Good afternoon Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ is Lord.

I greet you in the matchless name of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ because although many of you may have been startled to see that neither a priest nor a religious has been chosen to minister to you today, I can guarantee you one thing, that be it priest, religious or lay person we are all children of God.

Therefore, as children of God on this Pentecost Sunday, we are reminded that the same Spirit which raised Christ from the dead and which came to the disciples in that upper room and which Jesus promised to send us is now here, within all of us and available to us, and it is through that very spirit that I address you today.

We live in a very dynamic time, life is both challenging and changing before our very eyes. Our young people are just taking in and are being influenced by all that is happening around us. It is amazing how times have changed.

But these changing times are not meant to frighten us: they are not meant for us to become scared so that the very joy of life is sapped from us. No, that is not our Christian response.

Jesus knew that times would change, He knew that His time on earth, being physically present with his disciples, would come to an end, so he told them “Wait, I will send you the Holy Spirit, wait for that spirit of power and boldness, wait”, and today we celebrate that the wait is over, we celebrate the promised Spirit present with us.

Where is the zeal?

But Jesus not only left us with His Spirit, he left us at the last supper one very important, if not the most important sacrifice, that of Himself when, by his actions as he sat at the table with his disciples, he instituted the Holy Eucharist.

That zeal and enthusiasm that we have on Pentecost Sunday, where is it after we receive Jesus at the weekend Masses? For those of us who go to Mass every day, where is that zeal and joy?

That spirit that we boast about today, that spirit we pride ourselves on today, it comes not for us to jump up and feel good, not for us to pay lip service to the many choruses we sing, but to lead us into a deeper relationship with God so that we could be of service to others. Where is the zeal, brothers and sisters?

We have no zeal because we really do not appreciate, understand or believe that when we receive Holy Communion, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the omnipresent, omniscient, the omnipotent, all-seeing and all powerful God humbles himself to come to us in such a simple form which is present before our human eyes.

We must look beyond the bread we see with our human eyes to behold Jesus with our eyes of faith. This is not my feeling that it is Jesus, but Jesus himself says so, and God is not a man that He should lie. In other words, if God says so, it is so!

Let me take you to the Gospel of Mathew, (26: 26-29):

“ Now as they were eating Jesus took bread and when he had said the blessing he broke it and gave it to the disciples. ‘Take it and eat', he said ‘This is MY BODY'. Then he took a cup and when he had given thanks he handed it to them saying ‘Drink from this all of you for THIS IS MY BLOOD of the new covenant poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins'. ”

I don't know if you heard what I heard but, to me, what is recorded in the Word does not seem to be talking about something that happened only yesterday. They are talking about what happened the day before in some parish, they are talking about what our Jesus said 2000 years ago.

Did you hear the words “this looks like my body”? Did you hear “it represents my blood”? Did you hear “I wish this was my body, I think it is my blood”? NO!

Jesus said ‘This is my body, this is my blood”.

Jesus is the great teacher, He knows all things. If he did not mean to say that, if he felt that there was a misunderstanding, don't you think he would have corrected it?

Jesus made no attempt to ‘nicen it up” nor soften it because He said exactly what he meant, that is, what we receive is His Body and His Blood. Even his disciples we are told in John 6:60 said:

• “ ‘This is a harsh saying, who can listen to it?' And Jesus responded ‘the words I have spoken are spirit and life'.”

There is nothing to be ashamed about. All we are doing as Catholic Christian people is what Jesus himself said we have to do. John 6:53-56 says:

• “…unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in you…. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.”

He didn't say we may have some life in us or a kind of life in us. Jesus said unless you, me, all of us, eat his flesh and drink his blood we can have no life in us: that it is only when we eat his flesh and drink his blood that he lives in us and we in him.

We want peace; he promises to live in us and we in him. We want answers; he promises to live in us and we in him.

If we are his followers and we say we are disciples of the one true living God, why do we shy away from it? There is no need for us to be afraid or ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

This is our Lord presenting himself to us and, before we recognise the true power that we receive, we are too busy grappling with things we cannot solve, problems the answers for which we do not have.

Our King and Lord comes to us and opens His hands but we are too wrapped up in our problems to experience His presence, too bewildered seeking answers of the flesh to truly feel his blessing.

We hear it said a number of times that it is His Body and His Blood but we probably have never heard of the times when it has actually turned into real flesh and real blood.

In Lanciano, Italy, back in 1730, a priest who was having some difficulty believing that Jesus was truly present was celebrating Mass and, at the moment when he said the words of consecration, the host turned into human flesh in his hands and the wine turned into human blood.

Now this was 1730, over hundreds of years the flesh dried and the blood clotted in five pellets. Numerous tests were done and it was in fact discovered that the flesh was real human flesh and the blood was real human blood from the same blood type.

In 1970, the most rigorous tests were done and it was discovered that the flesh was tissue from the myocardium or human heart and that the shape of the cut of the flesh meant that it was impossible for anyone to have cut it from someone who was alive. And, even if it was cut from a dead body it would have disintegrated already, but this flesh remained intact.

The blood, it was found, still contained all the normal properties, such as phosphorus, magnesium, etc found in normal, fresh human blood. Once you receive a cut, within minutes the blood starts to lose all its properties.

Additionally, it was found that each of the five pellets contained the same amount of protein as found in fresh blood and one pellet weighed the same as all five together.

That is the greatness of our God. That was in Italy in 1730 and it is a miracle still around today.

Then in 1991 in Betania , Venezuela , at the very moment when the priest said the words of consecration the host started to bleed.

A grim situation

Right here in Blanchisseuse, in October 1995, I was involved in ministry with Fr Dwight Merrick who was having a meeting with some of the leaders when he was informed of a very sick parishioner.

He left the meeting with a few of the leaders and took Jesus in the Eucharist with him. When they arrived, they began praising God for the man, for his life, although by this time the sick parishioner was vomiting chunks of blood and the situation looked grim.

Before Fr Dwight left, he placed the small monstrance containing Jesus in the hand of the sick parishioner, left it there for a while and then removed it. Fr Dwight then left because he had evening Mass at the parish.

The following weekend, a man came up to Fr Dwight after Mass and asked him if he remembered him. He said, “Father, I am the man you prayed for last week”, and he was completely healed.

Tricia Hudlin at Laventille Devotions

He then said “I have one question to ask you Father. I want to know what you meant when you said the words ‘ Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani' .”

Father told him, “Well, I never said those words”. He said, “Well, you placed something in my hand and then I heard those words.”

We know exactly who said those words. It is the same Jesus present in Lanciano and Betania, present right here and available to you and me.

Brothers and sisters, we must be careful; we receive our Lord every week, but from the time we leave church ‘till when we return next Sunday, what about us says that Jesus lives in us? Or, do we live in such a way that for anyone to believe we are Christian they have to actually see us in church?

We come to church, some of us every day and for the vast majority of us every weekend, and we receive Jesus and it is no big deal. We are in the line going up to receive Jesus and we believe that to be the best time to check a text message.

We are going to receive Jesus and our minds are on the children, the fact that you have some bill to pay, or some of us are looking to see if our friends have reached yet, where they are sitting and what they have on. And, some of us find the line a little too long because you put the peas on the fire and you want to reach back before it dry down.

Does that sound like the attitude of people who really believe that they are receiving the healing, consoling, comforting power of Jesus?

This communion that we have with God does not exist outside of our union with others.

What is our Christian witness?

How many of us claim we love God whom we cannot see and hate our mothers or are not talking to our fathers who we do see?

How many of us claim we love this God whom we cannot see and, for years, we haven't spoken to our siblings and we despise our next-door neighbour?

Or with this love we have for God we pray for evil on a spouse or find it bothersome to take care of an ailing relative who took care of us when they were healthy?

And what about our workplace Christianity? Are we really Christian witnesses when we create conflict? Are we really bearing the good news when we gossip and sometimes add to it?

Are we really good stewards when we steal from our bosses because we feel we are not paid enough and we can't stand them anyway, so anything goes?

Or because we work for the Government we believe that we can reach to work anytime and leave anytime. What really is our Christian witness?

The Jesus we receive does not remain at the church door while we go about our business. Jesus comes to us, He remains with us, He is present in our every situation and yet we believe we are powerless against our circumstances.

I want to urge you to examine yourselves; what are we doing with the power we are receiving? Remember, to whom much is given, much is expected.

Jesus knew that we would need help so he presents Himself to us as the unfailing source and satisfier of our every need. Why not turn to him?

Pope John Paul II, in “Directory for Life and Ministry of Priests”, wrote “Adoration in the life of a priest is a must”. We can safely amend that to read “Adoration in the life of every serious Catholic Christian is a must”.

When last have you visited Him in adoration? Why not bring every worry to him?

He is there. We have our King willing to answer, heal, protect and guide us, but some of us prefer other quick fixes, which do not come from God.

We spend all our time asking everyone to pray for us, running from group to group for prayer, settling for a trickling of the anointing when we could go to the source.

When we go to adoration, trumpets don't sound and bells don't chime; but you have an opportunity to drink of the living water and to dip from the well of salvation.

We need Christ to fortify us to deal with the quagmire that we face every day. It is only when we spend time with God in particular that we could have his power in general.

It is that time before Jesus, laying down all our cares which enables us to call on him with faith and conviction in dire times when we find it difficult to pray.

When we spend that time with Him, we are fixing our roofs before the rainy season, covering ourselves with His precious blood, and we are laying that foundation before the enemy comes.

It is only when we prostrate ourselves before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, when we bring everything to Him, when we begin to fill up our barns with prayer, that we have a storehouse to draw on in drought and famine.

We are all affected by some problem or another. Everyone is crying out for a solution to crime – “Where is God? God could not be in this. He could not mean for this to happen”. But what about His promise that he would never forsake us and that he would never leave us orphans?

I remember being taught that if you don't stand for something, you fall for anything. And, with the moral decay these days, where everything is becoming a standard, we get frightened, but we forget that Jesus promises that “where sin abounds, grace much more abounds”.

We feel that the criminals are closing in on us, with more sophisticated weapons than our protective services. And, what is our response as Catholic Christian people when we start looking at this terrifying situation?

We lock-up in our homes, build higher walls, get more burglar proofing and have earlier ‘ midnight Masses' because we have taken our eyes off Jesus and we are looking for answers ourselves. And, like Peter when he took his eyes off Jesus, we too have started to sink.

We are looking for answers in all the wrong places, spending our money on what is not bread, our wages on what fails to satisfy, when Jesus has said to us to come to Him for He is the way.

We believe that more police vehicles and more guns will provide an answer, and Jesus says, “ I am the way ”. We have difficulty in our homes, our families are in crisis, our children are far from God and we wonder what to do, and Jesus says, “ I am the way, the truth and the life ”.

He has promised us that if we humble ourselves and pray, He will hear from heaven and heal our land.

Let us turn from our wicked ways, remember and tap into the power we receive when we receive Jesus in the Eucharist and spend time seeking God in adoration. Then, we will see the change. Acclaim the Eucharist, live the Eucharist.

When we stand in the name of Jesus, tell me who can stand against us?

I urge you, brothers and sisters, let us not look at our great mess but at God's greatness.

God bless you and I thank you.