Bulletin column from June 6, 2021

Dear Friends at Saint Frances Cabrini and Saint Mary’s Immaculate Conception Parish: Praised be Jesus Christ!
This weekend we celebrate in this country the Solemn Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, or “Corpus Christi” as it was commonly known for many centuries. It is the Church’s opportunity each year to focus our attention in a single-minded manner on what our official documents term the “source and summit” of our faith: the Eucharist. It is true that every Sunday is of course about the Eucharist, but this solemn feast day is meant to draw deliberate attention to it as a gift and as a mystery.
Even before the arrival of Covid19 and all of the difficult barriers to our worship that came with it, it is true that regular Mass attendance among all Catholics had been steadily decreasing. The reasons for this are of course many and complex, but the bottom line is that a mindset has been growing for a long time that consistent, Sunday worship is more optional than it is obligatory. With such a mindset, the authentic understanding of what the Eucharist is becomes radically diminished as well.
Today’s feast day proclaims a very important message in the face of all this. Namely that the Body of Blood of Christ in which we participate at the Mass is a priceless and beautiful gift. It is such a gift that we make it a point to show the Eucharist off to the wider world in things like monstrances and public processions through the streets. What we proclaim with today’s feast is that we never want to be without such a gift, and that we know that the Lord himself abides with us in and through the Eucharist. On him we feed as true food, to him we give our praise and adoration.
The best ambassadors and teachers of the profound importance of the Mass and the Eucharist are all of us who do make Mass attendance in person an iron-clad priority. We are the ones who have to get our friends and relatives to come back to Mass by talking about it and by inviting them. Some who continue to stay away in our era of Covid19 have their own health concerns for doing so, and there is room for patience with this to a point. However, there are many, many Catholics who do not have a good reason for staying away. They should be and need to be at Mass with us. We all know people in this situation.
To that end, this weekend we will kick off a few weeks of prayer and fasting with the intention of trying to get people back to Mass who do not have good reasons for staying away. Please make it a priority to pray each day using the special prayer for this month of June that we are using at our parishes. Please join to your prayer each day a small act of abstaining or fasting from some food or drink of your choice in order to advance the conversion of hearts on this point. With enough prayer and fasting, hearts do change, priorities change, and practices do change. Out of love for the Body and Blood of the Lord may we all engage this prayer campaign for an increase in Mass attendance with true zeal and devotion.