Meditation for the Feast of Corpus Christi
The feast of the Body of the Lord cannot be separated from Holy Thursday, from the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, in which we solemnly commemorate the institution of the Eucharist.
While on the evening of Holy Thursday we live the mystery of Christ offering himself for us in the bread broken and the wine poured out, today, on the feast of the Body of the Lord, this same mystery is offered for the adoration and contemplation of the People of God, and the Blessed Sacrament is carried in procession through the streets of towns and villages, to show that the risen Christ walks among us and leads us toward the kingdom of heaven.
What Jesus gave us in the intimacy of the Upper Room, he shows openly today, because the love of Christ is not reserved for a few; it is meant for everyone. At the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, I wanted to show how the Eucharist is a transformation of the gifts of this earth, bread and wine, aimed at transforming our lives and inaugurating the transformation of the world.
We can say that everything begins from the heart of Christ, who at the Last Supper, on the eve of his Passion, gave thanks and praised God, and in this way, by the power of his love, transformed the meaning of the death toward which he was going. The sacrament of the altar took the name “Eucharist,” meaning “thanksgiving,” precisely to express this: the change of the substance of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is the fruit of Christ’s gift of himself, a gift of love stronger than death, the divine love that raised him from the dead. That is why the Eucharist is the food of eternal life, the bread of life.
From the heart of Christ, from his “Eucharistic prayer” on the eve of the Passion, flows the dynamism that transforms reality in its cosmic, human and historical dimensions. Everything comes from God, from the power of his love, one and triune, made flesh in Jesus. Christ’s heart is immersed in this love; that is why he knows how to give thanks and praise God even in the face of betrayal and violence, and in this way he transforms things, people and the world.
This transformation is possible thanks to a communion stronger than divisions, communion with God himself. The word “communion,” which we use for the Eucharist, sums up in itself the vertical and the horizontal dimensions of Christ’s gift. The expression “receiving communion” is very telling, because it refers to the act of eating the Eucharistic bread. Indeed, when we perform this act, we enter into communion with the very life of Christ, into the dynamism of this life that is given to us and for us. From God, through Christ, to us: we enter into one communion through the Holy Eucharist. As the apostle Paul said to the Christians of Corinth:
“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all share in the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).
Saint Augustine helps us understand the dynamism of Eucharistic communion when he speaks of a kind of vision in which Jesus said to him:
“I am the food of the strong. Grow, and you will feed on me. You will not change me into yourself, as you do with the food of your flesh; but you will be changed into me” (Confessions VII, 10, 16).
Whereas bodily food is transformed in our body and helps nourish it, in the Eucharist we are dealing with a different bread: we do not transform it; it transforms us, and so we become conformed to Jesus Christ, members of his Body, one with him. This is decisive. Indeed, since it is Christ who, in Eucharistic communion, transforms us into himself, our individuality is opened up in this encounter, freed from its selfishness and inserted into the person of Christ, who in turn is immersed in the communion of the Trinity.
So the Eucharist, while uniting us to Christ, also opens us to others and makes us members of one another: we are no longer separate, but one in him. Eucharistic communion unites me to the person next to me, even if I don’t get along well with him, and also to our distant brothers and sisters all over the world. From here, from the Eucharist, comes the deep meaning of the Church’s social presence, as the great saints of social action bear witness, who were always great Eucharistic souls. Whoever recognizes Jesus in the sacred Host recognizes him in the suffering brother, in the hungry and thirsty, in the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoner; he pays attention to every person and commits himself concretely to all who are in need.
From Christ’s gift of love comes our particular responsibility as Christians to build a society that is united, just and fraternal. Especially in our time, when globalization makes us ever more dependent on one another, Christianity can and must work to ensure that this unity is not built without God, that is, without true love, which would lead to confusion, individualism and everyone against everyone. From the beginning, the Gospel has aimed at the unity of the human family, a unity not imposed from outside nor driven by ideological or economic interests, but arising from a sense of responsibility for one another, so that people see themselves as members of one body, the Body of Christ, because we have learned and keep learning from the sacrament of the altar that sharing and love are the way to true justice.
Let us now return to what Jesus did at the Last Supper. What happened at that moment? When he said, “This is my body, which is given for you; this is my blood, poured out for you and for many,” what really happens? In this way Jesus anticipates the event of Calvary. He accepts in love the whole Passion, with all its suffering and violence, even to death on the cross; and in accepting it he transforms it into an act of giving. This is the transformation the world needs, because it redeems the world from within and opens it to the dimensions of the kingdom of heaven. God wants to bring about this renewal of the world through the path Christ chose, the path that is Jesus himself. There is nothing magical in Christianity. There are no shortcuts; everything passes through the humble and patient logic of the grain of wheat that breaks open to give life, the logic of faith that moves mountains by the gentle power of God.
That is why God wants to renew humanity, history and the cosmos through a chain of transformations of which the Eucharist is the sacrament. Through the consecrated bread and wine, in which the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, Jesus transforms us into himself: he involves us in the work of salvation and makes us able, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to live by the logic of gift, like grains of wheat united with him and in him. So peace and unity are sown and grow in history, the goal we long for according to God’s plan.
Without illusions and without ideological utopias, we walk the roads of the world carrying within us the Body of the Lord, like the Virgin Mary in the mystery of the Visitation. With the humble awareness that we are only grains of wheat, we hold on to the certainty of God’s love, made flesh in Christ, which is stronger than evil, violence and death. We know that God is preparing for all people new heavens and a new earth, where peace and justice reign.
And by faith we see the new world, which is our true homeland. This evening too, as the sun sets on our land, we set out: with us is the Eucharistic Jesus, the Risen One, who said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
Thank you, Lord Jesus! Thank you for your faithfulness, which sustains our hope. Stay with us, for evening is coming.
“Good Shepherd, true Bread, Jesus, have mercy on us: feed us, protect us, bring us to the true good things in the land of the living!”
Amen.
Father Gerard Abi Saab
Note: this text reproduces Pope Benedict XVI’s homily for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (7 June 2012), which is why it includes a first-person reference to the Holy Thursday Mass.
