So all of us have gone through probably more than one conversion.  That’s my contention, especially when you look at the scriptures, that we have a tendency to think that maybe that happened once. But I think conversion is an ongoing process that you go through it again and again and again as it gets deeper.

And one of the conversions I went through was when I was 18, and I don’t need to go into the background of that, but it was right after that that I started going to Daily Mass.  And I was ordained a deacon when I was 30 and a priest when I was 31, and I’m 39 now.

My pants feel really warm now, I wonder, liar, liar, pants on fire. So as a priest, and that means I’m going on about 41 years. But during that time from 18 till today, there’s not very many times I haven’t received the Eucharist.  And I mean, obviously there’s times when it just couldn’t do that, but for the most part, there’s very, very few times that I have not received the Eucharist from that It’s really important to me. And I know that it’s important to you, not what I said, but the Eucharist is important to you because you’re here.  You may be here for other reasons as well. But the fact that  I have been asked, not that often, but asked if I ever got tired or bored about doing the Eucharist. And I could honestly say, and every time I’ve answered that question, I thought, no, not even in the slightest.  It’s never ever, oh, wow, I gotta go do the Eucharist again.  And I look at that as a particular gift from the Lord.  And that would be an ongoing gift that I would hope and pray that that would grow in you.  That every opportunity you would have to be able to receive the Eucharist, you would take it.  Because that would become something that was important to you.

So obviously today with the Feast of Corpus Christi, it lends itself to talk a little bit about that.  So what I wanted to do, and I’m conscious of the fact that I have about 10 minutes. So I will probably stop right in the middle before I’m at. But I wanna try to do whole time, hopefully meaningful, but quickly so that it will make some degree of sense. So I have, like last week, we had the Feast of the Holy Trinity. And so we talked about the economic Trinity, the imminent Trinity.  And you remember all of that? God the Father revealed in Jesus who remains with us in the Holy Spirit, God the Father creates, God the Son redeems, God the Holy Spirit sanctifies. Why does he do that? To draw us into the imminent Trinity, into that Paracaresis, so that we can get into that fellowship, that intimacy that the Lord’s calling us into. So to do with the Son of God, there is always and forever, because he’s 100% man and 100% God, there’s always now a human in the context of that Paracaresis. And we are in him and we’re invited into that reality. Remember that? Yes. So a thing to keep in mind.

So to do with, and this will probably be, it’s gonna be very, very, very short. But remember when I’ve shared with you about those three early Christologies, Jesus as Son of Man, Jesus as Lord, Jesus as Logos. And about the development of what that was. Jesus as a Son of Man, it was a completely Jewish audience. And he fulfilled all of the Jewish expectations. And as it began to grow outside of Palestine, it was half Jew and half Greek. And some of those terms they were not real familiar with. And so Paul was led to bring up another term, and that is Jesus is Lord.  He’s Lord in the sense that he will return to vindicate himself, but he’s also Lord because he’s presently active in the gifts of the Holy Spirit operating in the lives of the church and the people today.  And that Jesus is the Logos. And that’s when the fact that Christianity begins to move and interface completely now with a Greek audience or with a Gentile audience. And the Logos, that’s a multifaceted term that does not translate very well into the English.  Because when you think of John chapter one, the prologue, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, that Word there that’s used as Logos. It’s a multifaceted term.  It means things like that Jesus is the action of God, he’s the agent of God, he’s the communication of God, he is the reason of God, he’s the revelation of God, he’s the pattern of God. And I don’t know if you remember all that, but I went through all of that. I went through all of that several times to give that to you so that you would have some basis when you look at that. So when we go to the creed, go down a little bit. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. So remember, the Father is not older than Jesus.

Okay, you know that, right? Sometimes think, well, when Jesus was begotten, was there ever a time when the Father was alone? No, okay. Jesus has always been, okay, he’s always been begotten. What does that have to do with the incarnation, right? Begotten, not made, so keep going down. Oh, wait a minute, go back. Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God. Talking about who he is. And because see Arius, and that was one of the early heresies, and that was saying that Jesus is really special, really, really special. Firstborn of all creation. Everything was created through him and everything was created for him, but he was created. Because there was a point in time when God was alone and Jesus came forth. And the church early on said, nope, it’s not the truth at all. Jesus has always been. He is God of God, light of light, very God of very God.

It’s really important when we look at that, when you look at the context of Corpus Christi and the Eucharist, who it is that we are receiving. I know I’m talking to the choir, but again to go back and to say who it is, we are receiving the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. He’s not parceled out. You are receiving all of him. But the Father and the Holy Spirit is also present. Remember when we talked about the fact that God created, so that must mean that Jesus and the Holy Spirit was someplace else in heaven doing their own thing. Maybe one was in the basement, maybe one was in the living room, while the Father was created. They were all there. Okay, they were all there. So why am I saying that to try to move to the idea of that Jesus as the logos, and it’s the last word that I gave you, the pattern.  Jesus is the pattern of God.  See, there’s not anything random about what he does. And sometimes we look in our lives and we find what we perceive is a kind of randomness. Think about the liturgical calendar versus the secular calendar. There is a rhythm in heaven, right? That’s very, very different than the rhythm on earth. It has a tendency to be chaotic, has a tendency to be a cacophony, but there is not typically a rhythm. And we spend a lot of time trying to create a rhythm that doesn’t actually intrinsically exist.  It doesn’t exist in the world in which we live, because it’s a fallen world. And we try to make sense out of that and grab onto things so that we can have some sense of symphony, harmony.  And you notice how that’s always elusive?  It’s always elusive. And so you look at something as might be so simplistic as the liturgical calendar and say, “Well, the year starts completely different. It starts typically right after Thanksgiving with the feast of Christ the King, and Advent is the beginning of the year.” See, in our secular world, it starts the first. It’s like, so everything’s off. So you look at everything in the secular calendar, everything is off. Everything is off.

It’s, if you like to use that as an illustration, the liturgical calendar, that’s where the rhythm is. That’s where the pattern is. The Eucharist is the perfect pattern of God.  The perfect pattern, because it’s His honoring His prayer that we are invited into of worship of the Father. It’s His perfect pattern. It’s perfect prayer.  There’s nothing about it that’s random. And everything that happens in that, you’re invited into that synergy. You’re invited in that perichoresis. You’re invited into that intimacy in the very midst of what it is that He’s doing. Because see, the Eucharist is not my deal. It’s not Bishop Jones’ deal. It’s not your deal. It’s His.  It’s His, totally, completely His. And to be invited into that, invited into the logos,

God of God, light of light, very God of very God, and the union in the intimacy that you’re called into to celebrate that perfect, absolute perfect pattern.  And so remember when we had talked a little bit about the whole notion of worship, of how important worship is, which really doesn’t have anything to do with how you feel, but it all has to do that you’re called to do that. Because the very purpose in which you come to church, right, is not to what? Get. It’s first and foremost to give.  And the very process of giving, the Lord returns abundantly, but we’re called to give. And so we’re called to worship Him. And so we’re watching the Lord Jesus worship the Father perfectly, and we enter into that. The perfect pattern. Why would you miss that? Mary.  Why would you miss that perfection? The beauty and the wonder of His perfect prayer. Thomas Merton, and that may be a name that some of you are familiar with, it may be a name that some of you are not. I don’t wanna take time to go into that. But he said in the very process of his whole Christian journey, that he went to a liturgy at this particular monastery, and he said, “I have found what the entire world “revolves around.”

The Eucharist. The entire world revolves around the Eucharist.  What if that’s the first time that some of you may have heard that? It’s been around for a long time. Maybe it’s not the first time you heard that, but what if all of a sudden you started to take that and put that on and go, “What if that’s true?”  What if this is the perfect prayer, the perfect pattern? And given my time, here’s where I wanna kinda end up.  Remember in talking about the seven signs in the book of John, remember book of John, the gospel of John, book of signs, book of glory. And in the book of signs, there’s seven signs. And in the book of signs, in book of glory, there’s those seven ego-emie statements that are woven through the gospel of John.  I am the bread of life, right?  I am the light of the world. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the vine. Before Abraham was, I am. All of those I am statements that are woven in there, right? Remember the first sign? What was the first sign? Wedding feast at Gannon. Okay, wedding feast at Gannon. And what’s the last ego-emie statement? I am the vine, you are the branches. See, there’s already a connection.

But that whole notion of that Jesus turns the water into wine, and it said after that, the disciples bleed in him, just like that. They saw those, what was it? 120 to 180 gallons of water turned into wine, like that. And it said after that, they believed. It all had to do with Isaiah 35, Isaiah 25, the abundance, the abundance of the banquet. So in the midst of that, remember what it is that I told you with every sign, there is either discourse material or other events that take place that point back to help us understand what that sign meant. Remember the three things that followed? The marriage feast at Gannon, the cleansing of the temple, the dialogue with Nicodemus, and the Samaritan woman. And all of those point back to that thing. So think about this. Think about John the Baptist, right? His father is a priest, Zechariah.  His mother also comes from a priestly lineage, Elizabeth. You would think that you would have saw him in the temple, but he’s not. He’s in the wilderness, calling for the baptism of repentance and saying that there’s going to be one coming who I and none of us are worthy to even touch the sandal strap on his sandal, but he’s going to baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire. Remember that? But by the very fact that you would think that you would have found John the Baptist in the temple, but you don’t, you find him in the wilderness, talking about a baptism of repentance. And now you have after Jesus multiplies the loaves or I mean the water into wine, he goes into the temple and what does he do? He cleanses the temple.  What was supposed to happen in the temple? Cleansed, at least that, right?  There was something else that was supposed to be happening in the temple. So Nicodemus comes to the Lord Jesus and says, we know that you are someone from God because no one can do the things that you do or teach the things that you do if they’re not from God. And so Jesus begins to instruct Nicodemus and at one point Jesus will look, and I think this was done very humorously. He looks at Nicodemus and says, not that you are a, he says you are the teacher of Israel and you don’t get this. Why else did you go to the temple? To be taught. To be taught.  And then the next scene is Jesus with a Samaritan woman who’s, you know, half Jew, half Samaritan and talking about where worship is to take place and all that and Jesus will say, you know, worship at some point that you’re going to understand doesn’t take place there. It’s going to take place where? In him. Because what the Father is looking for is true worshipers, those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. And after this interaction with Jesus, she is so blown away that she goes running into Sychar and to say, I have met the Messiah. I have met the one we’ve been waiting for. She comes back, what? Healed. Are you following me? Yes. So why else did you go to the temple? To be healed. Now what Jesus says is why do we come to him and what does the Eucharist do? It cleanses you, it teaches you and it heals you. The perfect pattern. The perfect pattern. The perfect pattern.  And you can take all of that by looking at that symbol pericope that we find in John to do with the very first sign. I would suggest to you this, there is so much more going on in the Eucharist that we can even begin to imagine. I was at this place years and years and years ago, probably maybe 35 years ago, and there was a woman who was a seer, a prophetic seer.

And after the Eucharist, because we would be praying with a lot of people for healing, she would start to say what it was that was going on during the Eucharist at each moment where the Lord was moving, where the Lord was touching what he was doing throughout the entire pageantry that was unfolding. There’s so much more going on.  It’s absolutely profound. And remember why this is elevated? Not because heaven comes down because we’re drawn up. See, to every Eucharist, we are drawn up into the presence of the Lord. Heaven doesn’t come down. Heaven doesn’t come down. We are drawn up. It’s a life of exchange.  We always trade up and the Lord draws us higher into that perfect pattern.

I gotta stop because of time. Could you follow that a bit? Do you like it? It has nothing to do with me. But just to be able to start spending some time thinking about what if this is the perfect pattern. So listen to the rest of the prayers and the liturgy in maybe a way that you haven’t today. And to consider that and to think of that in the context, the perfect prayer, the perfect pattern, and in the process, cleansing, teaching, and healing.