JUNE22024

Todays feast is usually referred to with the Latin title: Corpus Christi. The official designation is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Recognizing the blood of Christ as central to our understanding of the Eucharist is highlighted in this way. Blood in the Bible is the life principle. What seems to us to be a bit barbaric, the sacrificing of animals as the way to worship God, meant to the ancient Israelites that life itself is in the hands of God. Blood signified that God was not peripheral, a nice addition to human existence, but necessary to life. There is a powerful scene in the book of Exodus after the people have received the law at Sinai when Moses slaughters a bull and then pours half of the blood on the altar (the sign of God’s presence) and sprinkled the remainder on the people. Their life and the life of God were understood as bound together. Kosher laws about consuming blood were testimony to focusing all of life onto God. This prohibition was so strong that the Acts of the Apostles reports that even when kosher laws were not viewed as binding on gentile Christians at the Council of Jerusalem there remained a requirement to refrain from blood. Of course, in St. John’s Gospel the culmination of the death of Jesus on the cross is when his side is pierced and “blood and water” flow out. Jesus gives his very life force as a sacrifice. That is the background Jesus brings to the Last Supper when he gives not only his body but also his blood in the Holy Eucharist. Jesus wants us to understand we have Communion with his very life when we receive the sacrament. The restoration of Communion under both species has given the Church today access to this fuller understanding of the great gift we have in the Blessed Sacrament. As we receive Holy Communion Jesus’ body, blood, soul and divinity transform our lowliness into the foretaste of the glory to come.