Sunday Within Octave of Corpus Christi – June 2, 2013
(2nd
Sunday after Pentecost)
Epistle, 1 John 3: 13-18
Gospel, 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 who had a great love
of the Eucharist. First established by the Bishop of Liége, Belgium, in 1247,
it was made a universal feast throughout the Church by Pope Urban IV in 1264.
In the Gospel reading on the feast 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,
by His life and death, has united all mankind under Himself. He is God and Man
and High Priest in the order of Melchisedech. (Psalm 109: 4, KJV
110:4) 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.
In Job
31: 31 we read, “If the men of my tabernacle have not said: Who
will give us of his flesh that we may be filled?” The Church sees this as
speaking of Christ’s feeding us with his own body and blood. This is spiritual food and Pope St. Gregory
talks about the difference between spiritual food and food for our bodies. The food we eat at the dinner table fills us
and satisfies us. When we eat spiritual food it makes us hungry for more. The
Psalmist tells us: “O taste and see that the Lord is sweet.” (Psalm
33: 9, KJV 33: 9) But if you will not taste His sweetness – His teaching,
His Sacraments, His Mass, and Himself in the Eucharist – you will not hunger
for more.
St. John
Chrysostom, in a sermon to the people of Antioch, talks about what a great gift
the Eucharist is. How many, he asks, have wish to see Jesus as He was on earth
and walked among men. He has given us that wish and more. Let’s compare it to Baptism to help us to
understand. By using a thing of earth, water, a gift is given to us, and that gift
is a rebirth in the Trinity. “I Baptize you in the name of the Father, and of
the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”
Many say
if I could only see Him, His Face, His garments, His sandals – but, using the
things of earth, bread and wine, Jesus
has given us more than that, because we see Him under the appearance of bread
and wine, we touch Him with our tongues and we even take Him within ourselves
as He told us to do in remembrance of Him.
Because of
Who we receive in Communion it is important not to receive Him unworthily. If
we receive him when our soul is polluted with sin, we invite our own damnation.
We are then, as St. Paul said, “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” (1
Corinthians 11: 27)
The Body and Blood of Christ under the form of bread and
wine was prefigured at the beginning of Salvation history by the gifts that
Melchisedech gave to Abraham (Genesis 14: 18) We can prove that the Bread
we distribute to people is the Body and Blood of Christ. It is by consecration.
We consecrate it by the words of Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity. The prayers at Mass leading up to this are prayers 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.”
We know that Jesus is the Word of God. “In the beginning
was the word and the word was God.” (John 1: 1) We also know from St. Thomas’ declaration: “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, meaning the universe and all that’s in it, 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 has 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?
Some will say, “I see no blood.”
But it does have a likeness to blood. To understand the 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 a 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 on the altar or on the faithful, and so that the price of our
Redemption may be effective, we are taught by the authority of the Church that
what we receive is the Body and Blood of Christ. It is the Son of God who tells
us: “For this is My Body, this is My blood,” and we do not doubt His teaching.
Human
reason alone will judge this sermon as our fanciful imagination because there
is a deep separation they say 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? But 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. So can a bird,
a fish and a bug. 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 His Father, and they make their 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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