The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
This August my mother turns 75. When I visit home this July, I want to do something very special for her. I am wondering - should I buy her fabulous diamond jewelry or should I take her in a trip somewhere exotic? Should I cook for her or have a special celebration of the mass for her? Should I get her a new sari or should I get her a brand new refrigerator? Or, may be, I should do all these things? My feeling is that no matter what I do for my mother, it can never express how deeply I love her. The most eloquent words cannot capture the depths of what I want to say to her.
I wonder if you have had a similar experience – on your wedding day you could not find words to express the depth of your love; on your honeymoon no matter how deeply you shared yourself, it still felt short of how deeply you love your soul mate. When you held your first child right after birth, you just gazed into those eyes and wish your baby could understand how much you love him or her; the sheer joy of finding employment after years of waiting
Here are some things that we may all agree on – the more we love somebody the more deeply we seek to give. The more dear people are to us the more personal our giving becomes. Think of today’s feast as God’s expression of love – God’s complete and total self-gift to us in his body and his blood. This is God’s way of sharing most deeply with us.
I want to take each of the three readings and take us through God’s self-giving. The key word that unites all these three readings is the word Covenant.
1. The first reading is the description of a primitive covenant making ceremony. Traditionally, this was called the covenant ‘cutting’ ceremony. The covenanters would cut into each other's arm and suck the blood, the mixing of the blood rendering them "brothers of the covenant." It also meant that breach of the covenant would be paid in blood. But when it came to the covenant with God and human beings, they could not cut God’s arms to draw blood. So Moses sacrificed young bulls and sprinkled half its blood upon the altar and half upon the people after he read God’s Law to them. In this way, Moses unified God and the people into a single covenant and sealed it by the blood of animals. Here is the deeper question? What did the Covenant symbolize? It symbolized the giving of God’s law to the people and the people’s giving of their consent to God’s law. The law was not an inanimate thing, by the way. It stood for a relationship. God’s fidelity to the people is seen in God honoring the Covenant and the people’s observance of the Covenant showed their love for God.
2) The second reading from the letter to the Hebrews clearly takes us a step forward. It talks about a better and New Covenant. What is it that made it better and new? First, God came upon earth in person through Jesus to seal the covenant. Second, it is not sealed by the blood of animals but by Jesus’ own blood. Third, in the New Covenant God did not just give a law, but rather this covenant was God’s self-gift to us through Jesus. If we are to interpret the new covenant from the lense of self-giving and love, then, God is trying to say something to the entire human race. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have everlasting life.” Jesus himself said, “Greater love has no man than this he lay down his life for his friends.” God loves greatly so God gives greatly; God loves unconditionally so God gives unconditionally; God’s love deeply so God’s self-gift goes to the deepest possible level.
3) Today’s gospel reading takes us yet one more step forward. At that last Passover that Jesus celebrated with the disciples, he took bread and said, “This is my body.” And then he took the cup and said, “This is my blood.” The account we have from Mark does not end the narrative with the words, “Do this in memory of me.” But the other gospels and Paul include the memorial as an essential element of the last Passover. Today, we have gathered around this altar keeping the memory. This memory is not merely of what God did through Jesus two thousand year back. First we must recognize that this Eucharist is how God expresses the depth of God’s love for us. We must recognize that this Eucharist is God’s self-giving to us and for all people forever.
As the bread and wine is brought to the altar and is transformed into the body and blood of Christ, let us be like the people in today’s first reading and say, "All that the LORD has said, we will heed and do." Let us become what we celebrate; let us become the Eucharist, the body and blood Christ, the love and self-gift of the Lord.
- Fr. Satish Joseph