Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ
Luke 9:11-17
Today we celebrate a feast that is central to our faith. We celebrate the real presence of Christ in the bread and the wine that we consume during Mass. We believe that after the priest says the words of consecration during Mass, the bread ceases to become bread and it becomes the body of Christ. The consecrated bread still looks like bread, tastes like bread and smells like bread but it is not bread anymore, it is now the body of Christ. The consecrated wine still looks like wine, tastes like wine and smells like wine but is not wine anymore, it is now the blood of Christ.
The gospel for today though speaks of an event in the life of Jesus that is so important that it is recorded in all four gospels and in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, it is even recorded twice. This event is the miracle of the feeding of the multitude. That after a long day in the wilderness, the thousands of people there who listened to the preaching of Jesus and for some, were even healed of their ailments, were hungry and don’t know what to do. Jesus then took action and upon receiving a meagre donation of five loaves and two fish, he blessed them and asked his disciples to distribute them and all had their fill with 12 wicker baskets of scraps collected.
In reality though, if you study the gospel passage, Jesus had already been feeding the multitude for a long time now. First, Jesus fed them with the word of God. He saw that crowd longed to listen to his teachings about the Kingdom of God. Jesus managed to hold such a crowd not only because of the message that he had but also because of the hunger of the people for the word of God. Then in the process of feeding, Jesus also catered to the needs of the sick. He went to them and they were healed. Jesus knew very well the effect of sickness on a person. It can be devastating not only physically but also socially. Take for example leprosy. In the Jewish culture, when one is a leper according to Mosaic Law, one should be expelled from the community and made to live at the edge of the city. So, getting healed from leprosy, has the effect of not just becoming physically healed but also being restored to your place in the community. Then after that, Jesus realised that the multitude were now hungry from the whole day’s activities and it was now getting dark. Jesus, not wanting to dismiss them without anything in their stomachs, got some loaves of bread and fish and asked his disciples to distribute them and they were all satisfied.
So how does the gospel for today relate to the feast of Corpus Christi? It relates in the way that Jesus was willing to give himself to us so that he could become a part of us and we can become a part of him. It also showed the amount of generosity with which Jesus gives if we only let him.
The Eucharist, which Vatican II tells us is the “source and summit of Christian life”, is patterned on the events of Jesus’ life. Like in the gospel for today, we are fed first with the Word of God, which we need to have in order to live out our Christianity. Then we are fed by the Body and Blood of Christ so that our spirits can be nourished as we live out our Christianity in daily life. Also, when we consume the body and blood of Christ, we experience our communion or being one with Jesus, so that we can have a part of Jesus and Jesus can have a part in us.
In a religious education class for small children, the teacher asked her students to describe God for her. Some said “God is huge”, “God created everything”, “God gives us everything that we need.” Then one little girl raised her hand and sheepishly said, “God is small”. This caught the teacher’s attention and she asked the little girl why she thinks God is small. The little girl said, “If God is not small, how could he fit in my heart.”
During Communion, you’ll have in your hand a small piece of white wafer, which is the body of Christ. The God who has made you as well as the God who has made the universe is now in your hand. Maybe it is good to take time to appreciate the incredible effort that God has made so that he can enter into our lives. And maybe by consuming his body and blood, we can also become a little bit like Jesus and love another as Jesus has loved us.
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