BRIDGEPORT—“We receive the Body of Christ so we can go out in mission to bring Christ to the waiting world,” Bishop Frank J. Caggiano said in his Mass on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, Sunday June 14.
In his online homily from the Catholic Center chapel, the bishop said that many people may think of missionary service in terms of going to a far-off land or a great adventure, but that it’s often found in the ordinary lives that people are called to lead as loving mothers and fathers.
“Mission is a life lived in fidelity, obedience, kindness and mercy. We receive the body of Christ so that we can be that for others,” he said, after reading from the Gospel of John (6:51-58), “ I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”
The bishop began his homily by noting that when he was younger, he joined other people from the parish where he was serving as pastor for morning workouts at the gym.
“You are what you eat,” the personal trainer hold him, and added that that getting in shape requires better nutrition as well as exercise.
“My trainer got it right, but St. Augustine was even more correct when he said ‘We eat the body of Christ to become the Body of Christ.’”
“St. Augustine, the 5th century theologian, said the only food that matters is the food on this altar as we receive and grow ever more in the image of the Lord who grants it. In this mission we will find our purpose, find our identity and find the road we will walk with Christ unto everlasting life.”
The bishop said that every time Mass is celebrated there is a “four-fold” action at work. “We take the bread, bless it, break it, and give it away to those who come forward… so that we might be ready to be broken, poured out in the love we offer others as was offered to us on the cross. And then that we can be given away in mission.”
“We remember the gift of the body and blood of Christ not as history but as fact,” he said. “What appears to be bread and wine is the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ in our midst.”
The bishop noted that the last three words of the Latin Mass, “Ite Missa est,” don’t simply mean the Mass is over, but they are a summons to “Go forth and do something with what you have received.”
In brief remarks after Mass the bishop said that beginning this weekend many parishes in the diocese are making the transition back to Masses within the Church.
He said he prayed that “We will continue to do it safely and prudently, as we, who share in the life of Christ through the Eucharist, work to make Christ’s presence real in the world.”
To join in the Bishop’s Sunday Mass, live-streamed weekly, click this link or visit the YouTube Mass Playlist.
