Corpus Christi (A)
Two weeks ago, we celebrated the feast of Pentecost, which also marks the end of the Easter season in our liturgical calendar. Parish liturgy committees (and others) are told that, after Pentecost, we move into Ordinary Time. Out with Easter white and Pentecost red, and in with Ordinary green!
Well, not so fast.
Although we do move into Ordinary Time right after Pentecost Sunday, the Church adds two more “white” Sundays immediately following Pentecost: Trinity Sunday and then Corpus Christi, or The Body and Blood of Christ, which we celebrate this Sunday (along with Father’s Day in the USA).
It’s interesting that the Church ends the “white” streak with Corpus Christi. One might assume that it would make more sense to end with Trinity Sunday. After all, all things come from God. All things are intended to point to God. Finally, our ultimate calling is to return to God, so to speak, in the fullness of life that will be ours beyond our earthly deaths. Ending the “white” streak with a feast of God would be a good way to remind us of all these things. Yet, true as these things are, we end the streak with Corpus Christi.
Not only do we end the “white” streak with Corpus Christi, but we can say that we began the “white” streak with another celebration of the Eucharist. The purple of Lent yielded to the white of Holy Thursday. We use red on Good Friday, but since we don’t celebrate Mass that day, we can say that the “white” streak, already begun, continues unbroken into the Easter Vigil and beyond. So, our “white” streak began with the Eucharist and ends with it. It makes for good symmetry.
What might this mean for us?
Our re-entry into Ordinary Time after the Easter season and its promise of resurrection and fullness of life is a reminder that we haven’t arrived at our ultimate goal yet. We are, and remain, a people on a journey. We are a pilgrim people, in the words of the Second Vatican Council. We haven’t arrived yet. Nothing that we find in all of creation – not even the best and most beautiful of things – can fully satisfy our hearts. We are made for God, and we look forward to the day when God will be all in all. We await the day when, in the words of I John, “we shall be like (God), for we shall see him as he is”. In the meantime, we wait in hope for that day, and are journeying toward it.
The fact that our recent “white” liturgical streak is bordered with Eucharistic feasts also reminds us of this. We are on a journey, like the Israelites on the way to the Promised Land. We need food for this journey, just as they did. Our spiritual food for this journey is the Eucharist. Through the Eucharist, we are fed with the very Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus. We are given a physical sign of his gift of self to us, a sign that becomes that very gift.
The readings for this feast focus on various aspects of the gift of the Eucharist. What kind of spiritual food is it? What does the Lord give us through it? We can say many, many things in reply, but the readings invite us to focus especially on three things.
In the first reading, from Deuteronomy, we are invited to see the connection between the manna that the Israelites were fed with for their pilgrim journey through the desert and the Eucharist that is the food for our own spiritual journey. The Israelites were wandering through an inhospitable land, one that did not – and could not – provide them with sufficient nourishment. They could not satisfy this need for food by their own efforts. They found themselves hungry and afflicted. They needed to depend on God, and to believe that God could (and would) sustain their lives. So, they are fed with manna, a food neither they nor their ancestors knew (or could have come up with on their own), a food that sustained them through all those years in the desert. Many of us may not be physically hungry, yet we are also on a desert journey. It is a kind of spiritual desert. We seek nourishment for our hearts and souls. Our culture offers us little of this kind of food. We cannot produce it ourselves. We have faith that God will indeed satisfy this deepest of hungers. And so he does, through this gift of the Eucharist. We are fed by the very life of God. With such food, we can endure the greatest of spiritual deserts and make our way following the Lord’s lead.
In the second reading, Paul reminds us that the Eucharist is also food for unity. We are made one, first of all, with the self-offering of Christ:
“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”
Our own struggles and sufferings, small and great, are made one with the Passion of Christ. Christ becomes, in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews, our compassionate high priest who always pleads our cause. We are assured that as we share in some way in the sufferings of Christ, we will also share in his mercy and his very life. We do not suffer alone. Nor is any suffering ever wasted, useless or in vain.
But Paul goes on: “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”
The Eucharist not only unites us to the self-gift and the sufferings of Christ. It unites us to one another in Christ. Since all are one body in Christ, what we do to one another, we also do to Christ. It was a lesson Paul learned on the road to Damascus, when Christ called out to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” It was a lesson Christ taught in his parable of the Last Judgment: “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers (and sisters), you do to me”. Paul reminded the Corinthians that if they did not discern the Body, they would be judged by God. He meant not only the ability to discern the presence of the Lord Jesus himself in the Eucharist, but also the ability to discern that all their brothers and sisters in faith were also that Body. This is one lesson, one aspect of the Eucharist, that continues to challenge and humble us. It is an aspect that we would rather forget at times. How can we live up to so great a challenge?
The Gospel reading for this day assures us that whoever eats the body and drinks the blood of the Lord remains in him, and he in them. We who receive the Eucharist also receive the very life of the Lord. We are enabled, through this most gracious gift, to perceive not only the Lord’s very presence in the Eucharist but also to perceive and honor his presence in all our brothers and sisters – including those we may not like, or who may not like us. We become capable of not only hearing the words of the Lord in the Scriptures and in Church teaching, but also of living them in our daily lives. The Eucharist helps to assimilate us into the very life and being of God. Since God is love, we become love, so to speak, the more we receive the Eucharist, are open to the Lord’s words, and are willing to be signs of the love of God to all we encounter.
Food for the journey. Food for unity. Food for life. These are three aspects of the Eucharist that our readings present for our reflection and integration. Other Scripture readings and the Catechism of the Catholic Church offer us still more. May we never tire of coming to know and appreciate what we are given whenever we approach the altar at Communion and hear the words: “The Body of Christ.” “The Blood of Christ.”