Deacon Cornell’s Homily

Despite repeated attempts to stamp out gnosticism, we still fall into the pattern of regarding all of creation, and even God in dualistic terms. Good versus evil, heaven versus earth, divine versus human, spirit versus body. Then what really gets us in trouble is focusing on one of those aspects to the exclusion of the other. Is Jesus truly human or truly divine? Am I a sinner or a saint? The Eucharist is no exception.

The feast of Corpus Christi was instituted in the 13^th century at a time when people focused so much on the divine presence in the consecrated bread and wine that they felt unworthy to receive communion. St. Julianne of Retinne pushed for the institution of this feast as a way of insuring that at least once a year the Eucharist would be celebrated in its fullness with reception of communion both of the bread and the wine.

Today the pendulum seems to have swung in the opposite direction. : we hardly seem to attach any importance to receiving communion or to what participation in the Eucharist means. Some surveys have indicated that 25-35% of American Catholics do not believe that the consecrated bread and wine are the real body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ. Mass attendance is down, and people don't seem to give any thought to the Eucharistic fasting for an hour or to take the time to celebrate the sacrament of Reconciliation before receiving.

The reforms of Vatican II renamed this feast the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (instead of just the Body of Christ) and reminded us that the focus of this feast is not on the divine presence so much as on the action of Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection, and the response he calls us to through this sacrament.

The readings and the prayers of today's feast remind us that the Eucharist is indeed a sacrament of initiation. As we talked about a few weeks ago, all action in our faith is initiated by God, and the Eucharist is no exception. Just as God initiated the covenant relationship with the people of Israel, Jesus initiates the new covenant. Jesus initiates this new covenant, starting by emptying himself of his being God to become human, and then emptying his human life by dying on the cross for us. Jesus is the priest who offers this perfect sacrifice to the Father as well as the sacrifice whose blood seals the covenant. Just as Moses calls the people of Israel to respond to the covenant God has initiated with action, so Jesus calls us to respond to the new covenant. As with any initiation, the Eucharist is not an end but a beginning. The consecration of the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ is not an end. The point is not that we now can see or consume the body and blood of Christ, end of story.

The Eucharist is not an end but a means to an end. We don't come here to celebrate the sacrament of Eucharist so that we end up with the real body and blood sitting in the tabernacle, or even so that we consume Christ's body and blood and have it become part of us at a biological and molecular level.

The reason we celebrate Eucharist is so that we might become the Body and Blood of Christ. We celebrate the Eucharist by bringing the gifts of bread and wine, which are symbols of us, to the altar, giving thanks to God for the gift of our lives, and then invoking the Spirit to change these gifts which represent us into the body and blood of Christ. Christ offers himself to us so that we might become the body and blood of Christ and so respond to the call Christ extends to us in the new covenant. Christ gives us his body and blood in communion so that we might be formed more fully into the body and blood of Christ that brings salvation to the world.

And that puts a lot of things into a clear perspective. If we are here for a private meeting with Jesus in the flesh we might think that doing baptisms at Mass are really an inconvenience that delays our meeting. But if we realize that we are here to become more fully the body of Christ so we can go out of here to bring salvation to the world we know that we need lots and lots of members of the body if we are to make headway.

If we are here for a private encounter with Jesus in the flesh we might think that even non Catholics should be able to receive communion because Jesus wouldn't ever turn anyone away. But if we realize that what we are doing when we receive communion is giving our whole person assent to the fact that the bread and the wine are really the body and blood of Christ and by receiving them we join ourselves more fully to Christ as church under the unifying service of the Pope, we realize that non-Catholics could not assent to that.

The story of the institution of the Eucharist is a story of service. This feast invites us to reflect on the service of God in the Word, the story of God's initiating action of love towards us. It invites us to reflect on the service of the priest, in whom we are to see the real presence of Christ who offers this sacrifice of the new covenant. Of course we are also to reflect on the the service of Jesus in his emptying himself to become human and then to die for us, offering his body and blood, soul and divinity for our salvation. But perhaps most importantly, it invites us to reflect on the service we are called to in response to such great love, a service of emptying ourselves by serving one another so that all of creation can drink the fruit of the vine new in the kingdom of God. Sooner rather than later.

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