Corpus Christi
As we celebrate corpus Christi we pray for all those who are contemplating whether they should return to the Mass and Sacramental life of the Church we need to pray for them that they will return. In many places throughout the world the Feast of Corpus Christi would have been celebrated last Thursday but we in Ireland celebrate this feast on the weekend after Trinity Sunday. On Saturday 5th June we have 4 First communion ceremonies in our parish for our school kids. With the COVID19 regulations in force things are different but what we were celebrating is the same as the children receive Jesus in the blessed sacrament for the first time. The readings for this feast mirror the readings of Holy Thursday evening when Jesus gave us an everlasting memorial of his body and blood. The Gospel Reading tells us as they 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.’
Then he took a cup, and when he had returned thanks he gave it to them, and all drank from it, and he said to them, ‘This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many. This is what we celebrate every time we come to Mass the new and everlasting covenant. In the action of the Mass we hold as sacred the memory of Jesus, we share the bread that is broken, we accept the cup that is held out to us. When we see the Eucharistic Bread, we believe that it is Jesus who is there before us: such is our faith in the Eucharist. The Church teaches that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life.” (CCC 1324) This means that, because Christ is really present in the Eucharist, we recognize that all the graces we enjoy as Catholics come from this great Sacrament, and all we aspire to, the fullness of the life of God, is contained in the bread of life. Gathered at Mass we bring ourselves and our prayers to God in the words of the response to the psalm we raise the cup of salvation and call on the Lord’s Name. We have this hope because God is with us and continues to be with us in good and bad times through the sacramental life of the Church and through the Eucharist in particular.
On the feast of Corpus Christi we celebrate the greatest gift our Lord has left us. By following in our Lord’s footsteps, Christians over the centuries have sacrificed greatly, in a labor of love, for their Christian way of life. Then as now, it begins with each individual person asking God to show the way and to provide the strength needed to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. This strength comes from the sacramental life of the church especially the Eucharist which is the body of Christ the Bread of Life. When we celebrate the Eucharist we recall Jesus’ radical values the way he talked about God and the kingdom; his insistence on forgiveness; his opposition to the religious sham that he saw around him; his commitment to peace; his willingness to die to overcome sin all of these things put him in opposition to so many of his own people and all of this led to Calvary on good Friday. In receiving the body and blood of Christ we become his body in our world. As St Paul says: “Though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one bread.”
In communion we share with Christ and with one another; we become one with his memory. That way, his memory and the memory of the last supper never dies it is up to us to keep that memory alive in our lives and the lives of those around us as we go forward as one body united in Jesus the bread of life.
Fullerton T 