Sunday 11th June 2023 - Corpus Christi

Deuteronomy 8:2-3,14-16/ Psalm 147/1 Corinthians 10:16-17/ John 6:51-58

It might be that in our relatively comfortable society we have things a little too easy. We have many freedoms with easy access to shelter, food, and drink. We have good education and healthcare and want for very little. This may lead us into a false sense of security causing us to become complacent about what our life here is about. It was to teach the chosen people of Israel this lesson that God led them into the wilderness of the dessert. Here they could more easily appreciate their dependence on God rather than on themselves. We can become self-reliant, but it is only an illusion and in the end we will need the loving care God provides so that we can successfully make the pilgrimage through the desert wilderness of this life.

In the wilderness of the dessert God provided food from heaven and water from the hardest rock while teaching his chosen people that they do not live on bread alone but from every word that comes from the mouth of God. In later times we were to see the word of God become flesh in the person of Jesus and he quite literally became the food and drink from heaven. The word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. He gave his flesh to eat and his blood to drink.

Through our faith we appreciate that we are in exile in a vast desert wilderness and on a journey to our true and lasting home. This is a physical journey that we live out each day. We need food, drink, clothing and all the physical requirements to make this journey. It is the same for our spiritual life which, here on earth, is bound up with our physical life. We need spiritual food, support and God’s care as we journey towards our eternal destiny. This spiritual food is the Body and Blood of Christ, given to us by Jesus at the last supper, to sustain us in this life in readiness for the next. This idea of eating the body and blood of Jesus is not an easy concept to understand or accept. It was the same when Jesus spoke about it himself. It was seen as intolerable language by some who heard it. Jesus did not seek to tone down or alter what he said. He made it quite clear that if we do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood we will not have life in us. If we do eat his flesh and drink his blood we will live in Christ and he in us, it is the way to everlasting life.

The thought of eating the flesh and blood of Jesus may well sound strange or even abhorrent but it makes sense if we consider that we are what we eat. The food we eat becomes part of us and we take on its essence, it is assimilated into our being. When we eat the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion it becomes part of us, and we become more Christlike as a result. Far from being strange or repulsive it becomes a beautiful union between us and Christ. We draw life from what we eat and drink and it is the same when we partake in the Holy Eucharist. We draw life from the real food and real drink that Jesus gifted to us.

The church describes this wonderful gift of the Body and Blood of Christ, The Eucharist, as ‘the source and summit of the Christian life’. In the short single paragraph of the second reading Paul sums up the Eucharist as that unifying sacrament bringing us into communion with the body and blood of Christ. More than that it brings us into communion with each other forming a single body which is the Church.

We understand the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist as a communion with the divine life bringing unity between the people of God keeping the church in being. In celebrating Mass together we are not only united with each other but we have a glimpse of the eternal heavenly banquet which one day we hope to join in eternal life.

This wonderful celebration of Corpus Christi reminds us of how, through the Eucharist, Christ is present to us aiding us through our wanderings in the desert of life here. We are on the road to eternal life and throughout that journey we are sustained by the real food and real drink that is the flesh and blood of Jesus. It brings us into a wonderful union with Christ, with each other and with the Church in heaven. This is why it is so important to gather at Mass and in Eucharistic adoration, something we missed so much during the Covid restrictions. We cannot be in communion with God, each other, and the Church by being alone. We need to come together to join in the social dimension of what it is to be Christian. There is only one loaf and that means that though we are many we form one body together.

God Bless Brendan.