Body and Blood of Christ - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2006

Mark told us in his Gospel today: While Jesus and the disciples were eating he took some bread, and when he had said the blessing he broke it and gave it to them. Take it, he said, this is my body.

They were having a meal together. Why did Jesus choose a meal setting as the means by which he wanted his disciples to remember him? Why food? Why bread? Wouldn’t a picture, or a statue, help us to remember him better? Why sharing together a loaf of broken-up bread?

When we do what Jesus asked us to do - when we remember him in the Eucharist - Jesus is present with us. But he is present, not as in an upper room in a street in Jerusalem. He is not present as in a place – locally. He is present sacramentally.

Sacraments are sign language. Jesus uses signs to carry his presence. The meal shared together, the bread, are telling us, better than words do, something about who he is, and what he is doing. The meal, the bread, are signs.

Last Thursday, when celebrating the Corpus Christi Mass in Rome, Pope Benedict said: On the feast of Corpus Christi we contemplate above all the sign of the bread. What did the sign of the bread tell Pope Benedict about who Jesus is, and what he is doing? Benedict called the bread the food of the poor, the bread of the poor.

He went on to talk about the mysterious bread-like food, the manna, which nourished what he called the pilgrimage of Israel during the forty years in the wilderness.

He invited his hearers to, as he put it: Look at suffering humanity, anxiously wandering among so many uncertainties; look at the physical and mental hunger affecting them. 

He prayed to Jesus: Give them bread for the body – Give them work! Give them bread for the soul – Give them light – Give them yourself!

He talked about the Eucharist as the fruit of the earth and of the work of human hands – (the way we refer to it in the prayer at the Preparation of the Gifts). The work of human hands: farmers’ hands, transport operators, bakers’ hands, retailers’ hands. He called it fruit of the earth, a gift, the gift of the heavens: sun and rain.

We call the bread of the Eucharist the Host. The word Host comes from a Latin word that means victim. Before we eat together the Eucharistic loaf, it must first be broken into pieces. That thought led Benedict to remark: When, in adoration, we contemplate the consecrated Host, the mark of creation is speaking to us. Then we discover the greatness of the gift, but we also discover the Passion, the Cross of Jesus and his resurrection.

Our contemplation takes place against the backdrop of our own time in history. That led him to reflect on our own times – as he said - when we hear of farming lands becoming desert, and there is much more talk of the danger of people and beasts dying of thirst in those regions without water.

To turn around the process by which farming lands are becoming desert will mean suffering for the followers of the Eucharistic Christ – challenging unjust structures of trade and the careless exploitation of natural resources and perhaps putting up with no more than our present standard of living. As Benedict said: we discover the Passion, the Cross of Jesus and his resurrection.

Benedict finished his reflective homily on the Feast of the Body of Christ with a prayer to the Lord: Guide us along the roads of our history! Always show the Church and her pastors the right path! Look at suffering humanity, anxiously wandering among so many uncertainties; look at the physical and mental hunger afflicting them! Give people bread for the body and the soul! Give them work! Give them light! Give them yourself! Purify and sanctify us all!

Bring us to understand that only by participating in Your Passion, by saying ‘yes’ to the cross, to sacrifice, to the purification you impose upon us, can our lives mature and reach their true fulfilment. Gather us from all the corners of the earth. Unite your Church, unite lacerated humanity. Give us your salvation.