Is Corpus Christi Just Some Poverty Thing?

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Corpus Christi?

Corpus Christi?

La Stampa reports on last week’s Angelus address given by Pope Francis where he continued to incessantly impute some supra-doctrine about the poor.

Pope Francis has poignantly said that Christians have no right to refuse help to those who need it, saying that to partake in the commemoration of Christ’s death is to see him in the poor and suffering and to welcome them and offer them help.

First of all the Pope is not poignant.  Secondly, the Eucharist is not a commemoration of Christ’s death.  It is Christ himself.  At Mass it is being present at His own sacrifice.  Third, and most importantly, the Blessed Sacrament is not about seeing Christ in the poor and suffering, welcoming them, or offering them help.  That is something else entirely.

Speaking during his weekly Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square Sunday, the pope reflected on the meaning of the Catholic feast day celebrated this week, that of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

Known commonly by its Latin name of Corpus Christi, the feast commemorates Christ’s actions at the Last Supper, when he is said to have instituted the Eucharist by first holding a piece of bread and saying: “Take this, this is my body.”

Francis applied wide ranging social consequences to that action on Friday, saying those who participate in the Eucharist enter into a communion that requires them to give care for all.

“When we take and eat this bread, we become associated with the life of Jesus, we enter into communion with Him,” said the pontiff. “We commit ourselves to realize the communion between us, to transform our life into a gift, overall to the most poor.”

“Today’s feast evokes this integral message and pushes us to welcome the intimate invitation to conversion and to service, to love and to forgive,” the pope continued. “It stimulates us to become, with our lives, imitators of that which we celebrate in the liturgy.”

“The Christ who feeds us in the consecrated species of bread and wine is the same that we meet in daily occurrences,” said Francis. “It is the poor person who pulls our hand, it is the suffering person that implores our help, it is the brother that asks our availability and waits for our welcome.”

This kind of 1970’s propaganda is quite the blast from the past.  Why is it that liberals always go back to their tired old playbook?  Who decided that we would now be re-treated to the effeminate, suffocating nightmare that was hippie Catholicism?

When we receive Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament we do not commit ourselves to transform our life into a gift overall to the most poor.  Jesus in the Eucharist is not the people we meet in daily occurrences.  He is not the one who pulls our hand, implores our help or waits for our welcome.  He is Jesus.

Jesus tells us when we help the least of His brothers, we do it for Him, because he loves them so much.  He appreciates our love to them and expects it, but they are not actually Him.  If they are in states of grace Jesus lives within them, but nevertheless Jesus is Jesus and people are people, even in states of grace.

Why must the Pope twist and minimize the Blessed Sacrament, who is God Himself, by turning it all into one big worldly poverty program?  Can’t he just defend the faith and teach it?  Isn’t that worth doing on it’s own?

If you’re like many people you spend most of your time helping others.  But is that our faith?  Isn’t it so much more?

 

 

On Corpus Christi Pope Francis Disturbs

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Not repentance, Confession, and Jesus all rolled into one

Repentance, Confession, and Jesus all rolled into one?

In honor of Corpus Christi, Pope Francis spoke about the Holy Eucharist.  As usual he said some uplifting things but, true to form, some of the things he said were unsettling, some were disturbing, and some were jarring.

We are accustomed to being wary now.  We can’t just assume Pope Francis is presenting us with Catholicism when he speaks, can we?

The Eucharist is the seal of God’s covenant, uniting Christians and giving them the strength to bring God’s love to others, even when faith carries a high price, Pope Francis has said.

The Eucharist does give us strength to love others, even when faith carries a high price, but is it really a ‘seal of God’s covenant?’  I thought it was God Himself.

Does Communion unite Christians with each other, or does receiving Him unite us all with Christ?

Celebrating the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ with an evening Mass outside Rome’s Basilica of St John Lateran, Pope Francis said the church and its members will never cease being in awe of the Eucharist.

Is this not something we can take as a given, since God is awesome?

Pope Francis asked the faithful as they walked through the city with the Eucharist to remember “our many brothers and sisters who do not have the freedom to express their faith in the Lord Jesus”.

This is true.  The freedom to process through the streets is a great and necessary thing.  I wish more of us felt free and willing to do so.

“Let us be united with them; let us sing with them, praise with them, adore with them,” he said. “And, in our hearts, let us venerate those brothers and sisters who were asked to sacrifice their lives out of fidelity to Christ. May their blood, united to the Lord’s, be a pledge of peace and reconciliation for the whole world.”

The Pope has made it clear before that by ‘martyrs’ he means anyone killed for professing Christ, not just Catholics.  The vast majority of those murdered for Christianity lately are not Roman Catholics.  Is their blood united to the Lord’s?  How much heresy and sin would a murdered ‘christian’ have to embrace before there was some disunity?

How can the deaths of Christians at the hands of Muslims be “pledges of peace and reconciliation for the whole world?”  A death is not a pledge.  Are peace and reconciliation God’s goals in a world full of sin and evil?  Perhaps first He wants faith and obedience.

I would imagine those killed might hope someone would pledge to defeat ISIS through military campaigns, because they know first-hand that it would bring peace and safety for others like themselves.  Most people brave and faithful enough to die for the name of Christ also know what peace really entails.

The Eucharist, he said, “sanctifies us, purifies us and unites us in a marvellous communion with God. In that way we learn that the Eucharist is not a prize for the good, but strength for the weak; for sinners it is pardon; it is the viaticum that helps us move forward, to walk.”

Does the Eucharist purify us?  What if we aren’t repentant?  What if we haven’t made a good Confession?  What good Catholic would consider the Eucharist his ‘prize’ anyway?  Why does the Pope employ strawmen?

Is the Eucharist pardon for the sinner?  Are the Last Rites administered without Confession?  Holy Communion is certainly a manifestation of God’s Mercy since He comes to us and heals us, giving us strength.  But it’s dangerous, particularly now, to give the impression that Communion is a time for forgiveness of sins.  That is what happens for the repentant sinner during Confession. Then, purified through the mercy of God and his Church, the good person can be strengthened and healed by union with Our Lord Himself.

Union with God entails a certain effort on our part, because God is holy.