Last week on Corpus Christi Sunday, we had the joy and privilege of celebrating our patronal feast with then Bishop-elect, now newly ordained Bishop Robert Christian, O.P., along with many of our Dominican brothers, sisters, laity, and friends and family.  Bishop Robert was the principal celebrant and homilist for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which was followed by a Eucharistic procession and exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for adoration by the faithful.

In his homily, Bishop Robert Christian expounded on the beauty and profundity of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist as expressed in the sequence for the Mass of Corpus Christi, “Lauda Sion.”  Quoting from the Sequence, “Each severed outward token, doth the very whole contain,” he went on to explain, “We are not receiving hundreds of Christs this morning, we are receiving the totality of the one Christ.  There’s real communion here.”

Bishop Robert Christian, was Father Robert Christian and student master for the friars of the Western Dominican Province when he accepted our invitation to be our celebrant and homilist for our feast.  Prior to his assignment as Student Master, he was a professor and vice dean at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), a Dominican institution in the heart of Rome.  Upon the announcement of his appointment as an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, we were delighted for him and the local Church; he was ordained bishop in San Francisco the Tuesday following Corpus Christi Sunday.

We are extremely grateful to all of our friends and family, and our Dominican family – friars, apostolic sisters, and laity – who joined us to celebrate this beautiful day.  You are all in our prayers.  Please join us too in keeping our new auxiliary bishop Robert Christian OP, with all our bishops, in prayer.  May God bless him and keep him, and may his ministry bear abundant fruit for the kingdom of God!