Oklahoma weather and becoming Eucharist

Just two nights ago, my parents, two of my children and their spouses and all three of our grandchildren—all piled into a small double closet under the stairs as we took shelter from possible tornadoes nearby on yet another crazy Oklahoma stormy night.

Photographer: Carlos Weaver

courtesy of  Life Teen, Mesa, Arizona

When it comes to weather, May is always a nutty month in Central Oklahoma. We know all too well the rules and patterns of severe weather and tornadoes. But even around here, the past couple of weeks have been especially treacherous.

Once the anxious hours were behind us, I found myself pondering about this experience in light of our feast this weekend. We celebrate what once upon a time as a child we called Corpus Christi—and we now call the feast of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ. 

Someone asked me recently what difference does the Eucharist make in my daily life, how can it affect what we label as “real life”?  For me, it means everything.

It’s what my wise pastor calls the difference between taking communion and becoming communion. It is more than Christ being in us. We, in communion, are in Christ!

Fr. Boyer leads school children in a Eucharistic procession

Here’s how Fr. Thomas Boyer described it in his homily this weekend. We gather together as a Church so that every time we assemble around the altar, 

“we may become more and more the very Christ we consume, so that finally having been gathered in communion and grafted onto this vine, no one will be hungry, no one will go away thirsty from this well of divine life, and all creation where ever we are found will in glory reflect the creator whose life is our privilege to share and whose gifts bring the duty to give. The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ is the Church in Communion from which no one should be sent away.”

 [To read his whole homily, go here] 

Our blood family came through the storms with nothing but stories to tell. But our Church family is hurting. Our friend Gary told me today that his mother, his brother, and his sister-in-law all lost their houses and are, literally, “starting from scratch.”

And our young friend Ken, one of those infamous storm-chasers, told me after Mass that he had just found out that his friend, afellow storm-chaser, died covering Friday night’s storms.

When one hurts, we all hurt. This is the Church in Communion.