Solemnity of The Body and Blood of Christ - 10 June 2012

Exodus 24:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26
In 1972, a shepherd had brought his sheep into a walled-off, enclosed area for the night, and he had just gone to sleep when he heard a commotion. He quickly rushed over to where the sound was coming from and to his horror he discovered that a wolf was in the process of dragging off one of his sheep through a hole in the wall. He was mauling this sheep and blood was flying.
The shepherd quickly began hitting the wolf, and the wolf turned on him and began attacking him. He bit him over and over while the shepherd was striking him with his staff, and finally with one final blow of his staff, he killed the wolf as he himself collapsed into a bloody heap. He managed to crawl over to the half-dead sheep and began to bandage its wounds. He gave it some water, and then took it in his own bloody arms, and shepherd and sheep went to sleep together. ...
Today, as we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Eucharist or the Body and Blood of Christ, we recall the supreme sacrifice of the divine shepherd, who broke His body and shed His blood on the cross, saving us from sin and leaving His body and blood for us as symbols of this great love and life. Eucharist in the church is understood as a communal sacrificial meal, offered by the community of believers along with the priest, to the Heavenly Father together with Jesus for the remission of sins and as an offering of gratitude and thanksgiving.
Today, the Eucharist is essentially and of its very nature a community action in which every person present is expected to be an active participant with the priest presides over it. The Eucharist is a sacrifice offered by the Christian community to the Father. Every sacrifice involves parting with something precious and hence involves pain. Every sacrifice involves an offering. Here in the Eucharist Jesus offers himself and his life out of love for us, his friends. He completes this offering on the cross as he offers himself totally to the Father. This offering is a gift and every gift involves the giver and the receiver. Jesus here uses the symbol of a MEAL to make us realize his presence. Every meal has its social dimension. Each and every celebration of ours, religious or secular, ends with a meal. A meal unites people, holds the family together and builds a community. Jesus uses this simple celebration of a meal to give us his closeness to us. It is built up on the idea of a family, where everyone shares the common food and all are equal.
Every Eucharist takes place in the context of a community. In this Communal Sacrificial Meal celebrated by the Community, we have the presence of Jesus who is the victim, the altar and the priest. Eucharist means thanksgiving and blessing. We express our gratitude to God for all the gratuitous gifts God has given us in Jesus and we offer back to him the gratitude in the form of Bread and wine. Eucharist indeed is a communal celebration where we all share in the one bread and one cup. A priest as the leader of the group only presides and leads the community in the offering of the sacrifice. The Feast sums up three important confessions about our Faith. First is that God became physically present in the person of Christ, true God and true Man. Secondly, God continues to be present in His people as they form the Mystical Body of Christ in his church. Thirdly, the presence of God under the form of bread and wine is made available to us on the altar at Mass and preserved there for our nourishment and worship. Jesus gives us his Body and Blood so that he might live in us and become life for the world.
One of the most solemn binding of a covenant is described in today's First Reading from the book of the Exodus. Here we have the dramatic account of Israel’s covenant bond with God. Moses had just received the Law or the commandments from God on Mount Sinai and he presented them to the people. He explained to them all the terms and expectations of the covenant. Then, after the solemn ritual sacrifice, half of the blood of the animals was sprinkled on the altar and the rest was sprinkled over the people, saying, "This is the blood of the Covenant that the Lord has made with you." The sprinkling of blood represented the bond of life between them and God.
The second reading taken from the letter to the Hebrews tells us that Christ has entered the sanctuary once and for all, taking with him not the blood of goats and bull calves, but his own blood, having won an eternal redemption for us. Through this pouring out of his blood, a covenant was sealed between God and the people of God.
The Gospel today brings us to the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. It is the first day of Unleavened Bread, the day when the Passover lamb was sacrificed and the Pasch was celebrated. It was the biggest event in the Hebrew calendar, the celebration of their liberation, under the leadership of Moses, from a life of slavery in Egypt. The night before the Israelites left, they had to kill a lamb and eat it. They had to apply the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their houses and so the first-born children in each home would be saved from the angel of death. Indeed they had been saved by the blood of the lamb. Jesus and his disciples now prepare to celebrate the Passover meal. But, for them this will be no ordinary Pasch. It will inaugurate a new age, a new covenant with a new people.
The institution of the Lord’s Supper is the ultimate act of love of Jesus towards his disciples and all others who believe in him. Mark tells us that as they were eating, Jesus took some unleavened bread, said the traditional blessing, broke it and distributed it among his disciples. "Take this," he said, "this is my body." It is not just his physical body but his whole person and everything that Jesus stood for through his life, words and actions. As he gave them the bread he identified it with his mission and vision of life. Again, they did not eat as individuals but, as one united group, sharing the one loaf among them all. Similarly, Jesus took the cup of wine, said a prayer of thanksgiving over it, gave it to them and again they all drank from the one cup. He told them that it is his blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many. The word blood expresses the whole person of Jesus. It was not the blood of animals but his blood that Jesus poured out on the altar of the cross for us. By this ritual, Jesus celebrates the new covenant which will be made real by his actual death and the pouring out of his blood on the altar of the cross as the priest and the victim.
It is Paul who advices the Corinthians to make Eucharist as the centre of their lives because of practical reasons as the church at Corinth had problems with unity, mainly due to their economic status. When the church came together to celebrate the Eucharist they also had their meal together as a single community. The problem in Corinth was that the rich would go ahead and eat without waiting for others and not even making sure that the poor in the congregation, who were mostly slaves, had eaten or even brought food with them. By eating without the poor, the rich showed utter disdain for their brothers and sisters, an offence against Christian unity. Paul tells them that there is no division in Christ’s Community as he shared one bread and one cup and formed a true community. They have their own houses to eat and drink and satisfy themselves. But at the Lords meal they are all to be one community, truly united to Christ in his sacrifice.
Our liturgy today recalls the scriptural origins of this devotion. All of our readings demonstrate the fidelity and the love of our Lord in his part of the covenant with us. They imply return obligations on our part. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and our participation in the Eucharist is our pre-eminent way of showing our love and worship of God and our attitude towards one another. Thus there is no place in Christianity for individualism. It is a horizontal faith: we go to God with and through all those around us. That is the reason why Paul asks the community to share the meal together because Jesus broke the bread and shared, saying that it is his body. Through this sharing we become one with him. It is the fidelity and the love of the Lord that must urge all those who are baptized to be faithful and loving in their turn to God and to the needy among them. If we believe that by receiving the body and blood of Christ, we are renewing our covenant with God and with one another, then we must be actively concerned about the hungry in the world who are the brothers and sisters of Christ. We are called to break our bodies and shed our blood in loving service, keeping before our eyes the sacrifice of the loving shepherd, which indeed will give meaning to what we celebrate in the sacrifice of the mass.
As we continue with the celebration of the Holy Mass, let us be thankful to the Lord Jesus for His Body and Blood that assures us our salvation. Let us also remember throughout the week that as new creations, we are called to feed on the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist so the Body and Blood of Christ may transform us in His likeness. The feast invites us to remember the connection between communion and community