Body and Blood of Christ - Homily 4

 Homily 4 - 2016

The recent Synods on the Family put the cat among the pigeons, and the feathers are still flying. One question was how to hold on to Scripture’s beautiful teaching about the permanence, mutual commitment and indissolubility of marriage and at the same time recognise that many Catholics have divorced and remarried, yet are as good and committed as anyone else. 

The answer may lie with mercy, guided by conscience. But mercy is not as simple as it looks. It is a whole other way of thinking, which comes only with wisdom and is the fruit of contemplation – as with Mary, who, as Luke’s Gospel says, “treasured these things and pondered them in her heart”.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ and the institution of the Eucharist. Actually we celebrated them on Holy Thursday. But at some stage in the Church’s history, some “powers that be” seemed to think that the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday somehow crowded out our focus on Eucharist. They preferred to concentrate on presence, rather than purpose – on who it is rather than what he is doing, and what he is there for. Historically, the Feast became popular at a time when people rarely received Eucharist. They looked at it instead. When I was a child, people still rarely received Communion, and then only if they had scrupulously fasted from all food and drink from midnight. 

Some people still see Eucharist as a reward for goodness. Sinners need not apply! Some as a reward for impeccable orthodoxy. Heretics not welcome! Others take a different stance. They brand all those who go to Communion as hypocrites, so, rather than associate with them and be defiled, they keep themselves aloof. It is the attitude often of the teenager, and parents are not immune from their censure. It seems to me that there are only two ways not to be hypocrites – either to be saints and squeaky clean, or to have no standards or principles to compromise. That leaves little room for most of us. [Where would we put the comedian Groucho Marx who famously quipped, “I would never join a club that would have me as a member!”?]

Seriously, we have to come to terms with mercy. The Church has not been good at that. Somehow, we need to mature, and that begins with self-knowledge. We are all works in progress. We are sinners; and the more we grow, the more we come to recognize, slowly and usually painfully, that there is no end to our sin. To accept that, we need to learn to be at peace with vulnerability, with not being in total control of our lives. That is mercy. And for the good person, it’s scary. It requires that somehow we discover that, with all our sinfulness, we can be loved – indeed, that we are loved, and loved by the God whom we instinctively tend to fear. To hang on to both at the same time, our clear unworthiness and the undeniable reality of love, can be a breath-taking breakthrough!

Rather than keep us at a distance, the eucharistic Christ invites and reassures us. The broken bread becomes His body, broken and given for us, sinners and hypocrites that we are; the wine we drink his blood poured out in love for us, for the forgiveness of sins and the steady healing of our brokenness.  As Paul wrote in today’s Second Reading, “Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming his death”. We proclaim his death! It was his way of proving he loves us. But not just us, he loves the world. Who are we to restrict his outreach? Precisely because we are not worthy, we need his redeeming love. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof. But only say the word – and my soul shall be healed!” Let us not just mouth the words. Let’s mean them.