a new word of God and a new bread from heaven. Now the Word of God has become flesh, and the bread of heaven is the very life of Jesus himself. To eat this bread is to have a share in the life of God himself; it is to participate in eternal life. ’He who eats of this bread will live forever’.

During the last meal of his earthly life Jesus charged his disciples to keep his memory alive by gathering together to break bread. Whatever else they do, his followers must remember to eat in his name. ‘Do this in memory of me.’

Remembering Jesus

Let us pray that our young people will again find a hunger for the Eucharist. Most of us don’t have to remember to eat: our stomach’s hunger pangs have their own way of telling us when it’s time. But we do have to remember to eat in the name of Jesus – which is why the Church asks us to gather in community each week to keep the memory of Jesus alive. We assemble in gratitude to hold that memory sacred and relive his saving death and resurrection.  We also recall Jesus’ radical values that put him in opposition to so many of his own people: his talk about another Kingdom; his insistence on a new way to live; his opposition to the self-righteous Pharisees; his willingness to die to overcome sin. In receiving the body and blood of Christ we become his body in our world. Nourished and fortified by the Bread of Life we are challenged each Sunday to build up that Kingdom during the following week, a Kingdom  of mercy and compassion, of justice , love and peace.

Word of Wisdom

Gratitude shifts your focus from what your life lacks

to the abundance that is already present.

JOKE

Name two birds that can’t fly?

Answer: An ostrich and a dead parrot!

[told to me by young  Conor Collins]

Pilgrimage

I am leading a  pilgrimage to Medjugorje on the 30th  August . There are still a few places left. Please contact me at 71267070 or [email protected] for more details.