Sunday Reflections
Corpus Christi
Whoever eats this bread will live forever
1. ✠ A reading from the holy Gospel according to John (6:51-58).
Jesus said to the Jewish crowds: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me
will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
2. The feast of the Corpus Christi has its origin on the events of the Maundy Thursday when Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist at the last supper. The Maundy Thursday events beclouded the all important event of Jesus’ desire to remain forever present with his people, which led him to allow bread and wine to be transformed into his flesh and blood. Centuries after the last supper, on 11 August 1264, Pope Urban IV in a bull transiturus, instituted the solemnity of the Corpus Christi as binding celebration for the universal Church, the first of its kind in the history of the Church. Thomas Aquinas was charged with the responsibility of the liturgical aspects of the feast. He composed the sequence that is read at today’s mass and the adoration hymns to the Blessed Sacrament like Tantum ergo sacramentum, adoro te devote.
3. The readings for today’s mass are designed to convey one message, namely that God cares for his people. He care for their material and spiritual needs. The first reading gives the account of God’s care for his people throughout their journey from Egypt to the promised land. He gave them food and water in a desert place where such bounty is considered impossible. In this way Moses showed that when God is with his people they would never lack. The presence of God among his people is a saving presence.
4. In the Gospel Jesus referred to the event of the first reading but reminded the people that their fathers who were fed by God in the desert are dead because the bread of the desert was merely material, a prefiguration of a real bread that he will give. He proposed a better bread which comes down from heaven and ensures an everlasting life. That bread is his own flesh. The Jews abandoned him with his teaching. They said that they were not cannibals. But Jesus insisted that his body is real food and his blood real drink. Hours before his passion and death he came back to the same teaching and officially inaugurated what we are celebrating today. He said of bread:” this is my body” and of wine: “this is my blood.” He then commanded his apostles to repeat the same gesture in his memory. The Church has continued to understand this act of Christ as a command that must be carried out by priests till the end of the world. It has remained the centre and summit of the Catholic worship life.
5. Without the Corpus Christi, the Holy Eucharist, the Catholic Church will no longer exist. As Catholics we know and we believe that Jesus, out of love for humanity, desired to remain present with his people and for this reason has accepted to enter and remain in the host after the word of consecration pronounced by the priest. The Church calls this transubstantiation, meaning that the physical qualities of the host and wine remain intact but their substance changes to body and blood of Christ. This is a great act of love and humility on the part of Christ. If Christ should reveal his glory on the host, no living being will have the courage to approach the Holy Eucharist (cf the theophany in Exodus 20:19). This simplicity of divine presence has led to doubts and abuses. The sequence draws our attention to them. It says that all receive the same thing but because some receive in grace, others in sin, the effects are also different: life to some and death to others. This is a warning to christians to receive the Eucharist with reverence and respect.
6. I once participated in a mass where almost everyone present in the big church received Holy Communion. I marvelled at their faith but I was told that appearance could be deceptive, that men use communion to prove to their innocence to their wives otherwise they will have problems. Women do the same and children fall in line for the same purpose. Do not join such group of people. Do not fear those who can destroy the body but cannot kill the soul. Fear rather he who, after killing the body will cast the soul to hell. God knows that we are all prone to sin. You do not need to prove your innocence to a fellow sinner. If fall into sin stay back from receiving the Holy Communion until you are absolved through the sacrament of reconciliation. Do not harm your soul because you want to please people. Develop a personal love and devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist. Visit him in the chapel at least once a week. He longs to see you around.
anaehobiv@yahoo.com
