An Oblate Cardinal Francis George was asked to say a few words to a gathering of young people. This is what he said: ‘The only thing we take with us when we die is what we have given away.’ These word may seem astonishing if one thinks about the audience he was addressing, some young people. However those words of Cardinal Francis George did fit into the audience. The Cardinal was showing, and inviting the young people to embrace, a certain lifestyle. The words I have just questioned echo and explain what Jesus proposed to the Twelve Apostle he had just chosen. Before Our Blessed Lord sent out his Apostles on their first mission, which was to be the continuation of his own mission, he gave them some training. The chapter 10 of the Gospel of Matthew focuses on that brief training Jesus gave to this Apostles. The training wasn’t about some techniques. Jesus briefly but powerfully introduced the Apostles into his own style of being the Apostle of the Father.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The chapter 10 of the Gospel of Matthew is important and precious for all of us who claim to be followers of Jesus. St Paul in the Letter to the Romans, which we have just heard, wrote: ‘When we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in his death… so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.’
Each of us here present has been baptised. It means that God chose us for baptism.  He chose us for baptism because he placed some of us in a Catholic family. Before our parents made the decision to baptise us it was first the decision of God himself.  Some of us made this decision themselves as adults. Still it was God’s decision because he revealed to us his glory and love which led us to the baptismal font. Even if our path to baptism was different we need to treasure that at the outset there was God’s choice. God chose us for baptism.
The same God who chose us for baptism also commissioned us to be his Apostles when he poured into us the new life. It is the life which we see in Jesus. It is the life which is all about giving oneself to others. That’s how Jesus lived. That’s how Jesus died. That’s why Jesus wasn’t to stay in the tomb. The life which has been given for others cannot be contained by a grave. There is no grave which can keep it. Such life will break any grave because such life is God’s life. It is life eternal.
Let us listen to some words Jesus said in the Gospel we heard today:
‘Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.’ These words echoed in what Cardinal Francis George said to the young people: ‘The only thing we take with us when we die is what we have given away.’ Can we be surprised that he said it to the young people? It was the most appropriate to address the young people in this way, to show them the lifestyle in which a person makes lots of choices which confirm the fundamental choice of living the lifestyle of Jesus, giving one’s life away. This is what defines my religious order the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Oblate means offered. It is someone who has made an offering of his life. Our Founder St Eugene de Mazenod understood that to be a missionary one needs to give his whole life to it. That’s how Jesus lived his mission. That’s the lifestyle he proposed to his Twelve Apostles.
As an Oblate, whose distinctive feature is a crucifix worn on the cassock, I couldn’t overlook what Jesus spoke about the cross today. In fact it is the first time when the word cross appears in the Gospel. However Jesus doesn’t talk about his cross but about ours: ‘Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy on me.’ Cross takes form of anything in our life we would like to get rid of. It can be something physical. It can be something moral. It can be something emotional. It can be something relational etc. Our Blessed Lord doesn’t see it as a obstacle for us to be good Apostles, providing we follow in his footsteps.
Taking our cross is the strongest expression of us giving away ourselves. Taking our cross means that we have given away our dreams to have an easy and smooth life. Instead we have chosen to live the life where God is everything in everything.

            A few months ago our Oblate community watched a documentary about the French national pilgrimage to the shrine of our Lady in Lourdes. The film didn’t seek any cheap sensationalism. Instead in plain but profound way captured the reality of suffering of the pilgrims making their way to the shrine as well as their hopes. The few stories selected for the documentary differed significantly as the suffering people differed. However what all stories had in common was their realisation of the suffering which was beyond their control and their hope for … A bystander could think that the hope of the sick was to be healed. However listening to their insights I was struck that they were searching for God rather then for healing. Most of the people interviewed there came to Lourdes many times. They did so because every time they came they found this mysterious something which we call grace. Grace is Divine life which abundantly overflows from the Trinity. This grace, this abundant Divine life allows Christians ‘to take up their cross and follow Jesus.’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Movies like the one I have just told you about are not the easiest to watch. They don’t aim at entertaining us. Instead they confront us with realities which touch something deep in us. We are invited into the world of another human being, the world which is secret and sacred. It is the world where God’s hand is at work. Our Blessed Lord spoke about that in the Gospel passage for this Sunday: ‘For everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from housetops.’ Those words, which Jesus said to his Twelve Apostles upon sending them on their first mission, captures something awesome about being a missionary. A missionary is sent forth with his or her secret and sacred world where the hand of God is at work. Such a missionary is not a propagandist of success but a brother or sister of the other to whom he or she reveals how God works in the midst of human physical, spiritual, emotional or moral fragility. This is what the Apostles Peter and John said to the Jewish leaders who ordered them to keep quite: ‘We cannot stop proclaiming what we have seen and heard.’ This is what the people in the movie about Lourdes did as well. They bore witness about Jesus whom they saw and heard in their own life so profoundly marked by suffering. If you can I encourage you to watch it. The movie title is Lourdes. It was directed by Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai.
If you are not into movies I encourage you to read chapter 7 of the Letter to the Romans. There you will have an insight into the secret and sacred world of St Paul the Apostle. He wrote about his own suffering: ‘I do not understand my own behaviour; I do not act as I mean to, but I do things that I hate… the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want – that is what I do… what a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death? God – thanks be to him – through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ I believe that each one of us can benefit greatly from St Paul letting us into his secret and sacred world. His personal world marked by sin but the world which was also touched by God’s hand. Each one of us could accept these word and his or her.
I believe that meditating on these words we can transform our participation in the Sacrament of Reconciliation when we open up before the priest, who is in fact our fellow brother in Christ. Then we show him, our fellow brother in Christ, this secret and sacred world of ours marked by sin but where the hand of God is at work. The priest’s outstretched hand brings upon us God’s merciful love is reassuring us that we are not imagining that God is at work in our life. He is.

            Recently it has been reported that a buried hidden treasure in the Rocky Mountains in the US has been found. The chest was filled with gold nuggets, coins, sapphires, diamonds and other items worth $2 million. Today on this Solemnity of Corpus Christi we want to announce to everyone that we, Christians, have found our treasure. Our treasure is the Body and Blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The worth of our treasure is ‘eternal life.’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The Solemnity of Corpus Christi is associated with Eucharistic processions. The Blessed Sacrament is carried outside our churches and we follow. In some places it is done with an extraordinary splendour. This year in most places, where it is permitted to have a procession, it will be conducted very low-key. It is beyond our control. We have been subjected to these restrictions like many other people and communities in our society.
It may take some time before all of us can return to regular churchgoing. However I encourage you all to turn this waiting into your Advent. I know that we’ve just completed Eastertide and that the liturgical Advent is months away. However Advent is about active waiting. How can you be actively waiting through these Covid-19 restrictions? Be telling people around you, believers and unbelievers alike, that the Eucharist is essential to us. The Eucharist is not a feast we can postpone. The Eucharist is our daily bread. We ‘draw life from Jesus.’ We must therefore eat his Body and drink his Blood. Jesus said: ‘Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever… Anyone who does eat my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day… He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.’ Our absenting from Mass hurts us and drains us of vital spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical support. Therefore the current restrictions can be our mission field where we evangelise by telling people that we are starving, that we are longing for receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord.
I mentioned before that this year Corpus Christi processions will be low-key or even cancelled. However when I thought about that I remembered a situation from the life of St Philip Neri, who is called the Second Apostle of Rome. One day fr Philip observed a man who left the Church right after receiving Holy Communion. Philip Neri sent two altar servers with candles to follow the man. You can imagine how surprised the man was when in the busy streets of Rome there were two boys in liturgical vestments with candles walking on his right and left. When the man returned to the church and asked fr Philip what it was all about he heard: ‘We have to pay proper respect to Our Lord, whom you are carrying away with you. Since you neglect to adore Him, I sent two servers to take your place.’ This year, I believe, we are being challenged to reflect on those Masses we attended in the past. Did we behave like the man from the story? Did we walk away from Mass aware that it was our Corpus Christi procession, not just a yearly event but weekly or even daily? We were carrying Jesus Christ in us.
When a priest invokes the Holy Spirit to turn the bread and wine into Jesus’ Body and Blood it is so that we, by receiving this heavenly food, could be transformed into the Lord whom we receive. That’s why we call the Eucharist our treasure. Its worth is ‘eternal life.’ How could you explain to a unbeliever that the Eucharist is ‘eternal life’? You could simply say that it is a matter of life and death. By saying this you can spread your hunger for Eucharist onto another person. Do you know what would be the most beautiful return to attending Masses in the post-Covid-19 era?  If each one of us could bring to church another person in whom we planted our faith and love for the Eucharist. This is our advent season, the season of active waiting to return to our churches.

            Last Sunday I said that ‘the love of the Father and the Son is not a feeling. Their mutual love is the person of the Holy Spirit.’ I also asked you: ‘Do you think that it is confusing and hard to understand? Just wait a week. Next Sunday we will have the Solemnity of the most Holy Trinity. That what leaves us speechless.’ Thank to God’s mercy we have lived through another week and have come to celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Should we keep quiet today then? Well, if you want to use mathematics today you better stay quite. How can mathematics solve the mystery of three who are one? That’s what we celebrate today. There is One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Is it hard to understand? It is not the only thing hard to understand in our life. Do you think that it is easy to understand a person who being imprisoned unjustly for three years can still say: ‘I don’t have any ill feelings for those responsible for the injustice done to me.’ When the imprisonment was being prolonged he added: ‘There isn’t any harm that cannot be forgiven.’ These are the words of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, Archbishop of Warsaw in Poland, who in 1953 was detained by the socialist government and kept a prisoner until 1956. The secret of his attitude was revealed when he said: ‘I believe that I remain in love, that I am still a Christian and a child of my Church who taught me to love all people. It was the Church who taught me that those who declare themselves my enemies I can turn into my brothers in my heart.’ Such attitude is hard to understand, isn’t it? Should we put it aside or ignore it then?
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The mystery of the Holy Trinity is hard to understand. The mystery of Cardinal Wyszynski’s attitude is hard to understand. However both mysteries have something else in common, not just that they are hard to understand, they are about life.
Let us listen again to what Jesus said to Nicodemus because it is the life giving word for us too: ‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.’ These words Jesus spoke at the beginning of the Gospel. At the end of the Gospel we will see Nicodemus again. He will go to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus. He will place the crucified Body in his own grave.
Nicodemus’ grave reminds us of our own dying. This is a reminder of all things we don’t have control over, things we don’t understand.
Nicodemus’ gesture of giving his grave to Jesus reminds us to invite Jesus into those aspects of our life we don’t have control over or don’t understand and which look more like dying with no hope on the horizon. Nicodemus during the conversation with Jesus, which we have just heard, couldn’t understand many things either. However those words Jesus spoke, and which were hard to understand, were also seeds of eternal life sown in Nicodemus’ soul. Before Jesus’ body was placed in Nicodemus’ grave Jesus’ words found home in Nicodemus’ soul.
On Easter Sunday morning Jesus was raised from Nicodemus’ grave. On Easter Sunday morning it was confirmed that Nicodemus didn’t put his hope in Jesus in vain. In light of the Resurrection St John wrote later: ‘Life was made visible, we saw it and we are giving our testimony, declaring eternal life, which was present to the Father and has been revealed to us. We are declaring to you what we have seen and heard, so that you too may share our life. Our life is shared with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.’
My Dear fellow believers! Gather with faith the words you hear here, like Nicodemus did when Jesus spoke to him that night when he heard from the Saviour: ‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.’
My Dear fellow believers! Treasure in your heart, and among yourselves, these words, these seeds of eternal life, like Nicodemus did in the days and nights which followed his night encounter with Jesus. Then you will also witness the eruption of eternal life in you, in your family and in your Church community. Christ Jesus will turn your grave: your helplessness and your hopelessness into the Resurrection morning. Then Jesus’ prayer from the Last Supper will be fulfilled in you and in our Church: ‘Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent.’ Knowing is about living with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
In order to reassure yourself, and believe me you need such reassurance, make sure that EVERY time when you make the sign of the cross that your forehead can feel your hand, that your chest can feel your hand and that your shoulders can feel your hand. In this way you immerse your whole being: your mind, your heart and your will in the life of the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.