PASTORAL LETTER

OF THE MOST REVEREND BERNARD LONGLEY OF BIRMINGHAM FOR THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI 2/3 JUNE 2018

Where is my dining room in which I can eat the passover with my disciples?

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

This weekend we are united in celebrating the great feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, the day which we also know as Corpus Christi. Although we gather around many different altars for today’s , across the many communities that make up the family of our Archdiocese, we are completely united with one another and with the Church throughout the world in this celebration.

That is because the Lord has left us the Eucharist as the gift of his own body and blood, offered up on Calvary for our salvation, as the sacrament of unity. Whenever we celebrate the Mass we become ourselves the Body of Christ, the Church, and we reflect the gift of unity that binds us in faith and affection to one another. Even if we are unable at this time to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion, for whatever reason, we are nonetheless truly united with Christ and with all our brothers and sisters around the altar of sacrifice in a unity which he has the power to deepen.

St Mark’s Gospel reminds us that the Lord did not institute the Eucharist as a private devotion. There is no such thing as a private Mass - even in the rare circumstances when a priest may have to celebrate the Mass by himself - because he is always united with the Church in heaven and on earth through the action of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. From the beginning Christ gave his body and blood to others, in the company of the apostles that gathered with him for his Last Supper.

As he prepared for this final, transformed passover meal on the evening before he died Our Lord asked: Where is my dining room in which I can eat the passover with my disciples? When he asked us to do this in memory of me he wished us to participate in his Eucharist together, united as it were around the table of his Last Supper and at the foot of the cross of sacrifice where he died for us on Calvary. Each one of us is drawn by our inner hunger for the food of life towards the altar of sacrifice and the sacred table of the Eucharist.

Today we may ask ourselves the Lord’s own question: where is the dining room in which I can eat the Eucharist with the Lord and with his disciples today? In church and chapel we are gathered around his altar this weekend and in this place we are bound to one another in a new and unbreakable bond of shared faith and through our shared kinship with Christ. Corpus Christi is also the feast day of the family of the Church, since the Eucharist unites us as the Lord’s brothers and sisters, faithful to him and faithful to one another because of him.

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As within every family, we do not choose who our brothers and sisters will be. They are a gift to us, brought into being through the love of our parents. Whenever we celebrate the Eucharist we experience a home-coming, a return to the place of welcome prepared by the Church as a mother welcomes her children, gathered around the table of the Lord. There are moments when we sense a need to come together for the big family gathering, demonstrating our unity and rejoicing in what we share together.

One such moment in the life of the in England and Wales will be the National Eucharistic Congress Adoremus taking place in Liverpool from Friday 7th to Sunday 9th September. On the Saturday we shall meet for the main event, to reflect on what the gift of the Eucharist means to us and to adore Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. It is our opportunity to witness nationally to the abiding presence of the Lord in the Eucharist and to our gratitude for the life-giving gift that he has left to us for the good of others. Your Priest can help you to access more information about how to register to be part of the 10,000-strong congregation we hope to see in Liverpool at Adoremus.

The priestly vocation lies at the heart of the Eucharist, so I ask you to pray for vocations this Corpus Christi, and to pray for the priests who so faithfully and generously offers their lives in joyful service. I also know how much they are inspired by the uplifting and strengthening example of your own faithfulness to Christ. This year, beginning on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I am inviting all our parishes to observe a Year for Priests. I have sent a prayer specially written for our priests to use throughout this year, as well as a prayer for you to offer for their intentions. You are most closely united together whenever they celebrate the Mass in your community.

Two extraordinary priests have helped to shape the family of our Archdiocese, and the story of their lives providentially overlapped because Christ called them to serve in the Midlands. Blessed had the joy of being received into the Catholic Church during the celebration of the Mass in the library of the College where he lived in Littlemore, a short distance from Oxford. He was completely united with the Catholic Church through the Sacrament of the Eucharist that he received at the hands of Blessed , the Passionist priest who celebrated Mass on the table in that library.

I am sure that Blessed Cardinal Newman could not have imagined such an event taking place in the library at Littlemore - that this would be the place where heaven and earth would meet and where he would first receive Holy Communion as a Catholic. At such a sublime moment this was for him the answer to the Lord’s question: Where is my dining room in which I can eat the passover with my disciples - and his companion on the way was the Italian priest who came to serve him at that crucial time because he had a great love for England.

So God’s providence made the Eucharist available for Blessed John Henry Newman though the dedicated service of a priest - so would Cardinal Newman take the Eucharist to the poor of Birmingham, to the sick and the dying as their food for the journey. So do we continue to receive the Lord today through the ministry of his priests.

On the feast of his Body and Blood we thank Our Lord for this abiding sign of his love for us and for the world which he lived and died to save. We ask that our devotion to his Eucharistic presence may grow stronger and that it may always bear fruit in our desire to go out and serve the needs of our brothers and sisters. Through the prayers of Blessed John Henry Newman and Blessed

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Dominic Barberi may we be united in faith, witness and service as the Eucharistic family of the Lord.

O Sacrament most holy! O Sacrament divine! All praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine.

Yours devotedly in Christ

Bernard Longley

Given at Birmingham on the 31 May 2018 and appointed to be read in all Churches and Chapels of the Archdiocese on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 2/3 June 2018.

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