CORPUS CHRISTI

            Today’s feast is the feast of the very center and heart of our church, the center and heart of our faith, and the center and heart of the lives of each of us, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Today’s feast is most important. I know that some find it difficult to believe that bread and wine change into the Body and Blood of Jesus. I can understand your doubts. We don’t see any change in the bread or wine.  There is no difference in the taste; the bread still tastes like bread and the wine still tastes like wine.  It is going against logic to say that the bread and wine change into the Body and Blood of Jesus despite no change in appearance.  Scientifically it is flawed to say that a change has occurred.

            The feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ is a feast which calls us to faith. When it comes to believing in God we need to surrender our intellect to faith.  As Paul says, in the Christian life we go by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7).  The Jews that Jesus was addressing had gathered to ask him for more bread. Jesus promised to give them the sacramental bread and blood instead. But in their worldly frame of mind they could not understand or appreciate the sacrament. They disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus reaffirmed that “My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink”. They ended up distancing themselves from the Eucharist because the sacramental language makes no sense to people in a materialistic frame of mind.

            The same problem that these early would-be followers of Jesus had is still with us today. If we approach the Eucharist with a materialistic mentality we fail to understand and so lose the benefits of such a wonderful gift of God’s love. The Eucharist is true food and drink but at the same time it is very different from every other food and drink. The great difference lies in these words of Christ which St Augustine heard in prayer, “You will not change me into yourself as you would food of your flesh; but you will be changed into me.” We transform ordinary food into our own bodies but the food of the Eucharist transforms us into the body of Christ. Ludwig Feuerbach's statement that we become what we eat is never more true that in the Eucharistic experience.

            Why do we need a feast of the Eucharist? First, a feast like this affords us the opportunity to give God collective thanks for Christ’s abiding presence with us which is made visible in the Eucharist. Second, this feast is also an opportunity for us to seek a better understanding of the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ and to order our attitude to it accordingly. In order to arrive at a better understanding of the Eucharist we need to ask why Jesus gave us this sacrament in the first place.

            From the gospels we find that there are two main reasons Jesus gave us this sacrament. One, Jesus promised to be with us until the end of time (Matthew 28:20). In the Eucharist he provides a visible sign and an effective means of him being present to us and us being present to him. As Jesus himself said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” Two, Jesus said that he came that we may have life and have it to the full (John 20:20). In the Eucharist he provides a visible means of communicating this life to us so that we can be fully alive both in this world and in the next. As Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (John 6:53-54).

            Jesus comes to us in every Mass under the form of bread and wine. The Eucharist is a celebration of the love of Jesus for us. The wine poured and the bread broken is the love of Jesus for us, body and blood given for us. Because the Eucharist is the love of Jesus for us we always approach Jesus in the Eucharist with great respect and asking pardon for our sins. That’s why it is so necessary at the start of every Mass to ask Jesus for mercy because we are so unworthy of his love and again before receiving Jesus we express our unworthiness: ‘Lord I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed.’ Let us today approach the Eucharist with a more lively faith in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and we shall experience therein God's saving power and transforming love.