Father Ryan Higdon

Corpus Christi Sunday
Its no secret that I love the outdoors. Its why I spend nearly half of my vacation time taking groups of young adults camping so that they can encounter God in nature. But the wild isn’t always breath taking views and vistas. For the Israelites it was a place of trail and tribulation, a sign of how God had tested them. The wilderness pushed them to an ultimate place of weakness, hunger and thirst, and an ultimate reliance on God as the source of their life. At the edge of their physical endurance they had to admit that life ultimately came from God and was not of their own making.
Today, Christ reveals the harshest of his revelations and a complete separation takes place. People out-and-out leave Christ because of something he says. Unable to make sense of what he demands, in their pride his followers abandon him on this point – that life comes from reception of Christ’s Body. Like the Israelites in the desert, the disciples of Christ are pushed to their limit, only its their pride that’s pushed, not their bodies. Today Christ leads us to a rational dead end, the Eucharist is impossible to wrap our minds around, but we’re nevertheless left like the Iraelites with God as the source of our life.
As we celebrate Solemnity of Corpus Christi I very much want you to ponder, in the desert and wilderness of our own pride, have you abandoned Christ’s teaching just because you can’t comprehend it?
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Featured image by James Gordon CC/BY Header Image by Wolfgang Staudt CC/BY