The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

 Lectionary: 167

"I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world."

Two weeks ago we celebrated the feast of Pentecost, a Jewish-Christian feast with very different meanings for the two religions. Jews call it Shavuot (sha-VU-aught); and celebrate that day when the Lord God gave Moses the Law, the Torah. Christians know the fiftieth day of Easter as Pentecost. We announce the New Torah, the Gospel, to every nation in every language of the world. 

Last week we celebrated the Most Holy Trinity. The opening prayer of the Mass and the Eucharistic Prayer are directed to the Father, through Jesus: 

“through him, with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, for ever and ever.” 

And the congregation says Amen.

Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Like the Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, the three Sundays of Pentecost, Holy Trinity, and Corpus Christi are a piece; and the mystery of each one needs the other two to illuminate our minds and stir our hearts to love and worship God. 

Everything God has done for us from Creation to Jesus reveals the three-fold nature of God and brings us to the Sacred Banquet of his Body and Blood. This is what God has wanted for us all along, that during the Mass we should ingest God as we are ingested into God.

As Jesus said:

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood

remains in me and I in him…. 

Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,

whoever eats this bread will live forever."

In today’s gospel, we heard Jesus speak to the disciples after he fed them with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. But later, when he made this incredible statement, Saint John tells us, “many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.”

The Lord might have gone after them saying, “No, no, you misunderstand me. I was talking poetically, metaphorically. I don’t mean like cannibalism; I mean it’s a symbol.” But he didn't do that because he was speaking literally: you must eat my flesh and drink my blood. And they knew what he meant. 

It wasn’t cannibalism, it was, "...you must die to yourself, You must belong heart and soul to me, as I do to you. You must be baptized and become my flesh as I become your flesh. 

The crowds turned away because they thought they already knew what God wanted, and it wasn’t as much as Jesus demanded. The Pharisees said they only had to observe the Law, avoid breaking the ten commandments, and they were good, and God was supposed to be satisfied with “good enough.” 

He was not. Jesus told us what God wanted of him and us, “Unless you take up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciples.” The cross is a metaphor for us; but for him, it was neither a metaphor nor a symbol. He had to carry the hard wooden cross on which he died. And we must go with him to Calvary if we would rise again on Easter.  

Catholics have explained the Eucharist with a philosophical word, transubstantiation; but Americans don’t do philosophy. We want to hear about a man who really lived a long time ago, but still lives among us: 

“On the night before he died, he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me."
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

On the night before he died, this healthy young man knew he would be dead by this time tomorrow. He was terrified, as anyone might be. But during that last supper, he also announced his decision to go through with it. Having said, “This is my body” and “this is my blood;” and, “You must eat it…. You must drink it,” he could not turn back. There could be no turning back. Later in the evening, as he thought about what he had done, and how the disciples had eaten his flesh and drank his blood; and as he waited for the mob with their ropes, chains, knives, and swords, he sweated blood. 

Twice he said, “Do this in memory of me.” We should think of these as his Last Words. He knew the kind of men he had chosen. They did not understand what he taught them; they were not brave; they were divisive and quarrelsome; they would prefer the broad highway of many choices to the narrow way of his cross. And they would forget everything he’d ever said or done. After the catastrophe of Good Friday they might say to friends and family, "Forget it; it never happened. I wasn’t even there."

 

But they must remember, and Jesus said, “Do this in memory of me.” because you must remember. If you do this, you will not forget. I will be with you. My body, and my blood; my presence and my Spirit will remind you, and you will remember everything, everything! 

But if you don’t. If you don’t eat my flesh and drink my blood, you’ll remember only what you want to remember; and you will not be my disciples. Everybody makes pictures of God. Sometimes they call their pictures, “Jesus.” But there are no pictures, statues, or images of God; there are no movies, operas, or dramas about God. There is only the flesh which you must eat, and the blood you must drink. 

Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; He is the Law, the Torah, so that we might belong heart and soul, mind and body, to him; and that he might belong to us. That we might be One with each other as he is One with God; as He our head and we his body might worship the Father in the Holy Spirit with one voice, one mind, one heart. 

This is what the Church celebrates with the Solemnity of Corpus Christi: 

so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us….

And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.