Feast of Corpus Christi

“Where do you want us to go …?” (Mk 14:12f)

In today’s Gospel, according to Mark, the disciples asked Jesus ‘where do You want us to go to make the preparations for You…?’ Jesus answers them ‘Go into the city…’ and further, when they do what he has told them, they will discover that everything is ‘all prepared’.

When I am in doubt about where the Lord wants me, wondering how it is that He wants me to love Him – how to follow Him – how to know Him – these are statements that it would be well for me to remember.

Where do You want me to go to prepare?
Go into the city. … all prepared

If I ask the Lord in faith for the gift of being able to listen to Him, I believe that somehow He will give me the answer I seek, because what I ask is only Him – I want Jesus, because in Jesus is everything. I want Him to show me the way, so I must have the humility to hear what He is saying to me, and the courage to accept His word.

He says to me – ‘go into the city’ – a bit difficult, because I’m here in a monastery, living as a nun, and I’ve left all things to follow Him, so how can I go into the city? But, maybe the ‘city’ is the place where I am, a city built on a hilltop - whose population is the sisters with whom I live and work and pray and learn to love and follow the Lord. And it’s a busy city. Busy enough at times to distract me from the remembrance of God, even to make me forget that here is where I know the Lord is most close to me. This is where He has invited me to be – to sit with Him and to pray for the life of the world, which is so very dear to Him.

How do I prepare? Especially when He reminds me that here, everything is ‘all prepared’? But my preparation must be within myself – I must prepare to accept this city as it is, because it is His city, which He has prepared. All He invites me to do is to see this city as His gift to me, the place where I will find Him – Him Whom I seek: the Life of my soul. It’s as easy as that! I don’t have to change the people around me, to make them what I think they should be – they are already the children of God, and in each of them He is pleased to make a home for Himself. I have only to prepare to be open to receiving such a gift.

And what happens when I say ‘yes’?

I hear Him say to me … “Take it, … this is my Body. … This is my Blood.”

Today is the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ – let us seek and find Him in the faces of all who cross our path today, and always.