THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
2 JUNE 2024
Moses
gathers his people at Mount Sinai. They
have been rescued from Egypt by the bloody sacrifice of the lambs when they
prepared their first Passover Meal.
Moses reminds them that they had not escaped through sheer luck. God loves them and has delivered them. Now God cuts a Covenant with them. They are his people. So, Moses relates to them all the words and
ordinances of how they must respond as members of the Covenant. They respond with one voice, “We will do
everything that the Lord has told us to do.”
Then Moses
seals the Covenant by sacrificing young bulls.
This may seem odd to us. But, for
the ancient Hebrews, blood has a sacred significance. It represents the source of life. Sprinkled on the altar, blood signifies God’s
presence. The twelve pillars supporting
the altar represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he sprinkles the blood on the people
themselves. The Israelites are now blood
brothers and sisters with God and with each other.
In the
temple in Jerusalem, priests would sacrifice animals to mediate the Covenant
and remind people of their relationship with God and with each other. The blood of those animals represented the
source of life. In their individual
Passover meals in their homes, participants would drink four cups of wine
indicating their communion with God.
Jesus and his disciples would have sung Psalm 116 (our Responsorial
Psalm today) in their Passover meal at the Last Supper. Jesus takes the fourth cup, the cup of
consummation and says, “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.” This fourth cup will be
consummated on the cross when Jesus does the will of the Father. He is the Suffering Servant who gives his
life for many – including Simon Peter, who will deny him, and Judas Iscariot,
who will betray him. When Jesus dies on
the cross, his final words are “I thirst” and “It is finished.” With those words, he cuts the New Covenant
with his blood.
The fourth
cup that was consumed on Calvary is what we share in this Eucharist, the
Memorial of the Last Supper. We are
blood brothers and blood sisters with Jesus and with each other. We eat the Body of Christ broken for us on
the cross. We drink the blood of the
covenant when we drink from the Precious Blood.
Saint Thomas Aquinas helps us to understand that we are not
cannibals. The bread which we see and taste
has been transformed into the Lord’s Body. The wine which we see and taste has
been transformed into his blood.
To use the
words of the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is the high priest of the New
Covenant. He places himself on the
cross, which becomes the altar of sacrifice.
As a priest, in persona Christi, I will pray the Eucharistic
Prayer. In that prayer, we praise or
bless the Father for the sacrifice of Jesus made present on this Altar through
our liturgical remembering. In that
prayer, we gather not only the bread and the wine. We gather the sacrifices we make as blood
brothers and sisters in our lives and join them to Christ’s perfect sacrifice. That is why the presider prays that the Father
accepts “my sacrifice and yours.”
As the
people in the desert learned, Covenants are a two-way deal. The New Covenant with Jesus Christ has the
same dynamic. The Lord mediates the New
Covenant with us by the shedding of his blood.
In return, we promise to die to ourselves and submit to the Lord’s will
on a daily basis. We become what we
consume: The Body of Christ sent from
this Mass to be the Body of Christ serving the needs of our community and
world. To quote Saint Theresa of Avila,
we are Christ’s feet walking in our community.
We are Christ’s hands reaching out to the poor. We are Christ’s eyes, seeing people in need
of the Lord’s mercy and kindness.
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