All Edmond Parishes Eucharistic Procession

All Edmond Eucharistic Procession
Stephenson Park Temporary Altar
Sermon: Mark 15:16-20
27 October 2024

 This day – the Lord’s Day – is about Jesus Christ!  This incredible blessing uniting all Catholics from the three parishes in Edmond is about Jesus Christ!  He is the one God who made the universe, all it contains, and who made us, giving us life in His image and likeness.  He is the one God who had a plan to restore the original blessing that He generously bestowed, after man’s original sin brought about the fall.  He is the God who loves you, who loves each of us, such that He comes to save us from our inclination to sin, to save us from the personal sins for which we each bear guilt.  In His divine love, He comes in our very flesh to pay the price for the sin that risks our eternal separation from Him in the condemnation of Hell.  As He approached the horror of the Cross for our salvation, He promised, as the Scriptures record, that he would not leave us orphans (cf. Jn. 14:18).  As the apostles and the first Christians came to accept his promise that he is the bread of life, the bread come down from heaven (cf. Jn. 6), they came to accept that precisely in the Breaking of the Bread, precisely in the smallness of the Sacred Host, our Blessed Lord fulfills his promise to not abandon us and to remain with us to the end of the age (cf. Mt. 28:20).

 As Jesus said, so the Scriptures record, and so we believe these words of our Blessed Lord, “For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.  He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (Jn. 6:55-56).  In this we are filled with hope and we are not alone!  For most of us here we have come to participate today already making an act of faith that with us and before us in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is Jesus Christ our Savior, just as he said.  But no doubt, that are many doing their own things today, surprised to find themselves caught up with this procession of Catholics, and maybe having no idea what they are witnessing here.  To any other bystanders who are willing to listen: If you believe that Jesus is God and if you believe that the Bible is God’s Word to us then you are already on this procession with us, on this journey that is a call to deeper communion with the Lord in his Church, a journey that leads to salvation in Heaven.  Other bystanders may not yet be Christian or not even a believer, this gathering is a reminder that you are invited to join with us, men and women of good will, to consider the journey you are on, to consider where you are going, and to consider whether you are, and where you are, with God on that journey.  Today, we give witness that we believe that God is actually present with us, in the midst of this world He made to be good.  He is really here!

 Why would we believe such a thing?  Why believe that God is with us and has anything to do, or any care, for this world in which we find ourselves?  First of all, God is involved with this world because He has created it and it is destined to return to Him.  The great event of the Incarnation shows us the nearness of God to this world.  The Son of God so unites Himself to His creation, that He takes on human flesh and takes up residence in this realm, Jesus the Christ.  And, the Gospel gives us a further reason for God’s nearness to the world because it shows us an encounter between the divine and the profane in a civic setting.  In the Gospel, the Lord and the world meet.  In the passage we heard, Jesus is not in a religious setting or location.  He is in the praetorium, which is the headquarters of the Roman authorities, the location of Pilate and the cohort of soldiers who mock Jesus and lead him to death.  By this point in the passage, Pilate has already sentenced the Lord to death and he has been scourged.  He is beaten and bloodied.  For however the vicious Roman scourging may have made his humanity and identity as Jesus unrecognizable, all the more would such a horrendous sight make his identity as God unrecognizable, even unbelievable.  Yet, in that civic setting, in the midst of the profane, despite all protestations to the contrary, despite man’s inability to recognize or accept it… God Himself was present!  Though submitting Himself to the twisted ways of man, our Lord was fully in command of what he was doing as God to suffer and die for our salvation, the salvation of the world and the souls He had made.  And He was doing all this right in the midst of the world and in the midst of the seat of civic authority.

 We experience some of that here today.  Today, also in a civic setting God Himself is present despite any protestations to the contrary, despite man’s inability to recognize it.  God Himself is here asking us to carry Him, just as He has done in various moments of salvation history: whether in the ark of the covenant, whether as a newborn Infant in Mary’s arms, whether being lifted up on the Cross, whether in the smallness of the Sacred Host in the hands of a priest… God Himself is here and He is asking us to carry Him into all the places He intends to go… into our holy places and sanctuaries, into our souls by grace, and, yes, even into our profane spaces, into our civic spaces where so-called “ordinary life” should not be separated from the realities of the kingdom to come.  For the “real world” as we so often call it would be very unreal indeed if separated from its foundation and destiny in God who created it, who cares for it, and calls it back to Himself.  This procession can serve as a reminder that we are called to carry the Lord into all things.  We are called to carry him in faith and how we live that faith, such that we, members of the Body of Christ, give witness to others by our words and actions that Jesus is with us and that he is Lord!  We are called to carry Him about in our moral choices.  We are called to carry him in the words we speak by which we might evangelize others.  We are called to carry Him about in our service to the poor and those about whom the Lord said, “When you did these things to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me” (Mt. 25:40).  We are called to carry Him about in how we organize this secular city of man, so that it more greatly reflects the order of the City of God.  We are in a moment now and through election day that gives us a privileged opportunity to exercise our moral duty to vote with our Catholic values in the hopes that we do our part to bring our city, state, and nation into greater conformity to the Kingdom of God.  The timing of this procession is a great witness and reminder that we should carry the Lord into our precints when we vote.  The Gospel passage today tells us in no uncertain terms that the Lord’s kingship belongs also in our civic spaces as he continues to accomplish his work of salvation in the souls of our time and place: the souls of the Pontius Pilates of our time, the souls of the soldiers of our time, the souls of religious authorities of our time, the souls of all the ordinary men and women, boys and girls, of every time and place.  As Catholics we believe that patriotism is a virtue.  Patriotism is a call to devotion and service to the land of our forefathers.  There is no patriotism greater than devotion first of all to the Father of all, the Father and Creator of this land.  As happened in the Gospel, when some meet the Lord in civic spaces the result may be an occasion for sarcasm, mockery, and rejection.  But we who are believers serve as signposts today, pointing our contemporaries to the real presence of God with us.  By prayer and fasting, which I beg of you to take up in these next days, we serve to pray for our nation in this electoral cycle, praying that good and godly candidates be chosen to lead us.  We serve both by the reverence of our bodies and the sincerity of words to truly mean that acclamation: Hail, King of the Jews!  Hail, Christ our King!  We commit ourselves today to carry our Lord into all the activities and places of our lives.  We give the Lord thanks for remaining with us.  And we ask that we may be more docile to his grace so that, unlike the mockery of the soldiers, we may truly reverence him as the king of every aspect of our lives, the king of our parishes, the king of our city, state and nation.