Presence of Jesus Mission with Fr Dennis Chriszt (Part 3); For audio only PPN
Part 3 of the mission with Fr. Dennis Chriszt celebrating “Christ Really Present in the Bread Broken & the Wine Poured”. Sharing a story of a woman from Tucurú, Guatemala, Fr. Dennis explains that the Eucharist is a feast prepared by God, a feast that destroys death forever, a feast that reminds us we have a reason to rejoice even while we are in exile. Truth of the Spirit is hosted by Patti Brunner. Fr. Dennis Chriszt, a priest of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood in Chicago, presented the parish mission “Celebrating Real Presence” at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Rogers, AR, on March 7-9. 2020.
Fr. Dennis: So, why do I tell this story? What difference does it make? The woman in the third pew, the third bench, that Sunday changed my life. At lunch, Fr. Marco Tulio said, “Do you remember the lady who sat next to you at Mass this morning?” And I pointed to the dry mud on my white shirt and we both laughed. And then he said, “Let me tell you her story. She lives in one of forty nine villages where we celebrate Mass once or twice a year. This morning as the sun began to rise over the coffee plantation where she and her family and friends lived and worked, she knew that if she did not receive the Body and Blood of Christ today she would starve to death before the sun set. And she meant starve to death.
Patti: Welcome to Truth of the Spirit I’m your host Patti Brunner. Today we have the third session of Celebrating the Real Presence of Jesus with Fr. Dennis Chriszt.
Fr. Dennis: The Lord be with you. The Gospel of the Lord according to John [Chapter 6:53-58]
“Jesus said to them, … For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.
[Fr. Dennis singing:] “Taste and see, taste and see, the goodness of the Lord. O taste and see, taste and see, the goodness of the Lord, of the Lord”. Isaiah once promised a better day to a people more used to fasting than feasting; God promises a feast like no other: rich food, choice wine, juicy rich foods and pure choice wines. [Isaiah 25:6] This is a feast, Isaiah promises, fit for a king. This is a feast prepared by God, a feast like no other, a feast that destroys death forever, he tells us, a feast that reminds us we have a reason to rejoice even while we are in exile because God has come to save us. This is more than a promise; this is an invitation to dine with God, to sit down at table with the Lord, to rejoice and be glad that God has saved us.
[singing] “Taste and see, taste and see, the goodness of the Lord. O taste and see, taste and see, the goodness of the Lord, of the Lord.” This really is a feast like no other for God gives us to dine with divinity itself; to dine on divinity itself, to eat the Body and drink the Blood of the Lord our God. This bread and this wine becomes the very presence of God in our world. This is true food and true drink. This is not some kind of holy symbol that reminds us of something that happened 2000 years ago. This is the presence of God, flesh and blood in bread and wine, here and now. When we eat this bread and drink this cup our bodies become the Body of Christ. Our hearts begin to pump the Blood of Christ throughout our bodies. This, this is the Bread Come Down from Heaven. Once we eat this bread and drink this cup we become the tabernacle; we become the chalice.
Twenty-five years ago a classmate of mine, a doctoral program in Chicago, was a Sister of Perpetual Adoration. Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration and her community asked her to do doctoral work helping them to understand what perpetual adoration means when there are not enough sisters for there to be somebody in the chapel 24 hours a day. And as she reflected on these very readings, and she realized, as she looked at the life of the sisters who started her community, she realized what they said ‘perpetual adoration’ they meant two things not just one. They meant “yes, there should be a sister in the chapel at all times praying before the Blessed Sacrament”. But she said, “They also wrote about that because the People of God have received the Body and Blood of Christ, we need as Sisters of Perpetual Adoration to recognize that you are the Body of Christ, that you are the Body of Christ that children we teach in schools are the Body of Christ, and we should adore that. That the patients who come into our hospitals are the Body of Christ, and we should be in perpetual adoration before them, and it will change the way we teach and the way we provide nursing care as we recognize that the Body of Christ that they receive in the Eucharist makes them just as much a tabernacle as the one that sits in the chapel. Well, I know that none of us are made of bronze. None of us are coated in gold. We don’t have locked doors. But we are the vessels of the Body and Blood of Christ. Because this is true food, this is true drink; this is God with us, Emmanuel.
[singing] “Taste and see, taste and see the goodness of the Lord. O taste and see, taste and see the goodness of the Lord, of the Lord.” I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier or not but I have a doctorate in ministry and liturgy from Catholic Theological Union. I’ve read a lot of things as part of my studies about what we do when we as Catholic Christians gather together to celebrate the Eucharist, when we gather to break bread and share the cup in memory of the Christ. But the person who taught me more than anything else about what the Eucharist truly means could neither read nor write. I don’t know her name. But I can see her face. I met her over twenty five years ago. And she changed me and the way I have come to understand what this great gift of the Eucharist is all about.
The first time I went to Guatemala I had studied Spanish for six weeks in San Antonio, Texas, which meant I knew how to say “Buenos días” [laughter] “¿Cómo estás?” “Nonde es español”. [laughter] My vocabulary was very small, my knowledge of verb forms was even smaller, but I tried, I knew I would be going to Guatemala several times over the next few years. Each time I went I was there for a month or two months, once I was there for only two weeks. But I had gotten to know the Missionaries of the Precious Blood in that community and sometimes I brought other members of my community with me. But on that first trip we stayed in a little town called San Gaspar, a village that is part of Guatemala City.
After a week in San Gaspar the mission director, Father Barry Fischer, said to me, “I’m going up to Tucurú for two weeks, I’ll be with the novices up there, it’s a five hour drive, up in the mountains, and if you’d like to come along, you are welcome to join me. And I was like, “well, you are the only person in the country I know that speaks English; I’m going where you’re going.” [laughter] So, we drove for five hours on mostly paved roads but the last hour or so was mostly dirt and mud. I had to learn, although I never actually drove in Guatemala, that the rule is that whoever is the biggest has the right of way [laughter] because once you leave the main road and you are heading to Tucurú the road runs alongside of a river and it’s often only wide enough for one vehicle. And every so often you’d look over the side and see a car or truck down there that didn’t quite make the turn or didn’t make room for the person that was coming in the other direction. One time, I think we backed up a half a mile before we there was a place we could pass each other. The bigger car, the bigger truck did not have to back up—we did.
But just before we arrived at Tucurú Fr. Barry said, “As long as you’re here, I’d like you to teach the novices one day.” I’m like, “they don’t speak English.” He said, “Yes, you have two weeks to get ready.” [laughter] “You are going to speak to them in the morning about how to pray the Liturgy of the Hours and in the afternoon you are going to teach them preaching. I’m like, “teaching people, preaching in a language you don’t speak. Have you lost your mind?” [laughter] But, he said, “Don’t worry, you have an English Spanish dictionary, a computer and two weeks to get ready. And you can ask me anything you want during the time.” So I did what I needed to do to get ready, but as time went on, once we arrived, I discovered that in Tucurú out of the several thousand people who lived there, seven of us spoke Spanish. And one very badly. [laughter] Everyone else spoke Achi which is one of 27 Mayan languages which is spoken in Guatemala today. Now remember, Guatemala is geographically smaller than Arkansas. So, here, if you drove a half hour you would have entered a part of the country where they spoke a completely different language. There are some similarities but not many. They are all Mayan languages but they are not idioms they’re distinct languages. So on Sunday when Mass was being celebrated in Achi I decided to do the only reasonable thing. [Father Dennis moves to the pew] I brought an English prayer book with me and I sat in the third bench. Now I call it a bench because it was not pew. These are way too nice. It was, the wood had not even been sanded. So, you did not slide across the bench. You sat down and that was it. [laughter. Father returns to podium] The bench was not very wide; it sat three people comfortably. About five minutes before mass started there were four of us in the bench that seated three. The marimbas started warming up for the opening song, and SHE walked in. She was wet from head to toe, muddy and did not smell very good. She decided to be #5. [laughter]
We were shoulder to shoulder and cheek to cheek, and I’m not talking about these [pulls his grin]. In less than two seconds I was wet muddy and smelly on one side. You could see she was delighted to be there. At the sign of peace I reached out to her and said, “La paz de Cristo con ustedes,” hoping that she would at least understand enough Spanish that I had just said “The peace of the Lord be with you.” She said something back. I hope it was “and also with you.” [laughter] She received communion and returned to the seat with the rest of us. After Mass she went and talked to Fr. Marco Tulio for a few minutes and and then left. And although I’ve been back to Tucurú several times since then, I’ve never seen her again.
So, why do I tell this story? What difference does it make? The woman in the third pew, the third bench, that Sunday changed my life. At lunch, Fr. Marco Tulio said, “Do you remember the lady who sat next to you at Mass this morning?” And I pointed to the dry mud on my white shirt and we both laughed. And then he said, “Let me tell you her story. She lives in one of forty nine villages where we celebrate Mass once or twice a year. This morning as the sun began to rise over the coffee plantation where she and her family and friends lived and worked, she knew that if she did not receive the Body and Blood of Christ today she would starve to death before the sun set. And she meant starve to death. And so, she began to walk. It was the rainy season, so it rained all day. She walked three hours in the pouring rain, on steep mountain trails where she slipped and fell multiple times. But each time she got back up because she knew that she needed to eat the Body and drink the Blood of Christ. Nothing was going to stop her. She knew that though it would take three hours to get there it would probably take four hours to get home because she’d be tired and it would be all, almost all, uphill on those same wet slippery muddy mountain trails. Just as the woman at the well changed, The woman of Tucurú changed me. I can’t imagine walking seven hours, even on flat Arkansas land, for a morsel of bread and a few drops of wine.
I can’t imagine what it was like for her that day but I know how important it was for her. It was the 30th year of the Guatemalan Civil War, the war where there was no end in sight. She knew the horror of the war for it came to every village in Guatemala at one point or another. People would disappear in the middle of the night and never be seen again. One day on that same visit I was back in Guatemala City we put Jose in the trunk of our car and drove him from our community house to la Catedral Drove him to the garage of the bishop’s house opened the trunk and let him out. The bishop was going to help smuggle him out of the country because that morning his name was in the paper as someone who would be executed by the army that week. One of the ways they terrorized people was by telling them in advance “you are on the list”.
Five years later a gunman walked into that same garage and shot and killed that same bishop. Because he was the primary author of the study that proved it was the government that was doing most of the killing. And that it was not about communism it was just about power and even way before the study was done she knew that. She also told Fr. Marco Tulio before she started to walk back home that not only did this bread and this wine save her life that day, because she had eaten the Body and drank the Blood of Christ, she would be able to bring hope and faith to the other people at the coffee plantation where she worked and lived. She knew that when no matter how bad things were because the body and blood of Christ had come into her that she could be a sign of hope for others. Her quiet walking through the pouring rain taught me more about what we do each time we gather at the table of the Lord than any great theologian, any papal statement; for her silent walking was louder than anything I ever heard about the Body and Blood of Christ.
About 95% of the time that I tell this story I wear a stole made from fabric I bought later that same week in Tucurú. It is made from the very same fabric that her skirt was made from. I wear it to remember her faith that I might never forget that there are people throughout the world who are starving for the Body and Blood of Christ. And we here in Rogers, we can go to mass any day of the week. We can eat the Body and drink the Blood of Christ any day of the week [Note: this was spoken one week before the Arkansas bishop restricted attendance at Mass] but there are still, 25 years later, thousands of people around the mountains of Guatemala who long for the day six months from now when they will receive Communion for the second time this year.
I don’t know about you but I’ve never walked more than a couple hundred feet—usually from my car to the door of the church. But her faith reminds me how great our God is, that once in a while God sends people into lives so that we know how blessed we are; I was the priest in the third pew. But she was the holy one. I was well educated and ordained. And she was one of the living saints that I’ve been blessed to know—if only for an hour and a half.
I suspect she has no idea who I am, or that I’ve been telling her story for over 25 years. I suspect she has no idea how many thousands of people in the United States have heard her story and let her faith touch their lives. But I hope when I get to heaven, I’ll be wearing that stole and find the lady with the skirt that matches, and we’ll both be able to talk a heavenly language that we’ll both understand that lets us both—that lets her know how profound her influence has been on at least this priest. And on countless other people whom I have shared this story with. She tasted and saw the goodness of the Lord. And I for one will never forget.
“Taste and see, taste and see the goodness of the Lord. O taste and see, taste and see the goodness of the Lord, of the Lord.” Have you been blessed by the Body and Blood of Christ? Tell the story to someone sitting near you.
Patti: You’ve been listening to Truth of the Spirit. I’m your host Patti Brunner. We invite you to come back for more. We’ve got one more session about celebrating the Real Presence of Jesus. It’s a real treat. Fr. Dennis is a wonderful story teller, isn’t he, and he’s got a fabulous story to tell us for his fourth session. So please come back for more because with the Holy Spirit there’s always more!
