Appeared in The Catholic Virginian June 26, 2000
Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ
This weekend we celebrate the great Feast of Corpus Christi, now called the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. Prior to liturgical renewal, this feast occurred on the Thursday after the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. Now we have the opportunity not only to renew our belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but also to emphasize the importance of being a eucharistic people each day of our lives. We can truthfully say that religious beliefs have meaning only if they are reflected in the life of the community.
The Sacred Constitution on the Liturgy states, “at the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again and so to entrust to the Church a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the person is filled with grace and a pledge of future glory is given to us”.
We believe that when the eucharistic minister holds up the host and says, “The Body of Christ”, we believe and affirm that Christ is truly and really present - body, blood, soul and divinity. This is not a symbolic presence, but a substantial presence because Jesus gave himself at the Last Supper when he took bread and said, “This is my body” and took wine and said, “This is my blood which is being offered up for you” and told us to “do this until the end of time in memory of me”.
Just think for a moment what our life as a church would be like without the Eucharist. And yet, the reception of Holy Communion is so easily available to us that the routine can dull our senses to the demands that the Eucharist makes on our lives as Catholic Christians. The Council Fathers of Vatican II speak of the Eucharist as the “source and summit of the Christian life”. The Eucharist is the source of God’s grace or God’s life for us, the spiritual food for life’s journey and the summit to which all our hopes and aspirations, the longings of our human heart flow.
Worthy reception of Holy Communion demands that we first be in communion with one another as we approach the table of the Lord. We must then, also, be in communion - one with - not only our brothers and sisters in Christ, but with all believers and those we encounter in our daily lives. Eucharist should affect our attitudes toward others, the way we live and interact with others. Simply put, Eucharist must have a profound effect on us, on the way we think, on the way we live, on our whole being as we grow steadily into the likeness of Christ.
When we affirm and say “Amen” as the host is presented to us, we are not just saying “yes” to the real presence of Jesus, but we say that, yes, we are the body of Christ. That means that our attitude must be that of Christ, we must be Christ-like in our actions and be the presence of Christ to others. Are we not called to be the presence of Christ to others and to do the things that Christ did while he walked the earth? Did not Jesus have a love for the poor and the downtrodden? Did not Jesus reach out to the sick and the less fortunate? Was not Jesus at home with the forsaken and the forgotten? Not only does our communion with Jesus make demands on our identity, but it puts a demand on the parish community to be seen and experienced as a eucharistic people.
What a gift Jesus has given so freely to us. He called us into a covenant relationship with himself and we keep his memory alive. Just as Jesus offers himself once again in the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass, we in imitation must ourselves become a self-offering to others. In Eucharist we stretch our horizons beyond our own circle of friends to those who do not experience the love of Christ so freely given to us. In other words, we are called to duplicate in our daily lives what we celebrate in faith at the table of the Lord. Just as Jesus said to his apostles on the night before he died, “Take and eat, take and drink”, so we must do likewise in the multiple ways of daily living.
Yes, we come to recognize Jesus in the “breaking of the bread”. When we gather, we are fed or nourished both by the bread of the word and the bread of the sacrament. We grow spiritually not just for our own spiritual benefit, but that we will gift others with the gift that we have received. At the end of every Mass, we receive the missionary command, “Go” - Go! To bring to everyone the announcement of the Risen Lord and his peace. Service to the poor, witness to charity and the promotion of life, the struggle for justice and the constant search for peace are all contained in that one word “Go”.
On this Feast of Corpus Christi, let us be ever thankful for the
legacy Jesus has left us so that he may be with us until the end of time.
+ Walter F. Sullivan