Walking with Jesus: The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Exodus 24:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

Today we are celebrating the wonderful feast of the Holy Eucharist, Corpus Christi. It is a special gift to prepare children for the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Holy Eucharist. One of the questions I ask them is, “Do you love Jesus?” With all their innocence, purity, love, and a huge, radiating smile, they say, “Oh yes, I love Jesus.”  I encourage them to say, “I love you Jesus,” after receiving ... and then to be still and listen ... because every time you say “I love you” to Mommy and Daddy, they say, “I love you, too.” Today is the feast of love: pure love. It is on God’s side; it is to be on our side too. Children look forward to this feast; they have been waiting a long time. “Can I have some?” has been a frequent question since they walked as a family in communion line, and not many are satisfied with, “You’re not old enough … you will when you grow up and receive First Communion.” For our little ones this is one of the rites of passage, and an important one. Does this celebration remind us of our connection to our faith heritage?

The Jewish feast of Passover commemorated and renewed the foundational experience of God’s Chosen People … setting them free from the confines of slavery in Egypt. They sprinkled their doorposts with the blood of a lamb, signalling God’s eternal presence with them. The “angel of death” passed over their homes and they began their freedom journey. It also marked the occasion of Jesus’ institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist. Mark’s account of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper shows that Jesus was the true Passover Lamb, now leading us to our eternal home. The first Passover is perpetuated among the Jewish people to this day.

The meal Jesus shared with the apostles, some followers and women contains many aspects of the Jewish Passover meal, with the exception of the major change at the end. Jesus blesses the bread and gives it to the disciples to eat. Then He gives them a cup of the wine for them to drink. What is so very unique are the words and interpretation of this by Jesus. The bread is now His Body, the wine His Blood. Now these two constitute a new covenant — a new agreement between God and each of us. Jesus draws on two traditions of sacrifice, both related to the Exodus, to explain the meaning of His imminent death which both saves us from death and seals a covenant between God and humanity. At the Last Supper Jesus explains, “As the Father loves Me, so I also love you. Remain in My love. … This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. … This I command you: love one another.”  [John 16:9-10, 12-14, 17]

“All of this will have its greatest significance when fulfilled in Heaven, God’s kingdom. There Jesus and all His disciples will share this new covenant with a new presence now fully realized.” So the question we ask is, What am I to do? How am I conforming to the will of God? God’s will is that we all be in Heaven. God’s grace leads us to a oneness of likeness and a oneness of love. It means we journey in love and God’s grace to become the person Jesus needs us to be. We look into our own lives and remember how mutual love joins two people … the deeper the love, the more the two wills become identified, the more they are one. Am I working on becoming the likeness of Jesus and the likeness of His love each day? It’s hard and it’s a struggle, especially since the enemy of love, forgiveness and caring never wants us to be love; that’s Satan regimen. In our world we are tempted to give up and give in. It comes down to how I am living and how I am loving.

In On the Threshold of Transformation, Fr. Richard Rohr writes: “Sometimes I think that the two genders, the division of East and West, the two hemispheres of the brain, the political divisions of liberal and conservative, the light-skinned and the dark-skinned — all must give way to something new and much better. Neither side of any issue is going to concede or disappear. If we don’t acknowledge the reality of the body of Christ, beloved of God, we will lose the ability to imagine ourselves — or others — as whole.” And then he asks, “Whom do I have trouble imagining as wonderful and loved by God?” This is the focal point of God’s love — you, me, and everyone — loved now and forever to be with God in heaven. Am I believing this, accepting this, living in this way? There are two aspects of living as Jesus in the oneness of His likeness and oneness of  His love: a new knowing and a new loving. That is me changing and loving as Jesus loves me.

In God, I see wonderful new things like our 7-year-olds do when they tell Jesus they love Him. After they receive I ask them, Did you hear Jesus?

“Yes,” they say.

And what did He say?

“I love you, too.”

So I reflect on:

• Why would Christ have chosen to leave us His body and blood under the appearances of bread and wine, instead of some other way?
• When we have an important meeting or event to attend, we do many things to prepare ourselves. Why do we generally take so little time to prepare ourselves to encounter Jesus in Mass and the Eucharist?
  

Sacred Space 2021 states:

“Today’s feast of Corpus Christi is a revisiting of the liturgy of Holy Thursday with an emphasis on the institution of the Eucharist. We are reminded of the Jewish context of the Last Supper (Passover meal, sacrificial lamb). The terms 'my body' and 'my blood of the covenant' both express the total self-giving of Jesus for us. The Last Supper is the prologue to the Passion. Do I appreciate the 'bread from heaven' that Jesus offers us?”