In Mary Help of Christians Basilica on the Belmont Abbey campus, a beautiful Italian crucifix hangs over the altar. Larger than life, it shoulders the lofty scale of the church, and even in the early morning dimness between Matins and Lauds, the corpus stays faintly visible with the insistent, bodily humanness of suffering.
Suspended there,聽it gives an imposing reminder of the price of sin and the terrible intimacy with which God embraced our suffering. You can鈥檛 see it without realizing how heavy it must be, hanging there, and how central it is to the liturgy going on in its shadow. In fact, I鈥檇聽been staring at this crucifix, off and on, for weeks, and it just seemed聽to get bigger and heavier and more unspeakable.
But last week during Mass, as Brother Bede assisted Father Chris at the Eucharistic table, I realized something. Full-sized humans, the monks still seemed small under the crucifix, but as they went about their quiet motions, they offered another image of Christ, one rooted in the Feast of Corpus Christi –聽which celebrates His Eucharistic presence in our midst: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. And as I watched,聽I started to realize聽all over again how deeply merciful God is.
Looking from the Cross to the altar and back was like suddenly seeing Christ鈥檚 answer to Peter鈥檚 cry, 鈥淒epart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!鈥 in a new light. Not聽depart from me, sinner听产耻迟听come, friend, and share my table and my life. It鈥檚 not that Peter鈥檚 fear – as a reminder of our need for humility and reverence – isn鈥檛 a natural response to God. It鈥檚 just that Christ鈥檚 reply is so much kinder, more merciful, and more tender than we have any right to expect: 鈥淭ake and eat. This is my Body, which will be given up for you.鈥 After everything He鈥檚 done, He still comes back for us, waits for us in the humblest and simplest of forms, knowing we can鈥檛 reach Him otherwise.
Not only did He sacrifice Himself for us – a fact which might easily crush us with its overwhelming responsibility – but He accompanied this terrifying, unanswerable act with聽the gift of Himself in a form small enough to fit on our tables and approachable enough to reach out and touch, taste, and hold.
As we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi this weekend, may Christ鈥檚 sacramental presence be a renewed source of comfort in our lives – not to replace our sense of His sacrifice, but to bring it and Him close to us in all the mercifully tender beauty of His love.
