CYCLE C: BODY & BLOOD OF CHRIST
Gospel Luke 9: 10-17, Gen. 14: 18-20 & Cor. 11: 23-26
We celebrate our parish feast day today: The Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. That in too many Catholic people the connection in FAITH to the THEOLOGY of the church and SCRIPTURES, that Jesus is present (Body & Blood, Soul and Divinity) in the Blessed Sacrament or the understanding of what can happen to us when we do receive Him, is sorely lacking, and therefore a source of great concern for the Church. This inability to grasp how God reveals himself or comes to us though, is NOT UNUSAL …as we will see.
Like the apostles and followers of Jesus in our Gospel, they struggled in their acceptance of who Jesus was and what He was going to do for them; even as they saw His GREAT miracles and heard sound teaching.
For some neophyte faith communities, like the Corinthians, that St. Paul had established, even he had to write them a letter to REINSTRUCT each community, in how they needed to correct basic belief tenants, or faulty worship practices or how to better express in an outward manner what should take place after receiving our Lord in the Sacrament.
Even in the first reading from Genesis, we have an incident in the life of Abraham that helped to form our beliefs in God. This reading has been chosen for this Feast (which is also known as Corpus Christi), because of the reference to the offering of bread and wine.
Abraham was returning victoriously from a battle against four invading kings from the east, who thought they had a god greater than Abrahams God. These Kings had raided eastern Canaan and taken off much booty. Abraham on his way back from victory, met Melchisedek, the King and chief Priest of Salem, a pagan city at that time (it was later called Jerusalem, and became the capital of Israel), who came out to meet and congratulate him. That Melchisedek brought out bread and wine to the celebration, is intended to show that there was some sacrificial significance intended by this action. That it was not just an ordinary meal offered to Abraham and his troops, seems to flow from scripture.
St. Paul had preached the doctrine of the Blessed Eucharist to his Corinthian converts. The custom of the early Church was to imitate the Last Supper, during which our Lord had his last meal with his disciples, and then instituted the Eucharist. The early Christians used to have a community meal (the Agape, meal of love and unity) AFTER WHICH they received the HOLY EUCHARIST.
Some abuses concerning the community meal cropped up in Corinth—lack of true charity among the congregation; the rich had abundance, they did not share with the poor, some went so far as to drink too much wine at the community meal and made themselves unworthy of receiving the Lord. Paul corrects these abuses in this letter and then goes on to emphasize once more what the Eucharist really is.
In the Gospel, Jesus had been preaching for months in the district around the Lake of Genesareth. His FAME had spread because of the many miracles he was performing. Wherever he appeared HUGE crowds gathered to hear him, but ESPECIALLY to obtain FAVORS.
In the incident we have just read, the crowds remained all day listening to him speak of the kingdom of God—“and he healed all who were in need of healing.” As night was approaching, the Apostles suggested to him that he should tell the crowd to go away for the night, and to seek food in the neighboring villages. They were evidently in some uninhabited region without shelter or food.
So when Jesus said, “you give them something to eat…”, Jesus really knew that the Apostles had not nearly enough supplies to feed such a large number (five thousand men alone), nor could they go and purchase so much food. For it was humanly impossible for so few to provide food for so many. So His purpose, therefore, in asking them was to prepare their minds to see His next great miracle and also lay the ground workfor the future changing of bread and wine into His body and blood.
To truly understand what we believe, we must make MANY faith connections to MANY biblical Events before we can get to our Holy Mass we are here to celebrate today. The Story of how the one true sacrifice came about has been PREFIGURED for us, starting in Genesis, where we have the sacrifices of Adam, Noah, Abraham and Melchizedeck. Then we move on to Moses and the Passover and the Desert manna. All of these and others lead up to the Last Supper and Calvary Sacrifice by Jesus.
Now that we have the fullness of this sacrifice, it is time for those who do BELIEVE, to take it upon themselves to more fervently practice and then express this belief as we have it in the Mass, so that others may believe too and become one with us.
We believers must know that by offering the BREAD and WINE, we are giving infinite honor and satisfaction to God, and by receiving part of what is sacrificed we become intimately united with God and with one another. We are members of the one divine family, partaking of the same divine meal.
The church officially teaches that “Every effect which bodily food and bodily drink produce in our corporeal life, by preserving this life, increasing this life, healing this life, and satisfying this life – is also produced by this Sacrament in the spiritual life” (Council of Florence, November 22, 1439). Thus:
1. Holy Communion preserves the supernatural life of the soul by giving the communicant supernatural strength to resist temptation, and by weakening the power of concupiscence. It reinforces the ability of our free will to withstand the assaults of the devil.
2. Holy Communion increases the life of grace already present by vitalizing our supernatural life and strengthening the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit we possess.
3. Holy Communion cures the spiritual diseases of the soul by cleansing it of venial sins and the temporal punishment due to sin. This takes place immediately by reason of the acts of perfect love of God, which are awakened by the reception of the Eucharist.
4. Holy Communion gives us a spiritual joy in the service of Christ, in defending His cause, in performing the duties of our state of life, and in making the sacrifices required of us in imitating the life of our Savior.
Holy Communion, receiving the Body and Blood of Christ under the forms of Bread and Wine, is the Source and Summit of our Sacramental life. This is knowledge we all must know and live in.
In receiving Jesus we are to grow Spiritually
Then, if God the Father can create the universe, and if Jesus, who is God can become man by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in doing so He EMPTIES Himself of His Divinity; and if God the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit can also easily feed 5000 by multiplying a few fishes and loaves; could not God then, in the power of the Holy Spirit, HIDE the divinity of Jesus under forms of bread and wine?
This community participation in the eucharistic sacrifice was stressed and practiced very much in the early Church and down through the first centuries. It is now our Sunday obligation to give honor to God by being present and participating in the Mass, in the offering of Christ’s sacrifice to the Father.
The Mass and the receiving of Holy Communion under the species of Bread and Wine, is the act of our full participation in the re-enactment of sacrifice of Calvary. An event that was prefigured in Bible stories like Mekchizedek & Abraham or the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes and of course again many other scripture Events.
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