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Get into the ring! How this works...

This is easy! Each week on Thursday I post my homily idea...my main focus for preaching this coming Sunday. What I am hoping for is a reaction from people in the pews. Does my "focus" connect with your daily life, faith, and experience? Or not? Either affirm the direction I am going in (by giving me an example from your life) or challenge me, ask for clarification! Questions are the best! Reaction rather than reflection is what I'm looking for here. Don't be afraid, get in the ring. Ole!



Friday, June 20, 2014

Becoming What You Are Celebrating

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00pm on Saturday, 9:30am and 12:30pm on Sunday

Turn Around Time

That expression "turn around time" is usually used by people that are attempting to get something done for us - they need "so much turn around time."  I am using it today because of the call to "conversion"  that is imbedded in the Feast of Corpus Domini, or The Body and Blood of the Lord, Corpus Christi. 

You see, "conversion" comes to us from the Latin word to "turn", thus turn around.  I am seeing in the Church's teaching on the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, in the consecration, that we believe this bread and wine is "turned into"(in its substance), the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ.  Another word of "turning into" is transubstantiation. 

So, you can see why I have thought of the Mass every Sunday or everyday (transubstantiation) as "turn around time".  However, there is a second consecration in the Eucharistic Prayer that is prayed over the assembly at prayer - that they/we would become "one body, one spirit in Christ".  St. Augustine charged the church to "become more of what we celebrate", to be "converted", turned into.... turn around time.

Conversion, being turned into something that we are not quite fully yet - that's the fundamental journey for Christian believers in the Holy Eucharist.  That once again today, here and now, in the power of the Holy Spirit and by the prayers of the priest, I would be turned, changed in my very substance, from alienated, broken, isolated individual to the very life and presence of Jesus Christ Himself. 

So, again today for the Bread and Wine and for Little 'ol me and actually little 'ol US - it's Turn around time.  Be changed or die!