Scallop Shell and Camper Van (CORPUS CHRISTI 2024)

From my earliest years as a young child, there has been a close connection between the Divine and the ordinary things of life. I understood and accepted that God was everywhere, so I prayed to him anywhere, told him my simplest desires. Many of these have been answered, some taking years – like the yacht that I’ve written about before - and others almost instantly.

An instant answer happened the other day as I was out on my walk. Something in me said it would be good to have a real scallop shell for Baptisms and I wondered if I should use my Camino shell which is at home in Mervue, but I felt that it has its place and memory. And as I approached the Goat Ledge outdoor café, I noticed William decorating one of the walls with hundreds of scallop shells. Stopping to chat with him, I mentioned my desire for one. He promptly produced a box full of them and offered me two to take away.

Another experience has to do with the blue and white Volkswagen toy Minibus I had when I was about three or four years, a toy I dearly loved, a love that prompted me to express to God my wish to one day travel in a real Volkswagen camper van. I’ve watched them longingly all these years.

Then came the wedding of Matt and Lily last Saturday. When I went outside to welcome the Bride, I was very pleased to see that she had arrived in a blue and white VW camper. At the end of the ceremony, in expressing thanks to various people, I thanked the man who drove the VW and told them all of my life-long but unfulfilled desire. Outside afterwards the Bride said they would take me for a ride around the block. I was as delighted as a child, the cat that got the cream! Prayer heard and answered.

During the week I eyed the second-hand shops to see if I might spot a toy like my old one because I wanted to share the experience with the Parish, and it would be an appropriate prop during my homily this weekend. My browsing proved fruitless.

And then, just before the Saturday evening Mass on the feast of Corpus Christi, little Frankie approached me with her Dad Dominic. She held out a wrapped gift to me and my emotions surged when I unwrapped it to discover a toy blue and white VW camper! Dominic didn’t know that I had been looking for one. So, this was like God hammering home a point and a fascinating detail about all of these VW’s is that my desire has always been for one with a split windscreen and that’s exactly what was given on each of these occasions.

What is important is not so much the scallop shell or the yacht or the VW camper but what the giving of them signifies. They signify to me, they are signs that God is listening and each one of these experiences tells of His abundant generosity. They are a reminder that, whatever is going on in life, He will always give us the greatest gift of all, the gift of Himself in Jesus in the Eucharist where He gives His entire self as food for our soul, strength in weakness and hope within all that life demands of us.

“Take this all of you and eat it, for this is my Body.”

It's not that He will necessarily take away our pain or heal or ills, but He becomes everything we could ever desire or hope for.

“The one who has God lacks nothing, for God alone is enough.”

In the face of this extraordinary Providence of God, I find myself praying in the words of today’s Responsorial Psalm – “what return can I make to the Lord for all His goodness to me?” (Psalm 116)

The Cup of Salvation I will raise.

The Eucharist itself, the Mass, becomes my response, my gratitude, the overflowing love of my heart.

Walking in the Corpus Christi procession last evening, carrying Jesus in the Monstrance through the streets, beneath the shelter of the canopy – it’s a community celebration of adoration. But it is also intensely personal – He and I face to face. And in that intimacy, my mind goes back again to my childhood and those wonderful Processions in Galway. While I have always wanted to be a priest, I never dreamed as a boy that one day I would have the honour of carrying Jesus in that way and I regret the hesitation, the shyness that was in me a year ago.

Who am I that I should carry the One through whom the entire universe has been created, He who is the centre of all creation? Who am I? And yet I am chosen for this.

As if to drive the point home, as we were turning from the Bourne into Roebuck Street, the blue and white wedding VW camper van drove by!

"In making these gifts, he has given us the guarantee of something very great and wonderful to come: through them you will be able to share the divine nature" (2 Peter 1)