Do we all remember the fairy tale folktale story entitled The Emperor Has No Clothes? Do you all remember that one? For the younger members of the community who may not exactly know that story, it has to do with a king. Now, this King only wanted to hear what he wanted to hear. So basically everyone was supposed to say, yes, he really wasn’t interested in the truth.
And so he surrounded himself with people who only said yes. Now, a tailor who wasn’t exactly honest, convinced the emperor that he needed a new set of clothes and that he could make the emperor an invisible set of clothes. And the emperor believed him. So now he tells the Emperor that he’s making him these clothes. He dresses him all up, and the emperor is standing there in his underwears.
But everyone around him is saying how good he looks. So he goes out in a big procession and everyone in the town is standing around saying the emperor has no clothes. What’s the matter with the emperor? He is walking around with no clothes while everyone the emperor thought he could trust is saying, Yeah, you look great. Keep on going.
So in our lives have we had that moment where we say, maybe he’s not all we thought he was?
maybe.
There’s something not right. Did we ever have a moment where we said to ourselves, He the Emperor has no clothes? Well, that’s the moment Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel. He’s talking about that moment when he says to the Pharisees, the priests, the scribes, all of you, here’s the truth. You are not doing what God wants, you’re doing what you want.
And he actually calls them hypocrites. Now, another way of saying that may be a little nicer is you’re not listening every good leader has the responsibility of listening before making a judgment or a decision to gather people around him to help the leader look up the situation of authority is one of those roles that comes with leadership. And wherever you have a good leader, you have him surrounded by people who understand that authority doesn’t mean power.
It means the responsibility of telling the truth. The truth, as Jesus says, will set us free. And the truth is how we live in faith. So whether you are the head of a household, the head of a big corporation, the head of a parish, it is important to gather people around who are willing to lead and tell the truth, as Saint Paul says, to speak the truth in love.
So today we are very blessed here at Saint Charles to be installing new leaders, to proclaim the word of God, to help in the ministry of visiting the sick and the homebound and distributing the Eucharist to help lead as members of the parish Council and as members of the Finance Committee. And their major responsibility is to speak the truth in love.
The Prophet Malachi, in our first reading today, talks about what happens when authority leadership stop speaking in God’s name. He comes down pretty hard on them and reminds us all the for the home to be blessed leaders have to want to deal with blessing. And the blessing is that call to service so that every good leader understands servant leadership.
What it means, as Jesus said, is not to seek the places of honor, not to seek the titles, not to seek any of that, but really to want to serve. That’s when Jesus really goes after this. Bribes and Pharisees. He warns them that in order to really be teachers, they must want not the community to honor them, but the community to love them.
That what important is humility and trust. That’s what’s truly amazing. So Saint Paul really gets it right. Paul talks about what it means not to boast. Now, that’s really interesting because Paul was pretty good at boasting, but he says what is really important is compassion service, humility. That’s real leadership. Paul knew that the rules are very important, but really behind every rule is wisdom.
So today, as we install our new leaders, we pray that they will be given the gift of wisdom. And so one of the first tests for our new leaders is to help our community make a decision. We, a community, have faith, have been asked to consider returning to the distribution of the precious blood. Here at Mass, though, it’s very interesting.
In St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he wrote For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes the gift of the Eucharist. And our celebration here at Mass always includes the offering of bread and wine. And in a moment, bread and wine will come down the center aisle to be offered so that it might become for us the body and blood of Christ.
The practice of the early church was to offer everyone one communion under both kinds. Now, somewhere around 1100, we began to stop that practice. So after a thousand years, we kind of stopped at it. And then about 500 years after that, the Council of Trent really it law only the priest would receive under the forms of bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, and about 500 years after the Council of Trent Second Vatican Council restored the privilege of receiving under both colonies the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us, since Christ is sacramental President under each of the species Communion, under the species of bread alone makes it possible to receive all the
fruit of Eucharistic grace for pastoral reasons. This manner of receiving communion has been legitimately established as most common in our Latin right. So for a thousand years everybody received the precious blood of Christ For about a thousand years, only priest received the body of Christ. And then Vatican Council says everyone can again receive the precious blood. Well, then we got the flu and we got COVID.
What happened? Well, for health reasons, we stopped. And how many of us are still a little germ phobic? You see me? I always use the hand sanitizer before communion. Well, is it time for us to consider we’re going back to both forms. Bishop Brennan has left that decision up to each and every community and so what we’re going to do for the next four weeks is discuss different aspects of receiving the precious blood.
In the end. It is a very individual decision. No one will be forced one way or the other. It’s a matter of prayer. Reflection and conversation. So in order to do that through the month of November, we’ll be having a little moment of catechesis like this, and then we’ll have time for prayer throughout the week on the first Sunday of that event.
I’ve asked Coco to begin singing the response Surreal psalm here at the ambo as part of the liturgy of the Word, and that one mass will begin to distribute in the Cup again during January. We’ll evaluate it. How has the experience been so that with catechesis, prayer and experience, we can discern and make a judgment as a community of faith?
How We wish to receive Eucharist united in heart and mind, our great Sacrament of unity. Again, there’s much for us to discuss. So please our new pastoral council members, our new members, our trustee is our Eucharist administers, stop and discuss with one another how you feel. The Lord is calling you as an individual and us as a community of faith to move forward again.
Leaders want to hear the truth spoken in love. We don’t want to be like emperors with no clothes. Trust me, that would not be a pretty picture. We want to sincerely discern God’s will for us as the family. Those who are called to in leadership and those who gather in prayer as a family. So whether we are the head of a household, the head of a corporation, the head of a firm, we are all called through baptism to move others towards the kingdom of God.
And so in that spirit, let us move forward. Let us lead with faith, hope and charity, and let us pray, especially for wisdom for our new parish leadership and wisdom for God’s holy people as we discern the will of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.