Bringing Jesus to others: The Eucharist, Tarsicius, and the Assumption

A short homily for the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Saint Tarsicius (Alexandre Falguière, ca. 1880). N.b. The spelling “Tarcisius” is also frequently used.

Last Thursday, August 15th, Catholics celebrated the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. That same date, August 15th, is also, in the Roman Martyrology, the feast of Saint Tarsicius, a young third-century martyr said to be carrying Holy Communion—the body of Christ—to people who were sick or imprisoned when he was attacked and martyred by an idle mob who had no awareness of the holy mystery he was carrying, but who apparently resented his great devotion to it.

That’s pretty much all we know about Tarsicius. It’s thought that he may have been a deacon; a later tradition makes him an acolyte or altar server. The tradition also relates that when his body was searched, the Host was nowhere to be found—as if, his sufferings being united with the sufferings of the Lord, so the young martyr’s flesh and the body of the Lord became one.

Most Catholics, I imagine, coming to receive Holy Communion might be somewhere on a spectrum between Tarsicius and the mob that attacked him. Hopefully closer to the saint! When I come to receive Communion, does my life belong entirely to the Lord? Am I ready to give it up, like Tarsicius? I hope so (I’d just as soon not find out!). Do I ever come to Communion in idle unawareness of Jesus’ presence, like the mob? God forgive me.

What Jesus wants to do for us in Communion is what the tradition says he did for this saint: He wants to be joined with us, his flesh to our flesh; to enable us to do what Tarsicius was doing: to bring Jesus to others, wherever we go. Do I bring the Lord to you today? Do you bring him to me, and to one another? I hope so. Am I sometimes unaware of the Lord in others and how he wants me to love him in them? God forgive me.

If we seek to bring Jesus to others everywhere we go, then we seek to walk in the footsteps, not only of Tarsicius, but also of the Virgin Mary—whose body, assumed into heaven, was in an even more wonderful way intimately united with the Lord’s body. Mary brought Jesus with her to Elizabeth’s house and everywhere else she went.

Both Mary’s body and that of Jesus are now glorified in heaven. May our communion with our Lord and our Lady in heaven begin here on earth, through our devout reception of Holy Communion, through constant prayer, and through love of neighbor.