Exposition of Blessed Sacrament: Is that YOU, God?
As Catholics I think we seem to
have lost the sense of awesomeness of Jesus’ presence in the monstrance and perhaps
in Eucharist. Weekly we watch the priest
and the Eucharistic Minister evenly distribute the consecrated hosts among all
the chalices. It appears to be a rather
mundane task. A host may fall to the altar and the priest puts it into one of
the waiting chalices. The wine is poured,
hopefully not too much so that it has to be consumed in a large gulp by one of
the attendants later, but enough to be distributed to anyone who wishes to
partake of the Precious Blood. Along
with the repetition of a weekly (or more) activity, these ordinary tasks
relegate the extra- ordinary to a mundane level as the church body
observes. So during the Exposition of the Blessed
Sacrament altho what we see in the encasement surrounded by a solid gold design
may not be fully appreciated, it IS the Body of Christ.
Centuries ago when saints and
heroes died the relics were divided, including body parts. We may find this practice distasteful in 2012
but it was done. At the Last Supper
Jesus made the bread and wine become his Precious Body and Blood. But imagine for a moment that he hadn’t used
those simple forms. We’ve seen and heard
of 1st, 2nd and 3rd class relics. They are pieces of the saints’ skin, their
clothing or maybe something that was touched to the saints’ clothing that is
considered a valued object. I was
recently given (and treasure) earth from Saint Thérèse of Lisieux’s 1st
burial exhumation on 9-6-1910.
So how might we react if the next time we
attend Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament there was a lock of Jesus’ actual
hair or a piece of bone or skin in the monstrance? What if the golden monstrance contained a splinter
of wood from Jesus’ own cross that had been covered with Our Lord’s blood? It is the
Body of Christ. Smooth white round wafer
or not.
