By Fr. Eugene Lobo SJ –
Genesis 14:18-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 9:11b-17
Today, we are celebrating the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. This special Feast is celebrated in remembrance of Jesus who gave His life for our salvation and commanded us to celebrate the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist in his memory.
The Feast owes its existence to Blessed Juliana of Liege, who began a devotion to the Blessed Sacrament in around 1230. Largely through her insistence, in 1264 Pope Urban 1V commanded its observance by the universal church. 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 form the Mystical Body of Christ in his church. And 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.
Our liturgy today recalls the scriptural origins of this devotion. In the first reading of today, we hear of Abraham asking his high priest, Melchizedek, to offer sacrifice to give thanks for a major victory that he had won. Instead of the usual sacrificial offering, the priest offered bread and wine, the full significance of which came to light at the Last Supper.
St Paul in the second reading points to the importance of the Eucharist as a reminder of Christ’s passion and death finally leading to the building of the mystical body. In the Gospel, we have the miracle of the multiplication of loaves where Jesus generously gives food to the people and makes them partake in the Thanksgiving meal.
The first reading is taken from the Book of Genesis tells us of Abraham’s journey of faith. God had promised Abraham, a dynasty and abundant land. The chapter tells of the capture of his nephew Lot and Abraham fights the kings and gets his release. On returning victorious from a battle against four invading kings from the East and had taken off much booty, Abraham meets Melchizedek, the king and Priest of Salem, later became Jerusalem. The name Melchizedek means, “King of righteousness.” He accepted from the king of Salem not only bread and wine for the invigoration of the exhausted warriors but a priestly blessing as well. In return, Abraham gave the priest a tenth of all his booty. The bread and wine could have been the sign of the alliance between the two persons.
In today’s second reading St Paul gives us the first detailed account of the Lord’s Supper and the Institution of the Eucharist. He tells them how Lord Jesus at the Last Supper instituted the Eucharist. He also tells them of the Eucharist because of practical reasons. The church at Corinth had various problems with unity, particularly at the level of economic status.
Apparently, people in the early church often brought their own food to meetings of the congregation, which would likely have met in the larger homes of the wealthy members. They would eat an Agape Meal together, mixing a communal meal with a celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
The Gospel of today tells us of the compassion of Jesus. Jesus was a great preacher and many were ready to follow him to any distance in order to listen to him. Jesus indeed was very human and he was greatly concerned about those people who had followed him to the desert place to listen to him and he wants to take care of them. His heart moved with pity for them. He asks the disciples to take care of them and he does the miracle of loaves to fill them with the necessary physical food. The miracle also shows the abundance of God’s love towards each individual.
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. Jesus had the Passover meal with the disciples but the details are not given to us.
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.”. 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.
Jesus gives his disciples the Eucharist. 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 means a Blessing.
Blessing actually means prayer of praise and glorification for all the Lord God has done for us in Jesus. It is a meal shared by the community in the name of Jesus. It is a sacrificial meal, meaning it is an offering to God as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus uses here the symbol of a simple meal to show his presence to us and chooses to remain in the form of simple bread and wine, a poor person’s meal.
Eucharist in the church can be 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. The Eucharist is essentially and of its very nature a community action in which every person present is expected to be an active participant and the priest presides over it. We are here, on the one hand, recalling what makes us Christians in the first place – our identification with the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus.
It is a sacrificial meal, where Jesus is the victim, the altar and the priest. He offers himself to the Father as a special offering for the reconciliation of the world. It is offered in a community with no difference in caste and creed and language. It is a fulfilment of the final mission of Jesus to save the world. Therefore let us prepare ourselves to receive the Lord worthily and as we break the bread at the Eucharistic table we ask the grace to be worthy of the Lord’s mystery and be his instruments to bring his unity and charity in the world.
The Eucharist is a gift, not just to be adored and reverenced, but also to be consumed, digested and lived by every Christian. What were once the simple gifts of bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of our Saviour – the new covenant between God and mankind. It is not a private gift, but a communal one. When the priest holds up the consecrated Host and the cup of wine and says, ” This is My Body – this is My Blood “, he is also saying, for Jesus, “you are my body… you are my blood!” Jesus gives us His Body and Blood so that He might live in us and so that we, then, might become life for the world.
If we understand and accept the mystery of Eucharist, then we should realize that we are one in the spirit with all who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. There should be a bond of love and welcome between them and us that should help us overcome all other differences. Diversity should not be an obstacle or a threat to us. We should realize how the church of Christ is enriched by the great variety of ideas and thoughts – and dreams – that are brought together as we come to celebrate and to be nourished in the Eucharist.
Today’s feast is a witness to this. Our oneness in faith and love is the strongest evidence that Jesus and His spirit are in fact working among us to bring all people together in the peace and justice of God’s kingdom. It is the testament of a shared “communion” in which we are all aware of our commitment to “be” the body and blood of Christ in all we do.
One day a man went to the priest and said that he could not believe that the bread on the altar can be transformed into the body and blood of Jesus. The priest said that it is really easy. We all eat so much of bread and other materials and they are quickly changed into our flesh and blood. It is a miracle of nature. The man was not convinced. He asked how the huge body of Jesus can be contained in a small host. The priest took him out and showed him the scenery. He asked him how this entire scene can be contained in a little eyeball and all is visible to him. The man still would not accept it all. He said how one Jesus can be found in every church at the same time. The priest then brought a small mirror and asked him to look into his own image there. Then he quietly dropped the mirror and it broke into hundred pieces. He then asked the man to look into each piece and asked how he was now seen in hundred pieces and he is still the same. The man was now convinced that Eucharist is truly a miracle and Jesus was found everywhere body and blood.