St Charles Borromeo
  • HOME
    • Sunday Page
    • Give
  • About
    • Mass Times
    • Bulletin & Calendar
    • Lent Schedule
    • Holy Week
    • Contact
    • Staff
    • Ministries and Committees >
      • Pastoral Council
    • Finances
    • Liturgical Ministries Schedule
  • News
  • Faith
    • Baptism
    • First Communion
    • Confirmation >
      • Confirmation Retreat 2023
      • Confirmation Sponsor
      • Confirmation Name
    • Synod 2023 >
      • Respond
      • Responses
    • Reading the Bible Rebelliously
    • The Lasallian Way
    • Spiritual Growth Challenge >
      • Lent 2023
      • Gun Violence
      • Essential Elements >
        • Essential Elements - Results
      • Personal Journey in Faith
      • Christian Practices
      • Finding LIfe's Purpose
      • Racial Reconciliation
      • Care for Creation
    • GIFT >
      • GIFT Prayer
      • Past GIFT Programs
  • Word
    • Lenten Evening Prayer
    • Voice of the Community >
      • Reflections
    • Homily
    • Children's Liturgy of the Word
  • Justice
    • Care 4 Creation >
      • Understanding Natural Gas
    • MACG Summary Report
    • Racial Justice
    • Local Resources
    • Renter's Assistance
    • Food Insecurity
    • Utilities Assistance
    • Care For The Elderly
    • St. Vincent de Paul >
      • Who We Are
      • WHAT WE DO
      • GET INVOLVED
      • GIVE
      • GET HELP >
        • FOOD HELP
        • FINANCIAL HELP
      • NEWS

Homily

Holy Communion

8/20/2018

0 Comments

 
Sr. Phyllis Jaszkowiak
August 19, 2018

We are invited to a great feast!  “Wisdom has spread her table” and she calls us to “come eat of her food and drink her wine”, so that we may “advance in the way of understanding”.  There are a few requisites: “whoever is simple turn in here, to those who lack understanding come eat of the food and drink of the wine.  Forsake foolishness that you may live”.
​Jesus, in the gospel today, also invites us to true Wisdom through the eating of his body and drinking of his blood.  He invites us to become one with him and one another.  “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood remain in me and I in them”.  We are invited to this great feast where we grow in understanding and then in Wisdom, and through Jesus we grow into the human person we were created to be.  
 
We need this food and drink more than ever in our country and world, today.  We have used sound bites and tweets on which to make decisions.  To make good, moral decisions, we need to discern what is good information, ponder it to attain true knowledge, contemplate this knowledge, and pray until we gain true Wisdom.
 
We do not do this alone. Holy Wisdom and Jesus always invite a crowd, so that we can be in Communion with one another.  The Eucharist, Communion, is coming together in unity, communion, compassion, and solidarity with each other in Christ.
 
I have been reading some of Dorothy Day’s thoughts on Communion, and she says:  “Communion, is being with each other in peace and love for at least this one hour.  For this hour we can forget that we may have argued with someone, may have told them they were wrong about something and we were right, may have wished our politicians would act for the people not for the money, or told our children to grow up or stop being a baby.
 
“No, for this hour we can be in Communion with one another, with our family; we are conscious of a Christian solidarity… We are united with Christ who is head of the Body…  Christ is the only one who can pray right, and we are praying with him… Then, too, we are united with each other, and we benefit by all the merits and grace of each other.  We lift each other up.  Two are better than one, for if one falls, the other lifts up the fallen one.”
 
Sam Sawyer, SJ, of America magazine, poses the question:  “Would Jesus eat with Sarah Sanders?”  His answer: “The way Jesus used table fellowship in the Gospels was morally transformative – but by inclusion, not by exclusion. These meals were signs of hope, not only regarding God’s kingdom but also regarding the kinds of persons who might participate in it.”
 
St. Cyril of Alexandria says:  “We are made one body in Christ, because we are nourished by one flesh.  As Christ is indivisible, we are all one in Christ.”
 
Sr. Barbara Einloth, from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, (LCWR) says: “Living from a place of communion, where we recognize the value of our authentic and inescapable connections with others, redirects our energies and imaginations.  It invests them in building bridges between and among us.  It generates appreciation for ‘the others’ and the gifts they bring to the enterprise of life….  Communion with others is possible and worth the effort.”
 
 And Jesus says: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood remain in me and I in them.” 
 
We are Christ’s body in our world and time today.  We are the ones who carry Jesus’ message of love to those closest to us, and to our world.  It is the one commandment Jesus gave us: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
 
Let us eagerly come to this great feast each Sunday.  Let us accept the invitation of Holy Wisdom and Jesus, and grow in understanding, which can lead to true wisdom.  Let us forge our connections with each other, build up community, and infuse our world with the love of Christ.  As St. Paul says, Let us “be filled with the Spirit”, the Spirit of God’s love in and through Christ.
 
 
Dorothy Day, A RADICAL LOVE: WISDOM FROM DOROTHY DAY, edited by Patricia Mitchell.  The Word Among Us Press, 2000.  Pages 43-44.
 
Sam Sawyer, SJ, AMERICA MAGAZINE July 23, 2018.  Page 54.
 
BECOMING ONE IN LOVE,  Essay by Barbara Einloth, SC.  Publication of Leadership Conference of Women Religious, 2018.  Page 38.  
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

St. Charles Church  |  5310 N.E. 42nd Avenue, Portland OR 97218  |  503-281-6461  | stchas@stcharlespdx.org


  • HOME
    • Sunday Page
    • Give
  • About
    • Mass Times
    • Bulletin & Calendar
    • Lent Schedule
    • Holy Week
    • Contact
    • Staff
    • Ministries and Committees >
      • Pastoral Council
    • Finances
    • Liturgical Ministries Schedule
  • News
  • Faith
    • Baptism
    • First Communion
    • Confirmation >
      • Confirmation Retreat 2023
      • Confirmation Sponsor
      • Confirmation Name
    • Synod 2023 >
      • Respond
      • Responses
    • Reading the Bible Rebelliously
    • The Lasallian Way
    • Spiritual Growth Challenge >
      • Lent 2023
      • Gun Violence
      • Essential Elements >
        • Essential Elements - Results
      • Personal Journey in Faith
      • Christian Practices
      • Finding LIfe's Purpose
      • Racial Reconciliation
      • Care for Creation
    • GIFT >
      • GIFT Prayer
      • Past GIFT Programs
  • Word
    • Lenten Evening Prayer
    • Voice of the Community >
      • Reflections
    • Homily
    • Children's Liturgy of the Word
  • Justice
    • Care 4 Creation >
      • Understanding Natural Gas
    • MACG Summary Report
    • Racial Justice
    • Local Resources
    • Renter's Assistance
    • Food Insecurity
    • Utilities Assistance
    • Care For The Elderly
    • St. Vincent de Paul >
      • Who We Are
      • WHAT WE DO
      • GET INVOLVED
      • GIVE
      • GET HELP >
        • FOOD HELP
        • FINANCIAL HELP
      • NEWS