We are the Body of Christ

San Lucas Toliman is a very special place in Guatemala’s highlands where so much of the world’s coffee is grown. There La Fiesta de Cuerpo de Cristo is a very special annual event which brings together young and old. The monstrance with the consecrated host is carried in procession to each group of homes as well as to the marketplace, the school, the clinic, the playground. All of these places are blessed, with those who live and work there participating.

Then there is a big fiesta where all the families who make up the “body of Christ” in this small village have a picnic, play games, and sing. Of course each of these families has a story; each experiences the normal tensions and traumas of family and neighborhood life. But it is precisely into the middle of these tensions and traumas, these joys and adventures that Jesus Christ —alive and risen—is welcomed and celebrated.

This special feast reminds each of us that WE are the Body of Christ. We are the living, breathing, thinking, feeling, praying, witnessing, faith-filled, doubt-filled, hope-filled, justice-filled, love-filled Body of Jesus. We are broken and shared…and then sent forth into a thousand corners our world as messengers and menders for others, as tangible signs of God’s presence alive and active in this world. As we believe, so let us live, throughout this summer and beyond.

—The Jesuit Prayer Team