Homily given on 20 October at Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane
‘This sanctuary has been opened to be specifically devoted to the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament’. These are the words of Cardinal Manning, spoken 150 years ago today, on 20 October 1874, at the opening of this Church of Corpus Christi. Today, we thank God, joyfully, that adoration of the Blessed Sacrament continues to be at the heart of this Church. For it is a role central to our faith, and fulfilled here amidst such devotion and beauty.
The foundation stone was laid on 5 August just one year earlier, 1873, on this site previously part of the garden of the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter in Westminster. Building must have proceeded at quite a pace, reflecting not only the dedication of the founding parish priest, Fr Cornelius Keens, but also the generosity of the people. From the very start of the project the church was intended be dedicated to Corpus Christi, the first such dedication of a church in this country after the Reformation.
Today this Church, this Shrine, is an invaluable part of our heritage and one which we will pass on to future generations with all the care that is rightly lavished upon it.
And we will hand on not only the Church itself, but also the devotion found here to the Blessed Sacrament. That devotion is so beautifully expressed in the hymn ‘Sweet Sacrament Divine’ written here by Fr Francis Stanfield, parish priest here in the early 1880s. This morning we will sing his words with more love and devotion than ever!
The readings we have just heard lead us to reflect again on, and appreciate afresh, the wonder of this Sacrament.
Let us start with the Gospel. Here we heard anew the proclamation of Jesus that he ‘did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as ransom for many.’
Jesus, we know, came to serve one thing above all else. He came to serve the will of his Father. Everything he did was for that purpose. This became so clear in the agony of Jesus in the garden before his death. In that moment the deepest motivation in the heart of Jesus was laid bare: ‘Father, not my will but thine be done.’ He lived out that motivation to the end.
And this, we pray, is the motivation throughout our lives too: to do the will of our loving Father, just as Jesus did, even to the end.
Now at this time there is much public debate precisely about the ‘end’, the ending of life. For us, the followers of Jesus, the crux of the matter is clear. We live according to the will of the Father. And we die according to the will of the Father. This gives us peace. When he calls we are ready to go. Not before. Not my will, but thine, be done.
Today’s readings also make clear that the will of the Father does not eliminate suffering from our lives. Indeed, at the Father’s will, Jesus shared in the weight of human suffering. Within this plan of our salvation, suffering is transformed into an ultimate offering of love, that of a faithful servant giving their best in prayer and closeness to Christ. This does not and must not exclude the right use of every good gift of pain management and relief at moments of illness and distress. All the skill and care of the medical professions, developed over centuries and progressing even today, should be at the service of those in their last days in pain and distress. Palliative care is a gift from which no-one in need should be excluded.
But now let me turn to the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews and to these few words: ‘We have a supreme high priest who has gone through to the highest heaven.’
This, too, has a great bearing on the current debate about assisted dying.
Death is something that we all must face. It can seem that we have to face it alone, even when surrounded by love, care and prayers. Yet these few words from that reading teach us something else, something of great importance: that Jesus has already passed through the narrow door of death and he, our supreme high priest, will be there with us, taking us through to the highest heaven, into the presence of his Father. With him at our side we can indeed ‘be confident in approaching the throne of grace’, the merciful embrace of our Father. We never die alone. The Lord is with us.
All of this is given to us in this most Blessed Sacrament.
This sacrament is our Food for life, the ‘panis vitae’, and the inspiration for our daily lives. It is also our ‘Viaticum’, the food for our passing from this world to the next. This is our tradition: to ensure that the person soon to embark on that journey through death receives the most precious body and blood of Christ. In receiving Christ we are absorbed into Christ. And then it is Christ himself who carries us, in his own body, into the mercy of the Father and the glory of heaven.
As we follow and contribute to the debate about life and death in our society today, we should make a special effort to beseech the Lord to protect our society from an impoverished view of life merely as a personal project, rather than a wondrous gift of God. And from a view of death as no more than a final extinguishing of life, to be decided at a moment of our own choosing, rather than death being the start, in God’s own good time, of a journey into heaven, in the arms of our loving Saviour.
Where better to make this prayer than here, in this Church of Corpus Christi, a ‘dear home’ to the hearts of so many for the past 150 years. The concerns of countless lives have been brought to the Lord here, before the Blessed Sacrament. For we know: ‘In thy far depths doth shine thy Godhead’s majesty’. We are privileged to see a glimpse of that majesty here in this Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament. And today, for all that this church has meant in the past century and a half, and for our own ‘restless yearnings’, we raise our voices and our hearts, in a song of ‘love and heartfelt praise’.
Amen.