Of the many relics we are blessed to have here at the Oratory there is one which is very rarely seen at all. It is visible after the stripping of the altars on Maundy Thursday and at other times during the year when the altar cloths are changed, but otherwise it is always covered. The altar of Our Lady of Oxford was part of the bequest of Hartwell de la Garde Grissell and had stood in his private chapel on the High (at number 60) before being moved to our church at his death. In the mensa of the altar was set a portion of the altar from the house of Saint Pudens the Senator, upon which St Peter the Apostle celebrated the Mass. It is a beautiful connection between our church, this house of Saint Philip Neri, Apostle of Rome, and the Prince of the Apostles. In former times a copy of the bronze statue of St Peter in the Vatican Basilica also graced our church — of which only part now remains (wouldn’t it be wonderful to have such a statue again!). It was Cardinal Baronius of the Roman Oratory who popularised the devotion of kissing the feet of the statue of St Peter, now very much worn away by the pious devotion of pilgrims.

In Rome, away from the Vatican Basilica which stands above his tomb, there is another place of devotion to St Peter, where the Via Ardeatina branches off the Appian Way, we find the church of Santa Maria in Palmis, also known as Chiesa del Domine Quo Vadis. This chapel commemorates the tradition that, as St Peter was fleeing Rome at the height of Nero’s persecution of Christians, he met the Risen Lord who was walking in the direction of the Eternal City. Peter asked the Lord ‘Domine, quo vadis?’ — Lord, where are you going? — and received the answer ‘I go to Rome to be crucified again’. Peter understood, turned around and went back to Rome there to die for Christ, crucified upside down on the Vatican Hill. As he returned, St Peter must have thought of those long-off days beside the Sea of Galilee where he was first called to be a fisher of men; of all he had been through in his following of Christ, of those moments of wonder and of difficulty, of restoration and of resurrection. Once, when Christ preached the doctrine of the Eucharist, it had been made clear that some would find the narrow way to be too much of a challenge, too much of a demand — and it was Peter who affirmed to the Lord that whatever the Way might ask of them, it was the only one to lead to Heaven: “Lord, to whom else would we go? You have the words to eternal life.”

This transitory life of earth, this training ground for Heaven, will often find us asking ourselves ‘Where are we going?’ or ‘What are we doing?’ Like St Peter, we might sometimes wonder what the Lord is asking of us; we may struggle to make sense of what the following of Christ means for us, or perhaps find ourselves endlessly wondering what the Lord has in store for us. Yes, Peter had his difficulties. Indeed, he did not always find the courage to follow the Lord. But before all he confessed the Faith, and followed Christ to the very end. The only real answer to the question of where we are going — where we hope to be heading — is Heaven. That is the only direction we can ever hope for our life to take, the only way, difficult though it sometimes may be, on which we dare to tread. St Peter returned to Rome to die because he knew that through martyrdom he would find his Friend again, and for ever — never to be parted from him. That is the joyful hope that we must live in, knowing that all things pass away, except for the love of God in which we hope to live for ever. Whatever questions we might have about our path, our own life, we find our confidence, our hope, and the measure of our worth in belonging to Christ, in hoping always for Heaven.

The Protestant pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was imprisoned and died because he stood against the crowds of anti-Semites of a previous generation, wrote a beautiful poem from prison entitled ‘Who am I?’, asking those searching questions which come to us all. He concludes:

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

The rock we cling to is Peter, that firm faith which gives us the happy hope of Heaven. Wherever life takes us, the only place we want to go is there.

When it comes to the greatest mysteries of our faith, it’s important to keep things simple. Because the best explanation has already been given to us by the greatest teacher there has ever been. All we need to do is to turn to the Gospels and see what Christ himself had to say.

When it comes to the mystery of the Eucharist, the gift Christ gives us of his own body and blood shrouded under the appearance of bread and wine, what does he have to say? “This is my body. This is my blood.” It’s no more complicated than that. He doesn’t say “This represents my body” or “This is a symbol of my blood”. But simply, “This is my body. This is my blood.”

In the Eucharist, we don’t have a part of Christ. He didn’t say: “This is a piece of my body. These are some drops of my blood.” But: “This is my body. This is my blood.” Whole and entire. If you were to receive only half a host, you wouldn’t receive half of Christ’s body, but all of it. You don’t receive more of him if you receive a bigger host. The smallest crumbs of the host are Christ’s body, whole and entire — which is why we must be so careful when we receive Holy Communion to make sure that not one of them is lost.

When someone’s body and blood are separated from each other, they die. But as St Paul tells us, “Christ being raised from the dead will never die again” (Rom. 6:9). His body and blood are separate no more, and can never be separated again. Wherever one is, the other is too. What he says is true: this is his body. But it is not only his body. It is his body and his blood. So also with the chalice: This is his blood and his body.

Christ makes himself present under the appearance of two separate things — bread and wine — to remind us of that one time when his body and his blood really were separated, to make his passion and death present for us whenever the sacrifice of the Mass is offered. But it is not his dead body and blood, but the living Christ we receive in Holy Communion.

And so we are closer to him even than his disciples were when he walked on earth. It’s so easy for us to read the Gospels and wish we were there, to look with jealousy on those who got to see and speak to and touch Jesus. And yet we can do precisely this by coming to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

If you want to make Christ the centre of your life, make the Eucharist the centre of your life. This Sunday, make a special effort to join him as he is carried through the streets of our city in the Corpus Christi procession. Make Mass the focal point of your week — of even of every day if you can — and look forward to that moment of Communion as one of the highlights of the Mass. Show Christ that you know he is there by genuflecting when you enter the church, by spending the time before Mass in quiet prayer, by receiving him reverently and carefully. Make a prayer of thanksgiving after Communion to drive home to yourself what a great gift you have received. And then when the priest tells us we have to go, and we reluctantly leave the Church at the end of Mass, we should look forward to coming back again soon. Because if we are looking forward to seeing Christ again here, we won’t be caught off guard when he comes to meet us somewhere else, in some other form — whether we find him in someone who needs our help, or when he calls us to him in heaven, or when he comes again in all his glory to judge the living and the dead.