Corpus Christi A

[cappie]

The Holy Eucharist is a meal.  On one level, it’s a simple meal of bread and wine.  But with prayers and the Holy Spirit, with faith, it is the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ.  It can take us back—back perhaps to our very first communion.  It can bring back memories of other churches, other altars, other fellow-believers.  But it is more than that.  This is what makes a Catholic understanding of the Eucharist slightly different from some other perspectives.  The Eucharist,  this sacred meal of the Body and Blood of Christ by any name—is more than a memorial.

The Eucharist takes us back, yes, in history and memory.  But the Eucharist also grounds us in the present.  And even more amazing, the Eucharist puts us in the future, where we eat and drink with the saints and martyrs, the angels and archangels, the fellow believers of all time and place. In the teaching on the Holy Eucharist, there’s a wonderful part that talks about the benefits of what we do, the benefits of Holy Communion, the Holy Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper.

It says simply, “The benefits we receive are the forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our union with Christ and one another, and the foretaste of the heavenly banquet which is our nourishment in eternal life.” 

The “forgiveness of our sins” has to do with the past.  I think it’s a complete misunderstanding to think that we have to be completely clean and sinless in order to receive Holy Communion. Pope Francis told us that “the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect, but medicine and nourishment for the weak!” In saying this he is not suggesting we should go to the Eucharist without thoughtfulness, prayer and presence of mind; but he is also reminding us that all of us, without exception, come to the Eucharist as sinners in need of God’s healing grace and mercy.

Pope Francis also provides guidelines for how the Eucharist should make a real difference in our lives and relationships with others. First, he says, we need to relate to people, sharing in their joys, hopes, sorrows and sufferings. Furthermore, this should enable us to reach out to the poor, sick and marginalised people, seeing in them the face of Christ. 

Second, experiencing God’s forgiveness in the Eucharist should enable us to see ourselves as “forgiven sinners” who are empowered to reach out in forgiveness to others. In this way the Eucharist enables us to overcome pride and division.

When we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ, we are forgiven. We are forgiven again. Our sins are washed away at Baptism, but the ongoing accumulation of sin in our life meets its match in Holy Communion. Ignatius of Antioch called it the “medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, … that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ.”  

Through the forgiveness of sins the Eucharist recalls the past and wipes the slate clean.  The Eucharist is the ultimate palate cleanser.  But the second benefit according to the Catechism sets us down squarely in the present.  It  has to do with strengthening our union with Christ and with one another. In a world that often suggests we live only for ourselves, that we protect at all costs what we think is ours; the unifying work of the Blessed Sacrament is counter-cultural. But it is live-giving. In Communion we are reminded that we need each other. The common cup and common bread underscore that we are not so different from one another, after all. Barriers of race and class and education, differences of national origin  are all dissolved in the common chalice.

Pope Francis adds Third, the Eucharist should enable us to become active disciples of Jesus Christ. While we Christians do not claim to be better than others, we nonetheless recognise our particular mission is to make Christ known and loved through a spirit of prayer, action and care for all our brothers and sisters, most especially those in need. 

In the words of Anglo-Catholic poet TS Eliot, Christ is “the still point of the turning world.” It is especially through our celebration of the Eucharist that our distracted, busy, turning worlds are stilled by the overpowering, silent mystery that camouflages the saving, liberating, loving presence of Christ in the broken bread and sweetened wine. 

For He is indeed truly present among us as the very life of the world.

And so, grateful for the redemption of the past, thankful for the mystery of the moment, and glad for the hope that is ours, we celebrate this feast of bread and wine, of Body and of Blood.