THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
19 JUNE 2022
Jesus
leads his disciples into the wilderness to avoid the threats of King
Herod. Instead of finding a place where
he can be alone with them, he finds five thousand people who tracked him down
and wanted to hear him. Centuries
before, Moses had led his people into a wilderness to escape the threats of
Pharaoh. In the wilderness, the people
cried out for bread. God fed them with
manna. When they longed for the fish
they had eaten in Egypt, God gave them quail.
Moses reminded the people that they were not alone. God was with them to care for them.
In this wilderness, Jesus also cares
for his people. Like the prophet Elisha,
he has already fed them with his words and deeds. In the wilderness, Elisha had taken twenty
loaves to feed a hundred people. Now,
Jesus takes five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand people. Unlike Moses or Elisha, who were mere human
beings, Jesus is the Eternal Word of God who feeds the crowds so abundantly
that twelve baskets of fragments are left over.
He instructs them to have the people seated in groups of fifty, much as
Moses had instructed his people to be seated.
He takes the loaves and fish, looks up to heaven and blesses them,
breaks them, and gives them.
That is what he does at the Last
Supper. That is also what he does when
the disciples recognize him at Emmaus after the resurrection. That is what happens at every Mass. The priest takes bread and wine, blesses the
Father in the Eucharistic Prayer, breaks the consecrated Host (during the
singing of the Lamb of God), and gives the Eucharist to the gathered
assembly.
On this feast of Corpus Christi, we
renew our faith that the Lord is truly present in the Eucharistic bread and
wine. Like the Mystery of the Holy
Spirit given at Pentecost, and like the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, we will
never completely understand this Mystery:
how ordinary bread and wine can be transformed into the Body and Blood
of Christ. In the fourth century, Gaudentius,
the Bishop of Brescia, in northern Italy, wrote a meditation on why bread and
wine are used to be changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. Bread is made by gathering many grains of
wheat together, mixing them with water and baking them with fire. In this process, Gaudentius recognizes us as
the Church, the Body of Christ. We are
like the grains of wheat. We become
God’s people through the waters of Baptism.
We are confirmed in the fire of the Holy Spirit. In a sense, we are like the bread offered for
the Eucharist. Like bread, we are lifted
up, sanctified, and transformed through the celebration of the Mass.
Gaudentius then considers
wine. Grapes come from vineyards. In the Bible, vineyards are symbols of God’s
people. In order to transform the grapes
into wine, the grapes need to be pressed and left to ferment. The cross becomes for us the winepress. We need to embrace the cross by breaking out
of our thick skins of selfishness and indifference. Once crushed, we can be fermented like wine
and become something greater than we were before.
Gaudentius helps us to understand
why our celebration of the Eucharist is the source and summit of our life of
faith. Through the ministry of the
priest, the Church makes the Eucharist.
The Eucharist makes the Church.
Whenever the people of God gather, we form the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is most itself at the
celebration of the Eucharist. Saint
Augustine said it best. We become what we
eat. Eating the Body of Christ, we are
Christ’s Body in the world. Like the
disciples who do not think that they can do much with five loaves and two fish,
we might think that we cannot make a difference. But nourished by the Eucharist, we can do
more than we can imagine. All of us,
including us dads, are sent forth from this church to transform the world, as
we are transformed through this incredible Mystery.
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