TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU
This Sunday is Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ – that is, the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is central to the life and faith of many Christian traditions, including our own. In the first reading, Moses reminded the people that God provided food for them in the desert. They – we – should therefore ‘not become proud of heart’. St Paul reminds us in the second reading that the Eucharist is a sacrament of unity – we are one body, one people, because we share the one bread.
But what does it mean to ‘do this in memory of’ Jesus? In some way the Eucharist connects us to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
That is not just for our individual or even collective benefit as a faith community. In his new encyclical, Pope Leo calls for ‘a Eucharistic spirituality’. He reminds us that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God was ‘entering our human condition and transforming it through the gift of himself’.
The first Pope Leo said in the fifth century that ‘Our participation in the body and blood of Christ tends to make us become what we eat’. Even earlier than that, St John Chrysostom said ‘Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Do not neglect him naked! Do not honor him here with silken garments but overlook him being destroyed by cold and nakedness’. So as Christ shares himself with us, we too are encouraged to share our time, our resources, with others.
It’s also important to remember that the sacrament relies on the basic, ordinary ingredients of bread and wine. In preparing them, we are reminded that these things come to us through God’s goodness in the fruits of the earth and the work of human hands. As the unity we share reminds us to care for each other, so God’s goodness reminds us to care for the earth, left to us in trust.
Pope Francis used to say that the Eucharist ‘is not is not a prize for the perfect, but a generous medicine and food for the weak’. May our celebration of word and sacrament sustain us in the week ahead.
Jim McAloon