Corpus Christi Sunday (Cycle A)

May 25, 2008

by Reverend Deacon Lawrence A. St. Onge

This coming Monday we will celebrate a day of remembrance, which we call, Memorial Day. It is the day on which we recall all the men and women who have died in protection of our country’s freedom; who have defended our democracy and liberty. It is a patriotic celebration recalling our country’s military history and national dedication.

Today, on this Sunday our church also has a memorial celebration in which we recall the One Death, which freed us all from the eternal un-freedoms, if you will. Two thousand years ago the Body of Christ lived among us as a Real presence of the Eternal Love of God. His blood gave His Body life and he gave His Body and Blood for our independence and freedom from sin.

We gather this weekend to recall the deaths of those who have allowed us to live more freely as a nation. So too, does the Church gather today to remember again the death of the One who laid down his life for His friends, our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as when a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies to itself so that many other grains of wheat might fruitfully grow, so the Body of the Lord Jesus poured out His life-giving Blood, that we might be the fruitfulness of His life-saving and love-giving, death and resurrection.

In today’s gospel passage the Jews were scandalized and the disciples were divided when they heard Jesus say, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.” Indeed what a hard saying it would be, unless we understand who Jesus truly is and why he calls himself the “bread of life.”

Under the Law of the Old Testament the flesh and blood of calves and goats was offered to God as an expiation of sins. St. Thomas Aquinas states: “Jesus offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the Cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed His blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But in order to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us forever, he left His Body as food and His Blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine.” It is what the church calls transubstantiation; that is, during the mass, at what is called the consecration, while still remaining in the outward form of bread and wine, they become in reality the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ – what we call the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Again, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: “Under the old Law it was the flesh of animals that was offered up in sacrifice, but here Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as food. What could be more wonderful than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church, for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit of all.” Through it “we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in His passion.”

Jesus loves us so much that when he left us and Ascended back to heaven, he left his risen body with us under the appearance of bread and wine. This is the Body that we celebrate today, the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, hidden indeed, in the form of ordinary bread and wine, but absolutely real, for in the Eucharist we truly receive the Lord Jesus, Body and Blood, soul and divinity.

Pope Pius XII, who was Pope in the 1940’s and 1950’s, put it this way: “When we receive [the Eucharist] worthily, we are what we receive. We are transformed into Christ.

This is the love that we cannot fathom nor fully understand, “his body is given up for us, from Bethlehem to Calvary, from a stable to a cross, his body is for us. Even now, in high heaven or in a host, his body is for us.”

The mission of all Christians, the reason for our being, is to make the presence of Christ a reality to the world. But we cannot do this on our own. The Good New can only flow through us when we become the one we are proclaiming. That is why Jesus gave his body and blood for us; for through it we are transformed into Christ, because the world needs its Savior.

We need to fight against the spiritual laziness that might cause some to relegate the Eucharist to that of a sacramental, as though receiving Communion is on the same level as making the sign of the cross with Holy Water, for example. We sincerely need to prepare ourselves to worthily receive the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist, not just in the prayers we say moments before Mass or before Communion, but in the life we lead in the week before Sunday Mass. We have to celebrate Christ’ Real Presence within us, not just in the pews after Communion, but in the way we treat others, with dignity and the kindness and compassion of the Lord.

Let us remember that we have to be mystics in a concrete world, for we have received the mystical, the Body and Blood of Jesus, to sanctify the world. May the Eucharistic Gift we have received continue to feed us, lead us, and guide our living and life.