Corpus Christi B

[cappie]

 Today we are keeping the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, historically called Corpus Christi. On this day, we acknowledge and celebrate the meaning of the Holy Eucharist wherein we are spiritually fed by the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ under the forms of consecrated bread and wine and fed also by the prayers of the whole Church.

 We thank God in a special way for having remained with us in the Most Holy Sacrament.  The great theologians of history were not the ones who decided to celebrate this day.  The idea arose spontaneously through popular demand.  It was in the XIII century that Pope Urban IV officially instituted this great solemnity in the universal Catholic Church. 

Since the beginning of the Church, common people have shown their faith in the real presence of Christ.  From this faith sprang the devotion to the Holy Eucharist not only in Mass but also outside of Mass.  Our Christian ancestors always believed that the Lord God was present in the tabernacle, and we should do the same.  Christ is there.  And it is there that our adoration and love should be directed.

There are people who say, “Why should we celebrate the presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist?  Christ is present everywhere?”  Well, yes, Christ is present in all places.  We see his presence in nature, and it is reflected in honest and true human relationships, and, in a special way, he is present in the Catholic Church that he founded.  Anywhere in the world that the Church prays, teaches, preaches or does charitable work, the presence of the Lord is indisputable.  But, since that first Holy Thursday, since his Last Supper with the apostles, when Jesus took the bread and said, “this is my body,” and he took the cup and said, “this is my blood,” the Lord has been truly present, God and man, wholly and entirely, in the Holy Eucharist. When I was in seminary some  years ago one of the questions on a mid-term examination for  Liturgy class was to “write briefly what participation in the Holy Eucharist meant to you.”

My answer to that question was that “when I participate in the Holy Eucharist, especially at the moment of receiving Communion, whether I feel it or not, I am united with Christ and with all of God’s people in heaven and on earth.”  

 Since then, when the Holy Mass is celebrated, the bread and the wine are transformed, by the work of the Holy Spirit, into the Body and Blood of Our Lord.   

Our readings in Mass today help us to understand a little bit about the great mystery that we are celebrating.  But we cannot discern with our eyes the radical transformation that occurs when the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of the Lord.  The presence of God under the appearance of bread and wine can only be perceived through faith. 

St. Thomas Aquinas said the Eucharist is the one change we encounter that is exactly the opposite.  The appearances of bread and wine stay the same, but the very essence of these realities, which can’t be viewed by a microscope, is totally transformed.  What starts as bread and wine becomes Christ’s body and blood.   A handy word was coined to describe this unique change.  Transformation of the “sub-stance”, what “stands-under” the surface, came to be called “transubstantiation.”  

Today, on this Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, we come together here in community in the presence of our heavenly Father.  As we celebrate the sacrifice and the victory of Our Lord Jesus Christ, let us give this great day its true meaning.   God does not want dead works or animal sacrifices. He wants our own flesh and blood, our own lives, consecrated to him, offered as a living sacrifice. This is the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in today’s Psalm. This is the Eucharist.

The Eucharist, the Mass, has always been central to my faith. It was the desire   to celebrate and share communion which led me to being ordained. One of my most profound 'religious experiences' was during an hour of adoration before the sacrament before I was ordained.

 Every time I celebrate I do so as if it were the first, the last and the only time I will do so and it feels holy every time.  

The Church is the body of Christ on Earth. Through the Eucharist the body of Christ is fed and sustained by, yes, the body of Christ. The ordinary is made extraordinary, the commonplace is made holy, heaven comes down to earth and lifts earth up to heaven. The Holy Spirit we receive at baptism leads us to receive the Son at Communion and we are lifted to God the Father.

What we do in memory of him is to pledge our lives to him, to renew our promise to live by the words of his covenant and to be his servants.

There is no other return we can offer to him for the eternal inheritance he has won for us. So let us approach the altar, calling upon his name in thanksgiving, taking up the cup of salvation.

 

[Archaeology cat]

Fr Cappie, that was beautiful. Thank you.