When we hear the phrase: “The Body of Christ”, we immediately think of the words that that are said to us by the priest or other minister just before receiving Holy Communion at Mass.  But the term “Body of Christ” is more than just the Eucharist.  In fact, this past Sunday we heard the following words in our Second Reading from St. Paul: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit with Him.” (1 Cor 15a, 17)

From this and other passages comes our understanding that the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and that because of our being united with Him through Baptism, we are united with all who share in that relationship with Him, both the living and the dead.  When we come to Mass, we pray as the Body of Christ across space and time, and we pray for the Body of Christ across space and time.  The seventh of the main elements of the Eucharistic Prayer detailed in the GRIM articulates this reality of our praying for the entire Church in each Eucharistic Prayer:

The intercessions, by which expression is given to the fact that the Eucharist is celebrated in communion with the whole Church, of both heaven and of earth, and that the oblation is made for her and for all her members, living and dead, who are called to participate in the redemption and salvation purchased by the Body and Blood of Christ.

(GIRM, 79g)

In this regard, I recall a line that I read very early on in my priesthood that has stuck with me.  It comes from a book titled Dignity and Duties of the Priest by St. Alphonsus Ligouri.  He reminds priests of the grave importance of celebrating Mass each day:

A priest who without an important reason omits to say Mass robs the Blessed Trinity of glory, the angels of joy, sinners of pardon, the just of divine assistance, the souls in purgatory of refreshment, the Church of a benefit, and himself of a medicine.

Thanks be to God, I can count on a single hand the very few occasions when I was not able to celebrate Mass when I could have in my nearly thirteen years as a priest (twice due to illness and once due to an unforeseen travel complication).  Even when I am on vacation or have a day off without a scheduled Mass and the temptation might be to take a day off from celebrating Mass, this passage comes to mind and I am motivated by charity to celebrate Mass, believing with a firm faith that that Mass will have a positive impact on the Body of Christ, and my not celebrating Mass would deprive the Church of these benefits.

I think this can extend to all of us when it comes to our praying at Mass.  We can sometimes think that skipping Mass may only affect one person.  But our failing to go to Mass and actively participate in praying for and with the Body of Christ deprives her of what we alone can offer.  We may reason that one person cannot make that much of a difference.  But remember the words of the Lord in the Prophet Isaiah, words which we apply to that view of ourselves and how much greater God’s view is of us and the impact our prayers at Mass: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Is 55:8-9)

Only in Heaven will we come to fully realize how God has used our prayers at Mass to benefit the Body of Christ.  Perhaps on a day when we struggled to come to Mass was the day when a soul in Purgatory was finally released and brought into the presence of God in Heaven.  Perhaps our prayer at Mass one day, even though we were distracted, prompted somebody who had given up on life to turn to God and find new hope in life.  This is what is on the line when we come to pray at Mass.  How can we ever deprive the Body of Christ of this assistance?

Father Alford     

Feast Day: January 21^st 

St. Benedict gives four different kinds of monks in his famous Rule. The first, and most familiar, are the cenobites, the monks who live in community, obedient to their abbot as well as the rule of their order. The second class or kind of monk are the anchorites, or hermits, those who have lived in a monastery, faithful to its life as described above, having grown to a preeminent love of God and virtue towards their brothers, to such an extent that now they depart from that community to live alone, relying only on God in their continued fight against vices of mind and body. The third kind, the sarabaites, live in a monastery, but don’t abide its rules or superior, they still live according to the world, doing what they like, untested, unpurified, in the sturdy language of St. Benedict: lying to God by their tonsure.  And finally, the gyrovagues, who drift from place to place, receiving the hospitality of monasteries for a few days, but always thinking the grass is greener elsewhere, slaves still to their appetites and whims.

St. Meinrad entered the world in Germany, around 800 A.D., born into the family of the Counts of Hohenzollern, though that family would not really enter the annals of history for another two or three hundred years (eventually becoming one of the most important dynasties in Europe, later descendants becoming electors to the Holy Roman Empire, then Kings of Prussia, and eventually Emperors of Germany itself, with the empire only ending after WWI). Meinrad, of course, came almost a thousand years before all that, and he just wanted to be a monk. Some relatives of his were Abbots of the monastery of Reichenau, on an island in Lake Constance, where Meinrad received his education, and eventually joined that monastery. Spending time in that Abbey, as well as a Priory dependent upon it at Bollingen, on lake Zurich, he was finally ready, and willing, to enter the eremitical life and settled into his simple hermitage on the slopes of Mt. Etzel.

All he had with him was a statue of Our Lady, from which miracles had happened, and the simple requisites of his life as a hermit. And, a heart formed by those years under the benedictine rule, wise, prayerful, quiet, generous, and gentle. So many people came to know of his holiness that they came in droves to receive his advice and intercession, so several years later (it is not about 835), he retreated further into the forest, to what would later become the grand Abbey of Einsiedeln (from which, in 1854, monks would be sent to Indiana, establishing the Archabbey of St. Meinrad, and eventually a seminary where many of the priests of our diocese received their formation to the priesthood). 

But Meinrad didn’t himself found Einsiedeln because in 861 two men came to his hermitage seeking to rob him of the many gifts that he received from those who were still visiting him. He didn’t have what they wanted: every gift, no matter how precious, was immediately given away to the poor, and though he knew their intentions, the hermit would not let mere murderous intentions impede his extending them hospitality, so he sat the two men down, cooked them a good dinner, and was then murdered by them when he was unable to give them the riches they sought. And so, the Church now has a “Martyr of Hospitality”, perhaps an inspiration and intercessor for all of us as we sacrifice ourselves to welcome, care for, invite, and provide for those who come to us. As with all the martyrs, their losing their life actually inspires many to follow in their footsteps, and so hermit after hermit returned to that same hermitage, eventually founding their the splendid abbey that stands there to this day.

– Fr. Dominic got to visit the Abbey of Einsiedeln in 2017, several months before he was ordained a deacon and a year before being ordained a priest. The Monks, after St. Meinrad’s example, were immensely hospitable, allowing us to join them for meals and prayer, showing us around the splendid place where they have prayed and worked for all the centuries since (with a brief hiatus only during World War II if I remember correctly), as well as the wonderful library they care for with 230,000 books, thousands of manuscripts, some of them from over a thousand years ago when it was founded.