THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

Readings: Exodus 14:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

Throughout the Church’s Liturgical Year there are special times when the Church bids us to look at “The Big Picture.” Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and Christ the King Sunday are a few examples. Today is one of those events and it deals with the question: “Where can we find God?” It’s connected with similar questions such as: “What kind of a God is God?” “Does God love me personally and individually?” and so forth.

Where can we find God? The immediate response that comes to mind is, “Well, He is everywhere.” But that answer never seems to satisfy, does it? Sure, God is everywhere. But being everywhere in general is being nowhere in particular. The big quest is to find God uniquely, specifically, and individually… and to encounter God in our natural human experience, not just supernaturally. We want to meet God close-up and personally. There’s nothing wrong with that want or need. It’s quite natural. We are human and we want to encounter God humanly.

For thousands of years God revealed Himself to us and spoke to us through others, through prophets and holy people we find in the Old Testament. And He still does. But that’s sort of like meeting God through letters and e-mails. It’s like encountering God only in the stories friends of His tell us about Him.

Sisters and brothers: God made us with a hunger in our hearts. We have a hunger for union. We want to be close up and personal with those we love. It’s only natural, then, that we should have that drive within us when we are conscious of loving God and want Him to be close to us.

Well, God knows that, of course. As a result, “in the fullness of time” (as the bible speaks of time), God came to us in His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Christmas is our celebration of that “coming of God to us.”

Our problem today is that this event occurred 2,000 years ago. What about now? Where and how can I get “close-up and personal” with God today, 2,000 years after Christ lived among us?

Jesus gave us the answer. Jesus is responding to our want and our need. Catholics and those who belong to the great Eastern Orthodox Churches, encounter God in Christ very personally, even intimately. We find Him in His Body and Blood; we find Him in the Eucharist, in the Blessed Sacrament. He is there for us. In each and every celebration of the Mass He presents Himself to us, offers Himself to us… really and truly. It’s really Him.

For us, Holy Communion isn’t just pretty poetry; it is not something that’s just a symbol. It is a symbol, but it is far more than just a symbol. In it God comes to us in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ comes to us in Holy Communion in order to become part of us. His Body becomes united with our own human bodies; His Blood mingles with our own human blood. In a way it is a marriage. Indeed, the bible speaks of the Lord's Supper as the "Wedding Feast of the Lamb.”

It’s all set forth for us in the 6th Chapter of St. John’s Gospel. If you want to spend some time pondering over it then when you go home take out your bible and go to the Gospel of St. John, the sixth chapter. There you will find the words of Jesus when He declared: “For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.”

The encounter could hardly be more human, more personal, and more intimate. It is God’s response to our quest; God comes to us in our need and our want to be close to Him – He gives Himself completely to us in Holy Communion.

It has always puzzled me that so many people cannot accept that gift. They find all sorts of ways to question what Jesus was giving us; they ask all sorts of questions seeking to discredit what Jesus was saying and doing. Indeed just moments after Jesus gave this teaching to His disciples the doubters raised their objections.

St. John reports that Jesus “…taught this doctrine at Capernaum, in the synagogue. After hearing it, many of His followers said, ‘This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’… After this, many of His disciples left him…”

We need to note that Jesus did not go running after them, calling them back. He didn’t say to them, “Come on back, I was only speaking poetically, I was only speaking symbolically.”
No! He simply let them go. And then He turned to the twelve apostles and asked them: “What about you, do you want to go away too?” Simon Peter answered, “Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe.”

Well, that’s the big picture we gaze into here today on this Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ. I began with the question, “Where is God?” and took you through some other aspects in the big picture. I end now with Christ’s answer to our need to be close-up and personal with God, to find God and then to enter more deeply into a love-relationship with God.

God gave us His Son Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. He didn’t give us His Son only to take Him away from us at the end of His life among us here on earth. For God in Christ gave Himself to us in order to stay with us until the end of the world, to be with us always, to be up-close and personal with us whenever we want to be one with Him. Is that a hard saying for you? Is that something that’s intolerable language?

God has offered Himself to you and offers Himself to you even now in this Mass. Will you receive Him into your own body and blood? Will you let Him become one with you in this “The Wedding Feast of the Lamb”? God has offered Himself to us. Now He waits for our response. What is yours?