THE P
RTAL
Catholic Social Teaching
Corpus Christi and Social Justice
June 2018 Page 9
Fr Ashley Beck links the festival with God ’ s love for the poor
What we celebrate at Corpus Christi is a belief which has often been costly .
‘ It is my lot to gather up the trampled , the dead , and all that the persecution of the church leaves behind . I have come to recover a profaned church , tabernacle and people . Your sorrow is the Church ’ s sorrow ... You are the image of the divine one who was pierced . … let us pray for the conversion of those who struck us … of those who sacrilegiously dared to lay hands on the sacred tabernacle . Let us pray to the Lord for forgiveness and for the due repentance of those who converted a town into a prison and a place of torment . Let the Lord touch their hearts …’
These are words from a homily preached by Blessed Oscar Romero ( who is due to be canonised later this year ) in 1977 . Oscar Romero was Archbishop of San Salvador in central America from 1977 until his martyrdom in 1980 . A Jesuit priest and a number of laypeople had been murdered by a right-wing death squad
Blessed Oscar Romero in the village of Aguilares and subsequently the village had been occupied by security forces , who murdered a number of villagers and desecrated the church , firing a machine gun at the tabernacle and scattering the sacred hosts around the floor of the church . When they left , the archbishop came to the village to reclaim the church which had been desecrated . In his homily , Romero stresses that the killing of innocent people and the attack on Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle go closely together , motivated by hatred towards the Catholic faith . In the extract above , he asks people to pray for the perpetrators , that they should be converted .
In June each year we celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi , our joyful and exuberant celebration of belief in the Real Presence , the doctrine of Transubstantiation . In many of our parishes and communities we will be having processions of the Blessed Sacrament . It ’ s
worth remembering that the feast day was abolished at the Reformation , when Edward VI ’ s first Book of Common Prayer was published , marking a real break with the Catholic Church and the devotional life of medieval England ; indeed , from the late 17 th century until Catholic Emancipation , those seeking office in this country had to swear an oath denying Transubstantiation . What we celebrate at Corpus Christi is a belief which has often been costly .
The killings and desecration in El Salvador in 1977 ( and it happened in other places too ) remind us that what we believe about the Eucharist is closely linked to what we believe about social justice , the Church ’ s Catholic Social teaching which is the subject of these monthly articles . Our God whom we adore in the tabernacle , on the altar , in the monstrance , is wounded when people are murdered in cold blood ; as human beings are created in the image of God , every killing is an act of sacrilege . Hatred for the poor whom God loves was the reason why the soldiers killed the villagers ; hatred too for the faith , made explicit in the terrible act of firing a machine gun at the tabernacle . All over the world people continue to be murdered ; when the Church stands alongside them , what we do is strengthened by our belief in the Eucharist . Jesus , who comes close to us through his real presence in the Mass , is alongside his suffering people in the world , particularly the poor and the oppressed . So while we should be joyful and exuberant at Corpus Christi , we should also remember those who suffer in the world , those who are desecrated .
For more information on the new programme in Catholic Social Teaching at St Mary ’ s University go to www . stmarys . ac . uk / postgraduate-courseslondon / catholic-social-teaching