Word to the Wise
Sunday, June 10, 2012 - Body & Blood / Corpus Christi - B
[Exod 24:3-8; Heb 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26]While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessings, broke it, gave it to them, and said, "Take it; this is my body." Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. Amen, I say to you, I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God."
A meal is more than food. It is about relationships. This is one reason why the demise of the family meal in our culture is such a dangerous thing. It means the gradual weakening of important relationships. The feast of Corpus Christi is an opportunity to reflect on our relationship to Christ. The observance of the feast has tended to focus on the physical food - the consecrated bread and wine - as objects of devotion carried in procession. This has the laudable purpose of reminding us of Christ's physical presence in our midst, but, again, a meal is more than food. We don't just come to a meal to sit and gaze admiringly at what is on the table, or just "grab a bite and leave." We come to a meal to celebrate and to acknowledge our relationship to one another. When this is weakened by frantic gulping and staring at a TV or by rigid social control as in the descriptions of meals in Victorian novels, the whole purpose of the meal is truly lost, no matter how fine the food is.
What Jesus celebrates with his disciples at the "Last Supper" is more than the transformation of bread and wine into his body and blood. At the time, the disciples would have been more concerned about their relationship to him. Even then, meals were important indicators of status and relationship. At the Last Supper, Jesus truly "cements" his relationship to the disciples by his total self-giving to them, whether it is in the form of bread and wine or in the washing of the feet of the disciples. Both of these gestures are given with the command to repeat them in memory of Him. If we follow his command we recognize that the Eucharist is a group event and not merely a collection of individuals who have no relationship to each other. Jesus makes it clear that whatever we do to "the least of my brethren" we do to him. [Matt. 25:31-45]
If we are at a parish this weekend where the traditional Corpus Christi procession takes place, it would be important to understand that there is no such thing as a procession of one person! We are related to one another by virtue of our baptism and we are called together by the Body and Blood of Christ. Christ is not only in the host in a monstrance carried under a canopy. He is in the person walking with us in the procession. Make a point of saying "Hello!" AMEN