Sunday readings in brief: Corpus Christi
Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14-16; Psalms 147; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58
The Body and Blood of Christ
Dear friends, today we celebrate in a special way what we celebrate every day, the real presence of Christ in our midst through the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Before his suffering and death, Jesus celebrated the Jewish Passover feast with his disciples. (Jews marked the day when the angel of the Lord punished the Egyptians, but “passed over” the houses of the Israelites, which were marked by the blood of the lamp, without doing them any harm, forcing the Pharaoh to let them go). However, Jesus turned this feast into his own and offered to his disciples and to us the most precious gift the world has ever seen – his body and blood as food for our souls.
In the celebration of the holy mass, we relive the sacrifice that Jesus offered to God the Father for our redemption. On the Cross, Jesus replaces the unblemished lamb of the Passover with his own body. He also replaces the high priests who offered the sacrifice of the lamb on behalf of himself and of the people with Himself. Therefore, Christ becomes for us the altar, the priest, and the lamb that is immolated for the salvation of the world. When we become Christians, we are called to imitate Christ by offering ourselves as a sacrifice for the good of others.
The priest is ordained and anointed to share in the Priesthood of Christ in order to offer to God the very sacrifice that Jesus offered for the faithful. By the grace of the sacrament of the ordination, the priest is made “in persona Christi”, that is to say, he embodies Christ who offers the Sacrifice and makes the Eucharist available for the faithful in the celebration of the Holy Mass. One may not like the personality of the individual priest but a good Christian will always appreciate the embodiment of Christ in the Priest. The priest is the Sacrament of Christ through the Church, that is to say, the visible Christ.
Eucharist is the epitome of the seven Sacraments that Jesus gave us for our redemption. Now, what are the sacraments and especially the sacrament of the Eucharist? Sacraments are understood as “the visible signs of the invisible grace of God, established by Christ himself in order to bring or increase grace in us” (CCC). We call them visible signs of the invisible grace because Christ chose the things that are visible to us to represent and embody the eternal reality that we cannot see with our physical eyes but only with our faith.
In baptism, water is the visible sign of the cleansing grace of God that removes the original sin and all other sins. This means that as a sign, it does not matter the quantity of water used in baptism. The visible signs of the Sacrament of the Eucharist that we celebrate today are Bread and Wine, which, after the prayer of the consecration by the Priest, become truly the Body and the Blood of Christ himself.
The Eucharist is the food for our soul on its return journey to God. In the first reading, Moses reminds the people of Israel how God sustained them through their journey in the desert by providing them manna from heaven and water from the rock. Just as we need food for our bodies in order to remain strong and healthy, we need also the Eucharist for our souls to remain strong and health until when we die and go back to God where we came from.
Now all this is made possible through our faith inherited from the apostles through the Church. When we receive the Eucharist, we receive Christ into our lives, therefore, the outcome of it must be the imitation of Christ through words and deeds. We become the tabernacles that house Jesus and the world must experience him in us. If this is not the case then we might not have understood what the Eucharist is and we render the Eucharistic Jesus in us inactive. The manifestation of the grace of the Eucharist is not complete in only adoration of the Blessed Sacrament but more in acting in a Eucharistic manner. Doing what Jesus did in every situation we find ourselves is becoming Eucharistic persons. Am I eucharistic?
If we were well instructed in our catechism about the Eucharist, then we must know that partaking of this celebration requires good preparation. We are very thorough in preparations for celebrations such as birthdays, graduations, weddings, and political rallies with minute details. However, when it comes to the celebration of the most important moment of our lives as Christians, the eucharistic moment, we do very little or no preparations at all.
The Eucharist is the gift of Christ’s real presence to us at the price of his life. In the Gospel, Jesus explains that he is the living bread that gives life to those who partake of him. If we only understood what the Eucharist really is and what it could do for us, we will not want to miss it even a single day. Many people like starting their day very early with activities such as Yoga, jogging, meditation, and others in order to keep their body and mind strong throughout the day. However, many forget that the body and mind can be as strong as the horse but if the soul is weak for lack of nourishment, the day will definitely be messed up. We may need to check the order of our daily priorities and revise them accordingly.
Dear friends, let us seek more knowledge about the Eucharist so that we can benefit fully from the grace it brings to us and those around us.
Have a blessed feast.
Fr. Lawrence Muthee, SVD
SVD JAMBO KENTAN 