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Some years ago, one of the computer technicians assisting the parish shared that his family had been Mormon for almost 200 years. It stopped me in my tracks. For the first time, I considered just how long my own family had been Catholic. There is no way to fill in the historical gaps over the millennia involved. I can only guess that I have a long line of alternately spiritually devout and apathetic ancestors, both saints and sinners, and probably many that were both saintly and sinners. The fact remains that both family lines, three quarters Irish and one quarter Italian, are from areas that have had a consistently Catholic tenor to them. The Sicilian part of the family could have come to faith as early as the 2nd or 3rd Century. It’s hard to know as my family might also have participated in one of the many invasions of Sicily that happened later. Most of Ireland came to the faith by the 6th Century. I responded to the technician that, to the best of my knowledge, most of my family had probably been Catholic for between 1,500 and 1,700 years. Those numbers caused both of us to pause for a moment.

We all have our own history, and a greater or lesser openness to influence from ancestors, parents and peers. As far back as I know anything of my grandparents and great-grandparents, that I am the product of a short line of loving and good predecessors…and a physically abusive alcoholic grandfather. That’s the human story, isn’t it?

This July 1st, we’re celebrating the fourth year since the canonization of Junipero Serra. He was himself, a richly gifted and heroically good figure, with a shadow side. His mission system both shared the faith with, and dominated the lives of, the native peoples of California that he came to serve. His missions have influenced the architecture of our buildings and the names of our cities, counties and streets. Our visions of “old California” are colored by memories of Spanish rodeos and tri-tip barbacoa. Our farms still grow produce and wines first introduced by his confreres. We stand, sometimes awkwardly, on his shoulders.

​Our past should inform our present. Serra came to a world that had not heard of the faith; we live in a world where people question faith’s utility in their lives. Like Serra, we have to find ways to proclaim the beauty and goodness of what we believe for others’ benefit. Like him, too, we will probably stumble in living out consistently all the best values of our beliefs. At our weakest moments, our own lives may get in the way of what we want the world to know of the Lord, our heart’s desire.

This Sunday we celebrate The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. The three readings today are threaded together through food and drink with words we hear from the Last Supper. The first reading from Genesis has Melchizedek offering “bread and wine.” In the second reading St. Paul references the Eucharistic Prayer and in Luke’s Gospel Christ takes five loaves and two fish “and looking up to heaven, said the blessing over them, broke them and gave them to the disciples.”

In the ancient Greek world before Christ, the Greek mother god Demeter was reverenced for giving the gift of grain to the world through sacrifice. Grain was considered a power for salvation while the Greek god of wine Dionysus identified death by the blood of the grape to make wine to give new life. The history of God’s journey of love for his children winds through the imagery of God creating the grain and the grape. When we bring the gifts of bread and wine to the altar, we are bringing the toils and stories of our lives to Christ to become Christ, as an offering for us, for our salvation.

Jesus is the incarnational indwelling sent by God to feed us eternal life. It is all part of the continued love story of God given for our transformation. Fr. Richard Rohr in his book The Universal Christ writes, “Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about us. Jesus came to change our minds about God.” God loves us relentlessly.

In the breaking of the bread Christ’s love is multiplied over and over again. It is in the sharing of the broken bread that we are a part of the Body of Christ sharing our own brokenness to open our hearts to God and each other. We are all in communion with the truth of Christ’s rising in the bread and wine to heal our own sorrows and brokenness to live forever with the Father.

When we hear today in the Eucharistic prayer “this is my body and this is my blood” we are to hear Christ inviting us to take him in……all of him. It has been said when we taste a sip of the ocean all of the ocean is now inside of us. So too with Christ in Holy Communion……we take all of him inside of us. We are then a tabernacle for Christ inside of us. Do we know that?

Do we live that?

Deacon Jack Redmond

Dear Friends,
Our Scriptures do a lot to illuminate and underpin our belief in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whose Solemnity we celebrate today. In the first reading from Proverbs we hear a beautiful and poetic declaration of the wonder of Creation. It’s written in the first person: “I was there when …” “I was his delight.” It speaks as the third person of the holy trinity: “Thus says the wisdom of God.”

For Christians there is a long tradition that Old Testament references to wisdom are in fact references to the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. So in this reading we have Wisdom detailing how he was there as all came to be. But it’s at the end of the passage that I think we hear something very important:

“… then was I beside him as his craftsman,
and I was his delight day by day,
playing before him all the while,
playing on the surface of his earth;
and I found delight in the human race.”

Here we have a description of creation from the very beginning, and God finding delight in us (and our ancestors). Sometimes we can lose sight of this very basic tenet of our faith – that God created us fundamentally good; so good, in fact, that God became one of us in order to redeem us and restore us to the union with him that we had broken. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).

The gospel reading (John 16:12-15) has Jesus speaking to his disciples in a very comforting way, preparing them, perhaps, for the coming challenges of his mission – his passion, death, resurrection and ascension. “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.”

"He [the Spirit] will glorify me,
because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he [again, the Spirit] will take from what is mine
and declare it to you.”

Friends, we can never fully understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity. We accept Three Persons, One God, on faith. Today’s Scriptures are there to help us contemplate these truths.

Siempre Adelante,

​Dominic MacAller
Worship Minister