This reflection is based on Matthew 16:13-19 on the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul.
At first glance, lumping Peter and Paul together in one feast in the Church seems pretty strange. After all, there was a time in history when these two Jews, who could not have come from more different backgrounds, found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict.
This reflection is based on John 6:51-58 for the Solemnity of the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ.
My first thought whenever I hear of the Solemnity of the Corpus Christi is the Mass bread and wine. And why not? We Catholics believe that at the Consecration, the bread and wine are transformed not just into a symbol of Christ’s presence, but to His actual body and blood. You may not understand it, or you may even choose not to believe it, but it’s not a shocking idea at all.
This reflection was made on the occasion of Pentecost Sunday, which this year falls on 08 June, the death anniversary of the English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.
I read my first Hopkins poem as a freshman in high school. The poem was “God’s Grandeur” contained in an anthology of poems carefully selected and compiled for us by our English teachers.
But between me and Hopkins, it wasn’t a case of love at first sight. An adolescent who had barely learned to appreciate any kind of poetry, I found his language and style too alien. And for some reason, the verses he wrote were much less accessible to me than the better known and more frequently quoted poems about roads less taken, tigers burning bright, and even that one creepy raven.