Pentecost set the followers of Christ on fire!  Through Christ and the Spirit, the early Christians trusted God’s love and imagined things never before conceived.  Preaching with profound passion and commitment ignited all the more to follow the Son of God to eternal love.  Consider how these early fevered Christians could not constrain their excitement for the truth revealed to them only through preaching.  Christ had taught them anamnesis or remembrance i.e. participating with Christ in the Sacrament of Thanksgiving, the Eucharist.  They needed liturgy to reveal the depth and truth of God’s love for all generations.  They needed to celebrate in community - a community uniting mankind with Christ and the Trinity.  These first Christians knew Jesus – they were in the room where it happened.  These people heard and witnessed the Word of God as he walked the earth or learned from those who did.  They joyfully celebrated the reconciliation of heaven and earth – man and God reunited.  As the liturgy developed everyone found a place in this unity of worship – ministries proliferated.  Fast forward to 1963 - Pope Paul VI issued Sacrosanctum Concilium, the first document emerging from Vatican Council II (VCII) and addressing Liturgy head-on.  Right up front Pope Paul VI called for full, conscious, active participation by the faithful in liturgy patterned after the Early Church.  Early Christian liturgy included proclamation (not just reading) of the Word of God, first from the Old Testament and then from the New Testament as they rejoiced in the fulfillment of the old Scripture by Christ.  With Christ now present in the Word, the liturgy moved to the altar to prepare the gifts and call upon the Holy Spirit to change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ and then to distribute the Eucharist to the enthusiastic Assembly.  Yes, the priest acting in the person of Christ calls upon the Holy Spirit to change the bread and wine into the Blessed Sacrament but who was going to assist the ordinary ministers (ordained) in all this preparation and distribution?  These generous and grateful ministers bear the title today of Extraordinary Ministers (EMs). 

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM puts ministry beautifully, “On my own, I don’t know how to believe that I am a child or heir of God. It is being together in our wholeness, with the entire body of Christ, that makes it somehow easier to believe that we are beautiful. We each have our own little part of the beauty, our own gifts of the Spirit, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 12. Paul says that the particular way “the Spirit is given to each person is for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). Paul’s word for this is a “charism”—a gift that is given to each person not just for themselves, but to build up the community and even society. Since we don’t have the full responsibility of putting it all together as individuals, we can shed the false theology of perfectionism.  All we have to do is discover our own gift, even if it is just one thing, and use it for the good of all.”

As I sit in the pew and an EM approaches me with communion, I see the warmth and dedication of a person who cares about me as a part of the same Body.  A simple act but such a loving act.  What better feast day for Fr. Rey to commission these generous and grateful ministers in our parish than The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ on Sunday, June 6 ^th.  Each of us has our own unique set of gifts (charisms) to be offered to the Lord.  Now, let us all celebrate those called to minister in the Eucharist, the “source and summit of church life”. 

Deacon Joe
June 5, 2021