Corpus Domini, ultimate companion.
By Simone Riva - Brothers, there are people who grumble against God every day: 'What bad times!, what difficult times!' These are the insults that are thrown out there and which we have already spoken about. 'Bad times, hard times, unbearable times'; yet they hold circus contests! Times are bad, times are hard. Let there be repentance. Call the times hard: how much harder are you, who from the hardness of the times draw no reason to repent! Indeed we see even in our day the senselessness of numerous spectacles flourishing, we see the crazed craving for so many superfluous things. Covetousness does not resolve to end even after its head has been cut off!" (St. Augustine).
Already 1,700 years ago, there was an urgent call to the futility of lament and the need for personal conversion. Today we are not so far away if the Archbishop of Milan, Msgr. Mario Delpini, on the occasion of the Corpus Christi Eucharistic procession, said thus, "Live, Milan! Welcome life! city of the old and the lonely. Live and give life! live and love children! Live and give thanks for life! Live! Enough of the lament that covers life and its beauties with grayness! No more obsession with looking alive instead of living! Enough with the impatience that cannot stand the annoyances of living; enough with the fear that holds life back and hides it in a lonely, gray private space! Live. Milan! Sing, invent poems, play your music, applaud your lyric. Live, Milan! Don't censor your smile, noiseless, contracted and demure. Smile, even if smiling seems a waste of time, with all there is to do. Live, smile, Milan!"
What allows us to lift our heads and start living in earnest? For Someone to call us. If the grace of a unique and unmistakable encounter didn't happen everything would remain a pure call. The lives of the apostles were overwhelmed by the call of Christ and, with Him, every detail regained a new texture. Instead, in so many broods the suspicion of being alone against all, of having to defend oneself from the other because he might be a danger, of making oneself.
On the feast of Corpus Christi, the Church proclaims to all, even taking it to the streets, the definitive companionship of Christ with the life of every man. This companionship is symbolized in the Eucharist, a method that Christians can't change; it contains a command: 'Do this in memory of me,' not anything else. It's a scandalous method that troubled even the disciples, so much so that they abandoned Jesus en masse when he said, 'Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you' (Jn. 6:53).
That we don't have life in us we can verify on many occasions, as a boy wrote to me at school, "I managed to lose myself and my passions again, I lost many things and people. One question that has arisen for me is: am I so easily replaceable, is my person worth so little? I used to be stubborn, headstrong, but now I'm just a menial, a kind of flag that changes direction just for the wind." The silent certainty of the possibility of a negative answer to his questions, however, can only move the heart of such a boy. A face is needed to show him this possibility.
For life to be truly, we ask for the gift of bearing what has taken us, without changing method: the total gift of ourselves. Endless questions await us, countless faces look to us.
Unrevised translation by the author - Source: Il Sussidiario
