Sunday, June 14, 2009

Corpus Christi

Today the Church honors the Eucharist in an extra-extraordinary way (we honor the Eucharist every Sunday, but this is extra!). We have a whole day to simply revel and rejoice in the mind-blowing fact that a piece of bread becomes the body of Christ. Not just a symbol or an idea or a community-builder... it is him. I love this story about Dorothy Day homilized by Deacon Gregg, via the Anchoress:

"Back in the 1970s, when there was a lot of liturgical innovation going on, Dorothy Day invited a young priest to celebrate mass at the Catholic Worker. He decided to do something that he thought was relevant and hip. He asked Dorothy if she had a coffee cup he could borrow. She found one in the kitchen and brought it to him. And, he took that cup and used it as the chalice to celebrate mass.

When it was over, Dorothy picked up the cup, found a small gardening tool, and went to the backyard. She knelt down, dug a hole, kissed the coffee cup, and buried it in the earth.

With that simple gesture, Dorothy Day showed that she understood something that so many of us today don’t: she knew that Christ was truly present in something as ordinary as a ceramic cup. And that it could never be just a coffee cup again."