The Body and Blood of Christ

The renewal of the liturgical calendar took two feasts from the old calendar to create the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.  On the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, the Church celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ) while on July 1 the Church celebrated the Feast of the Most Precious Blood. These two feasts were joined together; and, while most of the world still celebrates the Solemnity on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, the Bishops of the United States moved the observance to the Sunday after Trinity Sunday.

The A cycle of the Lectionary for Sunday Mass emphasizes the Body (bread) of Christ; the B and C cycles emphasize the Blood (wine) and the minister of the sacrament respectively.

 This Sunday’s first reading reminds us of the “theology of memory” that underlies both Jewish and Christian worship.  Chapter eight of the Book of Deuteronomy presents almost a litany of the favors that God has bestowed on the people of Israel.  God led them out of Egypt, directed their journey, led them through the Red Sea, saved them from Pharoah’s army, fed them with manna – a food previously unknown to them – and quail, gave them the commandments, and kept their clothing from disintegrating over the forty year sojourn.  By remembering the events of the Passover and all that God did for the children of Israel during their sojourn in the desert, Moses lays the foundation for Jewish worship.  Like many of the ancient religions of the Middle East, the act of remembering makes the events present in the community so that all of them can participate in those events as if they had lived through it.  By participating in it, they reap the benefits of God’s providential care.  For the purposes of today’s feast, chapter eight is excerpted to highlight the manna that they and their ancestors ate in the desert.  In something of a play on words, the name the people gave to this food, manna, sounds very much like the question they first asked when this food appeared, man hu, “What is it?”

 Just as our Jewish ancestors did and still do today, we Christians remember what Jesus did for us when we celebrate the Eucharist.  By remembering his sacrifice on Calvary, we make that reality present within the community so that we can participate in it.  Again, by participating in it, we reap the benefits of the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus.  As we pray in the great Eucharistic Prayer, “Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your church and, recognizing the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ.”  St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians reminds us of this by proclaiming: “The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (I Corinthians 10:16b)

We participate in a cultic sacrifice and a cultic meal.  Cultic sacrifices involve the shedding of blood and the immolation of flesh.  Cultic meals involve food and drink.  At Mass, the two are joined.  The Gospel of St. John clearly states today: Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  (John 6:53-55)

The words “flesh and blood” are often used by us to designate a real person.  This is the intent of the Gospel today.  Jesus is a real human being, a man of flesh and blood.  Our Eucharist is the flesh and blood of Jesus, under the appearances of bread and wine.  Jesus is in our midst as a human being, but also as God in the flesh.  The mystery of the Incarnation is intimately tied to the sacrifice of Calvary.  God came to live with us, or in the words of the former opening prayer of Christmas midnight Mass, leapt out of heaven to be one of us.  Thomas Aquinas wrote that God sent Jesus in flesh and blood so that we human beings would be rescued from our sins by one like us.  The great Franciscan scholastic philosopher, St. Bonaventure, argued that God would have become one of us in any event simply because God loves us.  Whether you look through the lenses of Aquinas or Bonaventure, the truth remains that God became one of us and died so that we might live.  Our Eucharist is, therefore, a sacrifice as well as a meal.

As we celebrate this great solemnity of our liturgical calendar, we must be mindful of the power of memory to be sure.  However, we must also recognize that participating in the Body and Blood of Christ carries with it the moral imperative that we become what we eat.  Gifts always imply responsibility.  When one receives a gift, one must not only be grateful for the gift but must also use it for one’s personal benefit and the benefit of others.  So it is that as Christ offered his body and blood for the sake of our redemption as a free gift, we must now do the same.  In that sense, the gift does not come without strings attached.  One cannot simply eat and drink this gift and expect the gift of eternal life to be automatic.  In addition to the memory of what Christ did for us, the very name “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving.”  So we are also grateful for what God has done for us and show our gratitude by living as Jesus did, for others.

Let us approach the altar today remembering all that God has done for us, giving thanks for God’s gift of love, and promising to extend that gift to the others in our life.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator