CENTENNIAL

On October 22, 2006, Corpus Christi Church and School celebrated their centennial at a festive bilingual Mass. Here is Fr. Rafferty's homily on that historic occasion.

OUR CENTENNIAL,

29th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

October 22, 2006

Readings:

Isaiah 53:10-11, Hebrews 4:14-16, Mark10:35-45

When we think of a servant, a slave, we think of something messy--calloused knees, dirty hands, bowed shoulders. Jesus himself stands as the bloodiest example. He was born in blood when he as God became flesh. We recall the humble service he performed in washing the dirty feet of his apostles. There was blood which came from his body when he was whipped, and there were the bowed shoulders when he carried the cross.

We can think of followers of his whose bodies have been wracked with pain as they seek to free the captive, feed the hungry, give shelter to the homeless. As servants, they follow the example of him who came not to be served, but to serve.

But the servanthood of leadership may not always be physically messy as these images. It can still serve. It can still lead.

I think of the knees of a young woman whom Thomas Merton describes during his first visit to Corpus Christi. Merton entered the church on an August Sunday when he was a graduate student at Columbia in 1938. He had just begun thinking of faith and God. In The Seven Storey Mountain, he writes:

I found a place that I hoped would be obscure, over on one side, in the back,

and went to it without genuflecting, and knelt down. As I knelt, the first thing

I noticed was a young girl, very pretty too, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, kneeling

straight up and praying quite seriously. I was very much impressed to see that

someone who was young and beautiful could with such simplicity make prayer

the real and serious and principal reason for going to church. She was clearly

kneeling that way because she meant it, not in order to show off, and she was

praying with an absorption which, though not the deep recollection of a saint,

was serious enough to show that she was not thinking at all about the other

people who were there. What a revelation it was, to discover so many ordinary

people in a place together, more conscious of God than of one another . . .

That girl was a servant to Merton.

I think of the sweat that may have poured from the mind of Fr. Joe Moore, the young priest whose sermon Merton heard that Sunday and who moved Merton to pursue his entrance by baptism into Catholicism. Merton states that "the sermon was what I most needed to hear that day."

This parish has been in the forefront of the ecumenical movement since Fr. Ford's day, decades before Roman Catholics recognized the presence of the Spirit in other traditions. How servantlike and humbling it can be to call another Christian our brother and sister when so many of us were raised to think of the other as rivals.

One cannot ignore the servanthood of teachers, religious Sisters of Charity, Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, and lay teachers who expend their lives by teaching children. In particular, we honor Sr. Mary Tyler. She called me about one month ago and said that she expected to be here today. But death claimed Mary last Monday. Though physically not well, in 2000 she returned as principal--a true servant. How many of our lay faculty have taken jobs with little compensation, but they serve in the molding and empowerment of youth, teaching them the love of God in Christ Jesus. Lay teachers in our religious education classes give up Saturdays or Sundays to teach that same love of God to our children.

One can serve the human spirit and soul by worship and its music. Again, Merton in his book Seasons of Celebration:

The words, songs, ceremonies, signs, movements of worship are all designed,

by their very nature, to open the mind and heart of the participant to this experience

of oneness in Christ. But this sacramental consciousness depends first of all on

human sympathy, relatedness, and on some degree of mutual understanding.

Hence the obligation to be at peace with all before going to worship.

One reason why I am a Catholic, a monk, and a priest today is that I first

went to Mass, and kept going to Mass, in a Church where these things were

realized. No matter how progressive Father Ford may have been (and, thank God,

still is), Corpus Christi Church had the same Roman liturgy as everyone else in

1938. It was just the familiar Mass that is now being radically reformed. There

was nothing new or revolutionary about it; only that everything was well done,

not out of aestheticism or rubrical obsessiveness, but out of love for God and

His truth.

Servanthood is reflected in the intellectual tradition which has been a powerful part of the ministry of this parish. Corpus Christi is about the smallest institution on Morningside Heights, but it takes its place and is invited to take its place alongside the great institutions of religion and learning that inhabit the Heights. I remember Rabbi Gilman of Jewish Theological Seminary when I went to ask him to preach here at Lenten Vespers. His response: "For the church of Fr. Bourke I would do anything. He did so much for us at JTS." Service in the intellectual sphere may not conjure up the calloused knees and stooped shoulders, but one faithfully serves by the work of the mind in the service of truth. In these days, when Roman Catholicism is bowed low because of many reasons, it takes servant leadership to explain and give witness to its beliefs, sacraments, and rituals. And who can forget the ministry of Fr. Raymond Brown when he taught at Union Theological Seminary. His ministry was nourished here and witnessed here.

Our parish has many ethnic traditions which seek to live in peace and worship. Jesus speaks of the gentiles lording it over one another. At the table of the Lord, people of many traditions serve one another and love one another, accept one another's differences, recognize one's unity in Christ. That is not always easy, but for one hundred years we have worked at this.

I have often wondered what was going on in 1906 when the archdiocese told Fr. Dooley that the new parish he was to open on Morningside Heights was to be called Corpus Christi, and not Our Lady of something or St. Mary, for example. Fr. Dooley was called from St. Sylvia, Tivoli, the northernmost parish in the archdiocese, to come to Morningside Heights and build a parish. Archivists, take note. I haven't found why Corpus Christi was given this name, but I will continue to look and ask others to look with me.

But how fitting for a group of Christ's servants to be called Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. St. Paul tells us that we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually parts of one another. We could not have a more glorious name as servants of Jesus Christ for one hundred years on Morningside Heights. For this, for one hundred years of servant ministry, and for the grace to both continue and find new ways to serve today, let us give thanks and beg for abundant new grace.

Click here for short continuation in Spanish.