BODY AND BLOOD, EUCHARIST.
June 2, 2024.
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ -
Corpus Christi – B.
"This is my body… This is my blood."
A Kenyan proverb says: “He who eats another man’s food will
have his own food eaten by others.” A Ghanaian proverb adds: “One who eats
alone cannot discuss the taste of the food with others.”
The Holy Eucharist is a Sacrament where the Body of Christ
is given, and his Blood is poured for the restoration of our lives and the
remission of our sins. The Eucharist is the Sacrament of all the Sacraments.
The Catechism, quoting Lumen Gentium 11 says: "The Eucharist is "the
source and summit of the Christian life." "The other sacraments, and
indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up
with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is
contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our
Pasch." It is so because the Eucharist is the actual and true presence of
the Lord at work and living in the Church and the lives and hearts of every
believer.
Through the Eucharist, the Lord's presence is made vivid and
tangible in the Church. The night before his passion and death on the Cross, he
gave the Eucharist not only to be a memorial but before all to be his
mysterious and ever alive Body and Blood, food, and fruit of our redemption.
An act of faith is what it requires for us to enter the
Eucharistic mystery and see through it Jesus as our bread and wine, food for
our lives. The Eucharist is truly a Mysterium Fidei for, "When we eat this
Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim his death until he comes again."
The Eucharistic sequence, "Lauda, Sion" says in
one stance: "Man cannot understand this, cannot perceive it; but a lively
faith affirms that the change, which is outside the natural course of things, take
place. Under the different species, which are now signs only and not their own
reality, there lie hidden wonderful realities. His body, our food, his blood
our drink..."
So, what we celebrate today in this solemnity, but also what
we celebrate in every Eucharistic celebration, is truly the Body and Blood of
Christ. This feast comes only as a reminder of the Eucharist sacrality and a
warning on how to approach the Lord present in our Eucharist. We are also told
that by receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, we become an Eucharistic people
and a living Tabernacle. We are the sacrament of Christ's presence.
As such, our lives should not only reflect his presence in
us, but we also should incarnate his life, mission, and action. The Eucharist
being a Sacrament of love and passion, we ought also to be burning with
passionate love up to dying sacrificially for others.
While celebrating the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus
Christi, the word of God emphasizes three main dimensions of the Eucharist for
us today. The Eucharist is a covenant. The Eucharist is a sacrifice of
expiation. The Eucharist is a Memorial. In the first reading, the dimension of
the covenant is made clear. Moses said to the people: “This is the blood of the
covenant which the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words of
his.”
The people were bound to a relationship of faithfulness and
obedience to God. For us Christians, the Eucharist also takes the meaning of
covenant. It is not simply a gift the Lord did before returning to his Father.
A gift is something we merely receive. The covenant, however, engages us. We
become a family with Jesus. By consuming him, we make him part of our lives.
Like every covenant, the Eucharist involves responsibilities. We promise to
give ourselves to the Lord just like he gives himself to us, and more, to give
ourselves to our brothers and sisters who partake in the same covenant with us,
becoming a family. There, the Holy Eucharist gets its true meaning as communion
for it seals our common union with the Lord and with others. Our first
responsibility in this sacramental covenant is love, obedience, and
faithfulness.
The Eucharist is a sacrifice of expiation. The letter to the
Hebrews points to this dimension. Christ, the per excellence, High-priest offered
the most perfect and acceptable sacrifice that takes away the sins of the
world. When we celebrate the Holy Eucharistic, we say it before the Communion:
"Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the
world..." Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross was an expiation like the ancient
sacrifices in Israel. It went, however, further to be the greatest and
perfection of all other sacrifices. We read that when Christ came as high
priest of the good things that have come to be, ... he entered once for all
into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own
blood." In so doing, he offered the greatest sacrifice that cleanses not
only our outer but also our inner being. He cleansed our consciences and
restored us to a perfect relationship with God. In Him, and through His Blood,
are are ransomed from sin and restored to life.
Lastly, the Gospel points to the dimension of the Eucharist
as a memorial. This is a divine order from Jesus, the night before his passion.
It comes in his own words: "Do this in memory of me." Mark, in the
Gospel, gives us the “Esse” of the Eucharistic prayer, the words of
Consecration pronounced by the Lord himself: “Take it; this is my body"...
Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from
it. He said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed
for many." These are words, we, your priests, when acting "in persona
Chriti Capitis", during the mass pronounce. Through those words, the Bread
each one brings and the Wine each one offers become the true Body and Blood of
our Lord and Savior. The Church speaks of Transubstantiation. The substances of
the Bread and Wine are completely and totally transformed in Body and Blood.
Celebrating today the Corpus Christi, many things we could
be tempted to say and teach about the Holy Eucharist. One, however, must be
central: our participation in the Eucharist and its effects on our lives. The
effects of the Eucharist are like the effects of any food on our body. We need
food for life, so too, in spiritual ground, we need the Eucharist to sustain
the life of our soul. The Eucharist gives us the grace we need to deny
ourselves and to live for Christ and our neighbor. One of the beautiful impacts
of the Eucharist is that being communion, it breaks our divisions, egocentrism,
and leads us to selflessness. In the Eucharist, the more love one has for
Christ, the less self-love we have, and deeper grows our concern for the good
of others.
Because the Eucharist is a sacrament of love, it is necessarily
a sacrament of union. It strengthens our union with one another and obliges us
to live for others. Besides, in the Eucharist, God himself comes to feed our
needs: needs of love, needs of communion, needs of union.
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