How many watched the Belmont Stakes Saturday?
The preacher would mount and say, "thank God" and off the horse went at full gallop. One day the horse galloped toward the edge of a cliff. The preacher panicked and said "whoa!" Then he remembered and said "amen" and the horse stopped at the edge. The preacher was so relieved he said "thank God!"
He was never heard from again. So much for horse stories.
Today we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Eucharist: a Greek word meaning “thanksgiving”: thanks to God for the gift of salvation, life within and with God forever.
I invite all of us to reflect upon the significance of this feast.
Now there have been many impressive meals in the course of human history. At the first supper, so the Book of Genesis says, the entre was forbidden fruit. That meal was a catastrophe.
And at state banquets leaders toast one another over rich food.
The meal table is often the center of family life. People gather and celebrate important transitions: birthdays, graduations, marriages.
And in our global Catholic family, the altar or table of the Lord is the center of our faith community. Think about that.
We gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the mystery of the dying and rising of Jesus Christ, so that we can re-experience our salvation, the gift of God's life in us, and nurture that life in our own journey toward our heavenly dwelling place.
Now consider what the word of God has to say to us today.
The word takes us back to the exodus or liberation of the Hebrews from the Egyptians. In the wilderness Moses experiences God in the imagery of thunder and lightning, and mediates a covenant in a so-called “blood” ritual symbolizing that God and his people share the same divine life. Blood symbolizes life and we carry within ourselves God’s life.
We may ask: how faithful are we in our relationship with God and each other?
The Letter to the Hebrews compares the animal sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem to the bodily sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Jesus through his bloody death and glorious resurrection opened up to us life beyond this earthly life. Do we live faithfully as sons and daughters of God?
In the Gospel according to Mark, we find ourselves at the last supper or Passover of Jesus. This developed into the Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharist which we know today as the mass. Herein, we worship and praise God for who he is and what he has done for us.
To understand the Eucharist, we have to focus on three phrases.
Jesus said: This is my body…this is my blood. The bread and wine become sacramentally the Living Christ, his real presence among us until He comes in glory at the end-time.
Jesus also said: Do this in remembrance of me. The same victim who died once for us outside Jerusalem centuries ago returns sacramentally to us in this meal each day, and at altar tables around the world. That's why we celebrate the mass: to re-experience our salvation.
Lastly Jesus said: Take and eat…take and drink. Jesus invites us to become one with Him ever so briefly in communion.
And the purpose of this mass is to form us into a vibrant faith community. Paul wrote: because the bread is one, we, though many, are one body. The sacramental body and blood of Jesus Christ empowers us to reach out compassionately to one another.
Yes, we are called to go from church into community, to wash the feet of our brothers and sisters, so to speak.
To paraphrase an old hymn: Christ has no hands but our hands to do His work today; He has no feet but our feet to lead human beings to Him who is our way, our truth and our life; He has no voice but our voice to tell us why He died (so that God might abide in us and we in God); and He has no help but our help to lead human beings to their true purpose in life: a life in and with God forever.
