-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!
2 comments:
I like the "turn around time" idea. The whole reflection reminds me of words used from some of the scriptures attributed to Paul: "I, but no longer I". We go in the doors of the church one way, but if we truly participated at all we most assuredly come out the doors differently. I - but no longer I. With the power of the Holy Spirit we can't help but be changed. More loving, more joyful, more patient and kind. Ready to go at life another week. So that hopefully - bit by bit - we become less of our individual selves and more of the Body of Christ. Less interested in satisfying our own self-absorbed interests - and more eager to work together in serving others and inviting them to be a part of us.
All of that leaves me as me - but different.
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