Corpus Christi Sunday: When Sharing Keeps Everybody Well-Fed!
Genesis 14:18-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 9:11b-17
When we look at the celebration of this Sunday – The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ – exclusively from the miraculous perspective, then we will have the excuse to do nothing about our brothers and sisters who are dying of starvation. On the contrary, today’s solemnity teaches us about the power of sharing in order to eradicate poverty both spiritually and physically/materially. It teaches us that prayer is not always done on our knees and addressed to God, but that prayer is at its best standing up and confronting poverty headlong through the power of sharing!
The help to a better understanding of today’s gospel reading comes from the first reading and the first part of our gospel: it is God who needs us more than we need him! Jesus comes to us in today’s gospel to request our help: “Give them some food yourselves!” Every hungry person, whether a neighbor or a family member, starves because you and I are egoistic. The plea of Jesus is trivialized each time someone goes to bed hungry, when I fail to share and see that I am always rich enough to share with the other person. It is not God who is at the origin of starvation and hunger, but human greed and inhumanity.
When Abraham gives his tithes, in the first reading, he lifts a priest out of poverty while having enough for his family and dependents. Abraham finds his way to the priest, Melchizedek, because he realizes that everything comes from God, and that God is not in need of food but his neighbor is. Abraham sees beyond an invisible God to a visible representative of God, a human being, in need of food. He shares because God gives for everyone’s “need and not for everyone’s greed”.
“Giving” is the definition of “Blessing,” when we do not wait for God to come down from heaven to feed the poor and hungry among us; when we play the visible God to other human beings, then we eradicate hunger and starvation; we make the bread of God available for everybody and we make God visible to every hungry human being. The ability to see the face of God in the face of smiling human beings because their basic need for food is taken care of makes the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ concrete, real and visible. Christ is not content with being masticated in church buildings, and being desecrated in his living temple, the human body.
The multiplication of the loaves, in today’s gospel, is possible because human beings make the bread available to Jesus for multiplication. Human generosity in sharing material wealth makes God’s blessings reach every needy person. It was possible to eat and have leftovers because God has more than enough for his creatures without the need for austerity measures. Each time we need to calculate the cost of what we share or are able to share, there is no more blessing in giving because it becomes an investment rather than a gift, a sharing. Whatever human beings receive, they receive free-of-charge. To give and share with the other is what makes us other gods, children of God.
Imagine what would have happened without the baker and winemaker of Jesus’ bread and wine at the last supper, what bread and wine would have been offered and consumed? What if Mary never accepted to share her flesh with Jesus at the Incarnation, what body would have been crucified? Before the miraculous is the ordinary and everyday reality. “Sharing” of the ordinary precedes the miraculous and makes it possible. Beyond the memorial of the Last Supper is the generosity in sharing its constitutive elements, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Beyond the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is the reality of our sharing in the divinity of God, through Jesus Christ. Yes, the ability to eat, swallow, and digest make the consumption of the flesh of Jesus possible. And, the generosity of God, sending his Son in human form, the acceptance of Jesus Christ to leave his Body as food and his Blood as drink are all preconditions for the Eucharistic meal and banquet – our solemnity.
If there is one inescapable lesson to be taken from our second reading, it is the death of Jesus Christ. “Death” is the highest act of self-giving and immolation. In death, the ordinary takes the form of the extra-ordinary, the quantifiable takes the dimension of the ineffable; immortality takes over mortality; what was limited, unlimited. The singular act of dying “for us” makes the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ a transcendent phenomenon. It transforms us into something ultra-mundane and eternal. Yes, the death of Jesus Christ makes today’s solemnity possible, and it is only when you and I are ready to die, as he did die, sharing with one another, there will only be one Eucharist – the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ; but when you and I are dead to selfishness and greed, then the Eucharist – the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ – will be visible to every hungry man and woman, then we will become what we eat – other christs!
Assignment for the Week:
Try to feed at least one hungry person this week.