Sunday Within Octave of Corpus Christi – June 12, 2012
(2nd Sunday after Pentecost)
(Luke 14: 16-24)
Last Thursday was the Feast of Corpus Christi. The term means Body of Christ. This feast was first urged by St. Juliana of Belgium who had a great love of the Eucharist. It was first established by the Bishop of Liége in 1247 and made a universal feast throughout the Church by Pope Urban IV in 1264. In the Gospel reading for that day Jesus tells us that He is “the bread that came down from Heaven,” and “He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever.” (John 6: 56-59) Jesus, in His life and death, has united all mankind in Himself. He is God and Man, High Priest in the order of Melchisedech. Jesus is the glue of that holy religion that fastens all things to the Creator in the unity of one same act of homage to God - the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Jesus gave us the miracle of the Eucharist so that we may continue His sacrifice of Himself to his Father forever.
“The Christian Sacraments are older than the Jewish.” (St. Ambrose sermon, The Sacrifice of Melchisedech: Migne, Patrologiae Latina 16, Book IV) But many will object that God rained manna upon His people in the desert long before the Eucharist was established. How can our Sacrament be older? Consider where the Jews began; from Judah, the great grandson of Abraham; or you might say they began when they merited to receive the Law of Moses. Either way, the figure of the Eucharist in Scriptures goes back to the time of Abraham when he defeated Chodorlahomor and his allies. On the way home Abraham met Melchisedech. Melchisedech brought bread and wine, and this is the figure or precursor of what we are offering today on the altar.
Who was Melchisedech? St. Paul tells us he was “without father, without mother, without genealogy,” which is to say that Scriptures do not record any of this. (See Hebrews 7: 1 et seq.) He resembles Jesus in this. Jesus the Word, in his heavenly generation was begotten without a mother, and Jesus the man was born without a father because He was born of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary. Melchisedech was also a priest, as Christ is a priest: to Whom it was said: “Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech.” (Psalm 109: 4, KJV 110) Jesus then is truly the author of the sacraments because Melchisedech was His precursor.
Many do not believe in the Body and Blood of Christ, saying what we distribute to people is simply bread and wine. But we can prove it is His Body and Blood. How can bread become His Body? It is by consecration. And how is it consecrated? By the words of Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. All the prayers at Mass leading up to this are from the priest, but when the moment comes to consecrate we use the words of Christ: “Hoc est enim corpus meum. This is my body.” It is the words of Christ spoken by the priest that change bread into His Body. We know Jesus is the Word of God “and the Word was God.” (John 1: 1) We know this also from St. Thomas’ testimony, “My Lord and my God.” (John 20: 28) And what power does the Word of God have? He commanded and the heavens were made, and the sea and land and all the creatures of earth. If the power of God can create things that did not exist into things that now exist, how much the more can It change what already exists into something else? I, and the Church, answer this and tell you “that the bread was not the Body of Christ before the consecration. But I say to you that after the consecration it is now Christ’s’ Body.” (St. Ambrose Op. Cit.) In a way, this also happened to us as St. Paul says: “If then any be in Christ a new creature: the old things are passed away: behold all things are made new.” (2 Corinthians 5: 17) Is it not the words of Christ, which is also the grace of God that changes us from unbelievers into believers?
The power of the Word can also change the laws of nature as we can see from His own birth. The laws of nature tell us that a man and a woman are needed to begin a new life. Jesus was not born in this way however. He was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary. The rules of nature also changed when Moses struck the water and the sea separated allowing the people to pass thru to safety. Eliseus (Elisha) caused iron to float on water as another example (4 Kings 6:6, KJV 2 Kings 6:6). Is it any wonder then that He can change water and wine into His blood?
Some will say, “I see no blood.” But it does have a likeness to blood. To understand this term “likeness to blood” think of your Baptism. “As Christ died, you also died by the Sacrament of Baptism, and you rose again through the grace of Christ.” (St. Ambrose, Op. Cit. Book 4) There is death then, not a bodily death, but in its likeness. When we were Baptized we put on the likeness of death and burial, (See Romans 6: 3-5). Just as we put on the likeness of His death, we also drink the likeness of His Precious Blood, but so that there is no horror of spilled blood, and so that the price of our Redemption may be effective, we are taught that what we receive is the Body and Blood of Christ. It is the Son of God who teaches us this: “For this is My Body, this is My blood.” We do not doubt His teaching.
It was an impressive and venerable thing that manna rained down from heaven, but we receive the Body of Christ Who created the heavens. Those who ate manna are dead, but those who eat His Body, their sins will be forgiven and they will not die for ever. St. Paul tells us that “as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord until he come.” (1 Corinthians 11: 26) When we show His death, we also show the forgiveness of sins. If, as often as His Blood is shed, it is shed for the forgiveness of sins, we ought to receive It always; that our sins may always be forgiven. We who are always sinning ought always to have what heals us.
Every living being thirsts for happiness and this thirst causes us to reach out for all the good we are capable of. We can be fully happy only if we have all the good we are capable of. We are the only creature on Earth that can conceive of God, and we want to possess Him in His own substance. We want to see His Face, to enjoy life with Him Who alone can satisfy all our desires.
Human reason alone judges this talk as our fanciful imagination because there is a deep separation between God and man. What is there in man, who was once nothing, that would induce God to stoop so low as to allow a union between man and God? That is the language of human reason and it falls short.
After all, Who was it that made the heart of man so ambitious that no creature on Earth can fill it? A dog can realize all the happiness it is capable of, and a bird and a fish. Is man then to be the only creature destined to failure because he cannot fulfill his highest ambition? That is not reasonable. “God is love,” St. John tells us, and love is a knot that human reason cannot untie. Human reason cannot fulfil man’s desire for the Infinite. The wonder in all this is not our longing for God, but that God should have loved us first, for we at one time were nothing. At the Eucharist here this morning we join Christ in His continuing perfect sacrifice to God, and He makes His abode in us. God is love and love must have union. It is union that makes the one like the other –and that is our happiness. +++
(Thanks to St. Ambrose)
We Celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass
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