THIS Sunday, across the world, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Corpus Christi. It is a celebration of our belief in Jesus’ abiding physical presence in our midst in the humble form of unleavened bread and wine.

Like a diamond, we can gaze upon the Eucharist, the Body of Christ, from many angles. Among other things, it calls us to justice, to disregard the distinction between rich and poor, when we gather around the Eucharist table itself and then afterwards outside of the church building. It was this very thing that first drew Dorothy Day to Christianity. She noticed that, at the Eucharist, the rich and the poor knelt side by side, all equal at that moment.

Sadly, we often don’t take this dimension of the Eucharist seriously. Many think that the practice of justice, especially social justice, is an optional part of being a Christian, something mandated by political correctness rather than by the gospels. But we are wrong in this. It is present in the Gospels and church teaching. Indeed striving for justice must be part of all authentic worship. The Eucharist is not a private devotional prayer, but is rather a communal act of worship which, among other things, calls us to go forth in peace and live out in the world what we celebrate inside our church building. The Word of God assures us that the validity of all worship will ultimately be judged by how it affects “widows, orphans, and strangers.”

Father Mark Hogan