On June 11, on the solemnity of Corpus Christi, we celebrate the body and the blood of the Lord. So important to our life of faith is knowing how to encounter the living Christ in every Mass, that even when the Church celebrates the Eucharist every day, it devotes a special day in the year to highlight the center of our celebration, the center of our life of faith, the center of our existence itself (Lumen Gentium, 11).
During consecration, the Father sends out the Holy Spirit to transform bread and wine with water into the body and blood of the Lord. There is one detail we tend to overlook: It is not only the body of Christ. It is not only the blood of the Lord. It is a body that has the purpose of being offered in sacrifice and a blood that is intended to be poured out for our salvation — the celebration of the Holy Mass is the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
Understanding the bond of the sacrifice of Christ with the need of having bread and wine being transformed into his body and blood helps us appreciate why the encounter with the Eucharistic Christ is vital to our existence.
In the Collect prayer at the beginning of the Holy Mass in this solemnity, we pray, “O God, who in this wonderful Sacrament have left us a memorial of your Passion, grant us, we pray, so to revere the sacred mysteries of your Body and Blood that we may always experience in ourselves the fruits of your redemption.” In the anamnestic clause of this prayer, we see the intrinsic bond between the sacrament of the Eucharist and the Lord’s Passion: “In this wonderful Sacrament (you) have left us a memorial of your Passion.”
Christ cannot offer up his life dying on a cross unless he institutes the Eucharist first. Why not? Because Christ will die for all of us, to pay for all our sins, so that we don’t die. Then, he’ll resurrect so we all may have eternal life. Hence, Christ needs to take us with himself to the cross somehow, so he can die taking our place. Therefore, he needs us to be in communion with him. With this purpose, the Holy Spirit transforms bread and wine with water into his body and his blood so we consume them, and as we eat and drink, it becomes perceptible to us that Christ is getting inside us and that we are now in communion with him.
But Christ does not offer up himself alone. In every Holy Mass, we offer up our lives as well in sacrifice to our Father. This bread, this wine and this water that are presented to God at the altar, represent our own life. And the Holy Spirit transforms these symbols of our life into the very body and the very blood of Christ, so he offers himself then to the Father with the perfection we alone would be unable to achieve. This way, he exercises his ministry as high priest.
Let us ask the Lord that, as we celebrate his body and his blood, we ourselves learn to become for our brothers and sisters, bread that is broken and wine that is poured out.
Be passionate about our faith!
Read the rest of the June/July issue of Northwest Catholic here.