Posted by The WORD in other words (2013) by Fr Dante Barril SVD – Rome, Italy
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ / Corpus Christi – C
In his book, Church and Society, Avery Dulles mentions that in the Gospel according to Saint John when Jesus taught about the living bread wherein he mentioned how the bread is his body and the wine his blood, many followers could not take his teaching. A good number of them left, yet Jesus did not take back what he said. He did not say, “You got me wrong, I was speaking symbolically” or worse, “Hey come back, I was joking!” Instead he asked Peter, “Will you also leave?”
The teaching of the bread and wine, turned into the body and blood of Christ, was difficult then and still is now. Yet Christian communities have held on to it down through the ages. Saint Paul in the second reading today proclaims Jesus’ presence in the bread and wine… “This is my body, this is my blood.”
I have people joke, “The host was hard, I wonder what part of the body it was?” Dulles explains in his book that things are composed of two things: form and substance. The form is what we see, taste, hear, etc., the substance is what makes that which we see what it is.
In the Eucharist, the bread and the wine retain their form. We see and taste the bread with all its ingredients and the same this is true with the wine. It’s their substance that changes. The host that we receive take like wheat but substantially it is the Body of Christ; the wine we drink, tastes like grapes but substantially it is the blood of Christ. Hence, the beautiful term transubstantiation.
That is difficult to understand, but what is clear is that God would go at great length , actually at the greatest length just to be with us. When he promised, “I will be with your until the end of time,” he meant it and the Eucharist is one solid proof of that.
In the Gospel, Jesus feeds, five thousand; it shows what happens when God is with his people. In the Eucharist, God is not only with us; God is taken by us so that he is with us wherever we go and whatever we do. Every time then that we attend Mass, we are assured over and over again that we will be taken care of, that everything will work out for the good because God is with us, so close to us — Emmanuel.
In the first reading we read of Abraham’s victory. It is always nice to win and all but I think Abraham’s blessing is not so much his victory as the God Most High being with him. Abraham was blessed because God was with him. It is not the winning or losing that matters, but his presence. And Jesus in the bread and wine is the Presence par excellence.
Reports scare me. I college whenever I would be assigned to present to the class a certain topic I would lose sleep just thinking about it. But what got me through it all was the presence of my four friends in the class. Every time I got up in from and I saw them I was always assured that there were at least four people in the classroom who would laugh at my jokes no matter how silly they maybe, nod their heads in approval, never minding if they understood anything and clapped their hands in the end, good or bad, passed or failed.
We just have to know that we are not alone, that we are accepted and loved no matter what. And that is what the Eucharist is all about, the bread and wine is our assurance that our God is with us and that he would accept us and love no matter what. It is always nice to be assured… in the ned that is all we need.
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