Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

This Sunday churches often mark the Feast of Corpus Christi which is a celebration and thanksgiving for the gift of Christ received in Communion.

The Church maintains two truths: Christ is fully Present in the Sacraments and in the poor.

Both truths require the suspension of our human notions of what is precious. Both require the acknowledgment that we are starving. Both require the acknowledgement that we are poor.

We are starving for wisdom in a world of disinformation. We are starving for hope in a time of too much despair. We are starving for relationship amidst a pandemic of loneliness. We are starving for God when the world tells us to turn our backs on him.

Our poverty is a profound one these days. It is a poverty of possibility. We no longer seem to think that there is more to life or love. We no longer seem to believe that with God all things are possible. We too often succumb to the blandest of demons: apathy. It pulls at our soul in a slow and relentless way, telling us that what will be will be and there’s nothing more that might be.

In a world where bread becomes Bread and where a Jewish carpenter’s son is revealed as the Son—in that world nothing is impossible.

Christ, in the Eucharist, reminds us that even the most common things are full of divine potential. He shows us that he is not only with us but living in and feeding our very bodies with his own. He shows us that nothing is impossible when we see with the eyes of faith—eyes which learn to see the Body in places where the human eye sees only what is not yet what it might be.

With our hunger and our poverty let us come to the banquet table. Let us come ready to be filled. Let us come ready to keep the feast. Then let us go out ready to welcome a starving world to find their place at the table, too.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert