Dear Sisters, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today’s great feast day, Corpus Christi, meaning ‘The Body of Christ’, is a celebration in honour of Him who comes to us at Mass in Holy Communion. This is what Our Lord Himself taught His followers: that He is the living bread from heaven; and that the bread which He would give His Apostles at the Last Supper was His flesh; and that all those who eat His flesh and drink his blood have eternal life; and that He will raise them up to new life in the resurrection on the last day. Later this summer, over a period of five Sundays from the end of July, we will hear in chapter six of St John’s Gospel our Lord’s teaching concerning the gift of His Body and Blood that He was preparing for His followers, a teaching He gave soon after miraculously feeding five thousand of them with five loaves of bread and two fish. As we will hear then, that wonderful miracle was very closely connected with the Holy Communion He was going to give to the Church.
But that is still a few weeks away. Today is a celebration of pure joy, gratitude and deep devotion. That is the fitting response to such a magnificent Sacrament. In all the seven Sacraments which Christ left to us as channels of His grace and goodness He is present by His divine power, but in this one He is present in a unique way personally, for what we receive in Holy Communion is not bread or wine, not a mere token in memory or in honour of Him, but is truly Himself: His Body and Blood and also everything that He is Himself in person; that means therefore also His human soul and, yes, even His Godhead, His divinity! What more could He give than all of Himself? Just think for a moment, that when we come to Communion, we are receiving God made man, in person, into our mouths for our nourishment and joy!
And we must be aware of this truth as well: He whom we receive in Communion under the appearance of a piece of bread is not dead. We receive Him, not as He lay in death in the tomb, a dead body, but as He rose glorious from the dead and now reigns in glory in heaven, fully alive! Even in the small particle that is given to us at Communion, we still receive everything that He is. So, whether it be a round altar bread, or a tiny fragment of the larger host, it makes no difference, it is still all of Him, whole and entire.
For the appearances that we perceive with our senses are not the reality we receive into our bodies and souls. We see what looks like bread because when it was made, and when it was brought to the altar, it was bread. But since the moment when the words our Lord spoke over the bread at the Last Supper were pronounced over it, the words we call ‘the words of consecration’, it has been completely transformed in its innermost being in a way that our senses cannot perceive. We cannot see any change, it still tastes like bread, that is what our senses tell us, but from that moment when the priest proclaims the Lord’s words: ‘this is my Body which is given up for you’, it ceases to be bread and becomes totally the Body, Blood, soul and divinity of Christ in person.
Since we cannot detect this change in the substance of the bread, because we can only see the outward appearances of the bread – how do we know that this change has taken place in the bread? It is because of the words of our Lord. When He says ‘this is my Body’, He does not mean ‘this is a representation of my body’. No; He means what He says, and He intended us to understand those words in no other sense at all. No wonder we should be extremely joyful, grateful and devout when we receive Communion.
Yet of course we cannot celebrate the Body of Christ without the presence equally of the sacred and precious Blood. In the same way, too, when these words are spoken over the chalice containing wine: ‘This is the chalice of my Blood’; then, at that instant, what was until that moment wine become completely transformed into Christ’s Blood, ‘which will be poured out … for the forgiveness of sins.’ This is why the feast which we still familiarly know as ‘Corpus Christi’, the Body of Christ, is now officially designated ‘Corpus et Sanguis Christi’, the Body and Blood of Christ.
The Precious Blood of Christ was from the outset an essential aspect of what we celebrate on this feast. For it was in the Sacrifice on Calvary that the Sacred Body and Precious Blood were separated, and then in the glorious Resurrection reunited once more in Him, never to be separated ever again. Hence, too, when we receive Him in Holy Communion, we can never receive His sacred Body without simultaneously receiving His precious Blood. For even though we receive under one sign or the other, that is, either under the appearance of bread or under the appearance of wine it makes no difference to what, or rather to whom, we receive into us. It is always the living and glorified Christ, the Lord whose final parting gift to His disciples was indeed His precious Body and Blood.
I have made this point particularly today because this Year’s readings are indeed especially focused on the Precious and Sacred Blood of Christ, the Blood of the New and Eternal Covenant, the Blood poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins. So we heard in the first reading the account how Moses sacrificed bullocks at the foot of Mount Sinai. These sacrifices were intended to bring about communion between God and His people, to unite them in a bond and a covenant more powerful than simply one of words. Hence we were told that Moses took the blood of these sacrificed animals and poured some on the altar. But this was not all, for then we heard that Moses took the rest of the blood and, after reading aloud the Law of God to the listening people, he then sprinkled them with that blood, saying as he did so: ‘this is the blood of the Covenant that the Lord has made with you.’
Having heard the importance of the Blood of the Covenant in the first reading, we moved on to hear a reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, in which St Paul tells us how Christ’s Blood utterly surpasses the blood of heifers sprinkled on the people by Moses. Christ’s blood is the price of our redemption, by which we are truly at last set free from sin in a way which the blood of the old covenant could only look towards with hope and longing until fulfilled in the Blood of Christ poured out on Calvary for us.
So finally we turned to St Mark’s account of the Last Supper. The first words are those with which we are familiar from every Mass, that after He had taken the chalice in His holy and venerable hands Jesus gave thanks to God and then gave the chalice to the disciples, saying to them: 'this is my Blood, the Blood of the covenant which is to be poured out for many.’
As I said a moment ago, we receive the Blood of Christ whenever we receive His Body, because they cannot be separated in Him alive as He now is. It as only in death that they were separated. He gave two forms not as two different sacraments, but as two different outward signs of the one sacred reality. It is that which we receive and adore and honour. Let us always do so with great reverence, reflecting carefully on who it is that comes to us in such great humility now under such humble appearances.
In honour of this day, and as a reminder of what it is that we celebrate, at Communion today I will offer you the Sacred Host with the words: ‘Corpus Christi’, to which, as usual, you reply ‘Amen’.
Make A Comment
Comments (0)