Word to the Wise
Sunday, May 25, 2008 - The Body and Blood of the Lord
[Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14B-16A; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58]Whoever eats my flesh and drirnks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.
Three Sundays in a row we celebrate major realities of our faith: Pentecost (the Holy Spirit), Trinity (the very identity of God and how God works in the world) and today, Corpus Christi (the Eucharist - the Body and Blood of the Lord,) It is a lot of very important, rich and complicated theology to ingest! This is certainly true of today's feast. (It is difficult to get away from punning here because of the nature of the occasion! - "feast," "ingest.") The Second Vatican Council, in words often quoted now, speaks of the Eucharist as the "source and summit" of Christian life. The phrase, "going to Mass," truly misses the reality. It's like saying, "I'm going to see a friend." We know that more than just seeing the friend is involved! It is the relationship that matters, not just being in the same place at the same time! The real bond is "love" and friends truly feed friends with love. This is not simply an abstraction: a friend is a physical being. We don't just love the idea of them, we accept them as they are - tall, short, thin, fat, etc.. Friendship as "feeding" is not cannibalism, as Jesus' audience initially thinks, it is a matter of being love FOR someone else. If this becomes mere ritual that we are legally bound to attend, the whole meaning is lost. The feast of Corpus Christi (The Body and Blood of the Lord) is the celebration of Jesus' complete gift of himself to us in love. The reception of the consecrated bread and wine is a reminder that this gift is not an abstraction but a true gift of self. Jesus' humanity is not to be "over spiritualized" or the elements of the meal turned into mere symbols. Jesus has given us a way to receive his entire person, past, present and future. The big difference is that this gift is the gift not of food "'for now" which the manna in the desert was. It is a food that creates a relationship which guarantees eternal life. To view this casually or abstractly by simply "going to Mass" is a sad commentary on how little we can appreciate love. When we receive the Body and Blood of the Lord, the priest or other minister, says to us, "The Body (Blood) of Christ." These words carry all the meaning of Jesus' gift to us of himself in love. Our affirming response, "AMEN!" is an acceptance of the gift. AMEN
config
view
logs
4096.0 KB
90 ms
4
