Dear Sisters, Associates and Colleagues,
Happy Feast of Corpus Christi. Last week we spent time trying to get our minds and hearts around the concept of the Trinity—One God in Three Persons. Today, we celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi, which is The Body of Christ, or as the feast is now more formally titled, The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.
For about 14 weeks, due to the pandemic, our worship has been disrupted. Many of us have not been able to celebrate the Eucharist in person or receive the Body and Blood of Jesus as we have been accustomed to before the coronavirus. For months, livestreaming has become the norm for our worship together as a community. Most of us have been relegated to watching Mass on our computers or smart phones. We have been unable to participate in receiving the Body and Blood of Christ and have been able only to offer a prayer for spiritual communion.
In some of our residences, due to the kindness of our brother priests, our sisters have been able to continue to gather together in person, observing social distancing, to pray together and to receive communion in spite of these many weeks of COVID-19. Today, I was informed that Villa Notre Dame celebrated an in person liturgy for the first time since before Holy Week. Many thanks to all those who made this possible. We still have Sisters throughout the province who have been receiving the sacrament spiritually and attending Sunday liturgies virtually. For many of us it has been a spiritual poverty in these challenges times. However, the inability to receive the Body and Blood of Christ does not exclude us from being Eucharist—being the body of Christ to one another and being the body of Christ to our suffering, fragile and broken world.
During these days and months of the pandemic, as I remained in isolation, and practiced social-distancing in the midst of the racial tensions, protests, unrest and police brutality, I have asked myself the question, “How have I been the ‘body of Christ’ through it all? What have I learned as I’ve had the luxury of remaining in the quiet of my home, had the opportunity for more prayer, reading and reflecting? Moreover, how has God called me to live in a new way? How have these months transformed me and enabled me to be “the body of Christ” in a new way? How have I done my part in building up the body of Christ as I witnessed the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus in the faces of those who suffered and died during this pandemic, in the faces of those who put themselves and their families aside so that we could remain safe? How have I used this time to educate myself about the racial tension in our world and about the suffering people must encounter because of the color of their skin? How have I stood in solidarity with the people who have lost their lives to armed violence, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many others.
As someone who has benefited from white privilege and who belongs to a church and religious community who has failed to address the sin of racism, I have asked myself how have I been the body of Christ and, like Jesus, sided with the poor and the marginalized? The coronavirus has given us the opportunity to be more aware our relationship with God and with the world. Let us pray that as individuals, as a province and as a congregation we give witness to the Body of Christ and direct our entire lives toward that oneness for which Jesus Christ was sent. Let us continue to pray that we might trust and dare in these transformative times and continue to open our hearts to those in most need of our love.
Many blessings, happy feast day, and stay safe and well.
Charmaine Krohe, SSND
Provincial Leader
School Sisters of Notre Dame
Atlantic-Midwest Province
