Becoming One with the Lord, through what I Eat and Drink: The Meaning of Corpus et Sanguis Christi
Ex 24:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26
There is a physical dimension to our residency of the planet earth. Neither the physical is the enemy of the spiritual nor is the mundane necessarily against the spiritual. Having dealt with the metaphysical and spiritual, the Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, last Sunday we dealt with the mystery of the Trinity, today we concern ourselves with food and drink, the physical and mundane components of human life. The spiritual and the physical both have the imprint of God, and must be considered together. As we say in Nigeria, “man must wak”: food is important!
A story was told of a little boy preparing for First Holy Communion. The parish priest/pastor asked all the children for First Communion not to eat breakfast before coming to Mass, so that they will eat breakfast after Mass, in order to keep the Eucharistic fast, before their first Holy Communion. On the faithful morning of the First Holy Communion, just to make assurance doubly sure, the pastor came to ask the children to be sure they were fasting. When he asked “did any of you eat breakfast before coming to Mass”? A little boy answered in the affirmative. When the pastor asked him why did he eat before Mass, against the instruction he received, not to eat before First Holy Communion Mass, the little boy said this: “Father, my mother prepared bounded yam for breakfast this morning. Considering the weight of pounded yam, I decided to eat the pounded yam before First Holy Communion for fear that if I were to eat it after Holy Communion, the weight of the pounded yam will asphyxiate Jesus, but now Jesus will come and sit on top of the pounded yam, after my First Holy Communion. The pastor was impressed by the theology of the little boy and his desire to have Jesus sit and reign over pounded yam in his stomach!
The reign of Jesus over pounded yam, according to the little boy’s theology, definitely begins with digestion followed by absorption into the blood streams and the circulation of the blood around the body and the production of energy to sustain the physical body. The reign of Christ in the physical body talks about the indispensability of food for the proper functioning of the body. Both food and blood are concrete and physical elements responsible for the co-existence of the body and the spirit of every human being. The only guarantee for the marriage of the body and the spirit not to end in a divorce called death, is for the body to keep receiving food, processing it, and supplying the whole body with the wherewithal for its sustenance. The Body and Blood of Christ comes to every Christian in a human mode of sustenance in order to keep alive the bond of existence between the body and the spirit. The composite nature of the human body and the need to keep both in harmonious co-existence reminds us of the need to keep Jesus ever present in our Christian lives, as its life-wire.
The meaning of Emmanuel – God-with-us – gets a boost today with the realization that God is not only with us externally to our bodies, but deep down our alimentary canal, our blood streams. St. Paul is very correct, when he calls the human body the temple of the Holy Spirit. Just imagine God flowing down you veins, even flowing around the most unlikely places of your body and making his presence felt and active. This sounds very scary or even scandalous to myself, considering my unworthiness and iniquities. But when I think of the accusations of the Pharisees against Jesus – “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them,” I am encouraged to keep my body pure of sin, because of the presence of Jesus, who not only ate with sinners like me, but dwells within me, and takes up every available space within my Body. Yes, the Holy Spirit takes up my Spirit and possesses me, but Jesus is not distant from me because he occupies all the physical parts of me, thanks to his Body and Blood as my food.
Although our first reading today seems to lay emphasis on the “sprinkled blood” against the altar, it is because food/meat had already been eaten, synthesized and absorbed into the blood providing energy for the whole body. Moses commanded Zebahim shelamim (communion sacrifices [Ex 24:5]), which are sacrifices in which those who offer the sacrifice also eat part of the sacrifice and the other part of the sacrifice is offered to God; it is this partaking of the sacrifice that makes it “communion sacrifice” or “peace sacrifice”. Therefore, just as “blood” is the sign and symbol of life among the Jews, and the blood of the sacrifice was offered to God in the symbolic sprinkling of the altar with blood, the meat of the oxen sacrificed was consumed by those who were there with Moses. Analogically, the Body and Blood of Christ, which we eat and drink at each Eucharistic celebration, tell the story of our sustenance from the Body and Blood of Christ and our communion with God, through Jesus Christ.
Also, the blood of our first reading signifies the covenant between human beings and God. The blood that flows in every Christian is a sign of the eternal covenant between God and humanity. It is not the blood of goats and bulls, according to our second reading, but the blood of redemption wrought by Christ – Christ’s blood itself. It is the Blood of the covenant of eternal relationship between God and human beings. An anaemic body is a dying body for lack of blood. A Eucharistic-less church is an anaemic church because it is terminally ill and en route to death on account of blood cancer.
Blood transfusion and blood production are two ingredients to recover from an anaemic condition. Jesus is the willing donor for our anaemic lives, because he died transfusing his blood into us; but blood production is dependent on the proper functionality of the body itself, not what was transfused into the body alone. This means that human beings have got their roles to play to overturn their anaemic situations, through constant eating of the Body and Blood of Christ – “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives forever!” From the food eaten, the body sustains its blood manufacturing industry. “For this reason Jesus is mediator of a new covenant,” according to our second reading. Through the death of Christ, we have a guarantee of constant blood supply for our lives and the prevention of anaemia provided we keep receiving the Body of Christ as food and his Blood as drink.
Becoming one with the Lord, through what we eat and drink is the meaning of Corpus et Sanguis Christi, the feast we celebrate today. Every “covenant” brings lives together and keeps lives together as long as the terms of the covenant are kept. Jesus ate his Last Supper not with angels but with sinners, Judas, Peter, Matthew, etc. Jesus makes himself available to you and me as daily food, yet nourishing us for eternal life. On account of what Jesus did for you and me, making bread and wine become his Body and Blood for us: where is any room for boasting? Jesus comes to you and me and dwells in unbelievably ill-prepared places of our bodies in the most elemental of ways: why would I not do my best to be worthy of such a guest? Indeed, how appropriate our responsorial psalm today: “To you will I offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and I will call upon the name of the Lord. My vows to the Lord I will pay in the presence of all his people!”
In some countries and regions, we make public show of Christ today, by walking down our streets with the Monstrance to show the world that God is love, and he dwells in every authentic relationship. Indeed, God “has a crush” on humanity and wants to be in a covenantic relationship with each human being. If we make Jesus publicly known to the world in our processions and dances today, how do we make him known to our fellow sinners, fellow travelers to eternal life, in our daily lives? May we be divinized to become other christs by eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Christ!
Assignment for the Week :
Could you feed a homeless or hungry person this week?