Virtual... Perhaps this is the best word to sum up what we have all endured during the last year and a half. Nearly every aspect of our lives has been touched by this word. We encounter each other on our phones and computers. Our work is virtual. Students go to a virtual school. Mass has been virtual. This virtual existence is a result of the restrictions placed on us by the virus, but it has also been the result of a culture that was already dominated by screens and in which real human interaction is increasingly difficult to experience. My favorite author G.K. Chesterton wrote that, “A dead thing can go with the current, but only a living thing can go against it.” With the current of our culture sweeping us in all sorts of directions, we must actively fight to swim against it. The virtual experience was necessary for a time, but we are moving back to life where we need to seek out those things which are Real. As men and women alive in Christ we are called to contradict the world and to fight the currents that draw us away from our Lord. We are called to draw close to Him who is the source of all Reality.
This last Sunday, we celebrated the great Feast of Corpus Christi. The obligation to attend Sunday Mass was reinstituted, and we are in the process of transitioning from a virtual experience of Mass and prayer back to the Real Thing. As Christians, we have been given a tall task of sanctifying the world, but we have not been left to our own abilities. Christ, who understands the weakness of our condition has not abandoned us but has left us the necessary aids to grow in holiness, and thankfully, they are very far from virtual. The two main ways by which we encounter Christ and grow in holiness are The Eucharist and the Church, the Body and the Bride of Christ. Last weekend, we were invited to encounter both of these: to assemble as the People of God, and to receive our Lord in His Most Precious Body and Blood in reality. Christ did not just leave us with a series of spiritual platitudes transcending our everyday life. He chose to leave us visible signs of His Body. He chooses to be Really present in the forms of bread and wine, and in the members of His Church.
Contrary to this virtual life we have been living, we have been invited back to an encounter with the Real Presence of Christ. Perhaps we felt abandoned by God during these months. Perhaps we felt the isolation that comes with social distancing. Whatever our experience has been, Christ has never left us. “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20) It is during these upcoming months that we must intentionally pursue communion with Christ in The Eucharist and The Church. These two realities, which many of us have gone without, are stable points of contact with Christ in an ever-changing world. No matter what happens in our lives, in our country, in the world, these two rocks will remain, for they are Real.
In Christ,
Colm Larkin