Corpus Christi
Dear Family,
Memorial Day Weekend and the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ occur together this year. (Stick with the Latin name of the feast: it’s shorter.) If you’d like a good overview of Memorial Day, check out Wikipedia’s contribution. Wikipedia also has an article on American combat deaths throughout our history as well as casualties related to those wars. Cf. “United States military casualties of war.” Stunning. Although I had seen it before, seeing again the number of 600,000 casualties during the Civil War always grabs me.
In many ways it’s too bad that Memorial Day has become more of starting line for summer, than keeping its focus of honoring those who died in service. Memorial Day or Decoration Day (when we put flowers on the graves of our people who died in military service) used to always be May 30th. Then we got caught in the long-weekend syndrome. Business rules! Sorry. I’m not really that cynical. Remembering those who have died while in service also presents itself with special challenges. What kind of emotions does the remembering evoke? There is the sadness of loss that family members must bear.
There is also a certain sense of bewilderment wondering about how we get into the wars in the first place. We defend ourselves from unjust aggressors but always with the obligation of not becoming one ourselves. The recent recollection of Morley Safer’s Vietnam reporting told us again of how no war is waged without atrocities on every side. Emerging from the mists of all the memories of war comes the ghostly specters of 20-something young people we never got to know. That’s the Memorial Day I hope we can spend a little bit of prayerful time thinking about tomorrow; gratitude for self-sacrifice and never glorifying that heroism to the point that it separates us from who and what it took.
Rarely do those who fight the wars decide to have them. Maybe having Corpus Christi this weekend could help us, the believing community, remember our special obligation to be bulwarks against war precisely because when Jesus became one of us he redefined our destinies. Our future is not decided on battlefields but on His Cross which opened the gates to the halls of eternal life. In his Body and Blood, the Eucharist, the thanksgiving, we find food for living HIS Life. He certainly fought His war, but he triumphed over evil and chose to remain with us, in Communion with us.
With any kind of luck, both in the weather department as well as the health one, on Saturday evening - yesterday– we processed with the Body of the Lord in four directions to bless all that the winds touch.As I remember our service people I pray for them. I also pray in gratitude for their part in giving me the freedom that comes from being a part of a good nation.
Remembering means not only the names of those who have died but also remembering the ‘why.’ It also calls me to a deeper desire to work in whatever ways I can to let our country continue to be all we said it is in our most flag-waving moments. It means I won’t let the silly season of political campaigns turn me into a cynic, which I already said I am not.
Happy Corpus Christi! Happy Memorial Day! If it seems like an odd juxtaposition, take a deep breath and ask the Lord in his presence to bless our land.
In Jesus,
