Sunday – 10th Week in Ordinary Time – A – The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

In today's solemnity, we celebrate how that Son of God dying on the cross perpetuates his self-emptying a self-emptying that pours into our hearts when we receive him during Holy Communion at Holy Mass, his Holy body, blood, soul, and divinity, contained and hidden beneath the veil of bread and wine.

We start off in today's readings with Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, who reminds his people how for 40 years the Lord had directed all their journeying in the desert, and they were tested and afflicted so as to grow and mature and keep trusting in the Lord for their sustenance.
And how when they were hungry, he fed them with a food that, as Moses describes it, was unknown to you and your fathers in order to show you that “not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3).

So if Moses is saying about this supernatural bread, which was, at the end of the day, just bread that God had provided.
That we live by the Word of God, how much more would he be shocked to have known that that same Word of God would descend from heaven and become bread for us?

And that is why in the second reading from Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.
Again, this is to the earliest converts to Christianity, and the reading is so brief that I can quote it in its entirety here.

He says to the Corinthians, “Brothers and sisters: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17).

My brothers and sisters, Saint Paul was driving home the truth that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, his body, his blood, his soul, and his divinity.
And when we partake of Jesus, we become united as one in Jesus.

And it is so beautiful that we are able to journey together, which is such a big part of the profound aspect we see written into this mystery of the Eucharist and of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Now at the Mass - a validly ordained priest (the fullness of the priesthood being the episcopate - the Bishop), has been given the charism by Christ... (When we say charism, we differentiate it from merely a gift. If God gave me a gift, it's for me personally. If he gives me a charism, a charism is yes, a gift that is given to me, but for the benefit of others, for the benefit of others. Right. So the charism of healing, for example).

... well, God has given his validly ordained priests the charism to be able to pronounce the words of Christ on the bread and on the wine, and consecrate those to realities where even though their accidents remain the same (meaning the color, the taste, the weight, the texture. All of that remains the same), the substance on the inside, invisible to the naked eye, turns into the Body and blood, the soul and divinity of Jesus. That host, and that wine become Jesus in our midst.

And Jesus Himself says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” (John 6:54).

Now there's more to it, right?
Because when we partake of the Eucharist, what is also simultaneously being declared, what is being declared is that we are in a state of grace. Right?
Which means that we're living by His Word.
We're trying our best, and we're trying to grow in our union with him, in our service to others.

And that is why Jesus continues in this discourse on the Eucharist and he says, after declaring that eternal life would be given to those who consume his flesh and his blood... he says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him” (John 6:56).

So there's a union between the reception of the Eucharist and a life that is lived so as to be able to do so.

That is why Saint Paul, elsewhere in the Scriptures, admonishes the early Christians to examine themselves and to discern that the bread they are partaking in is not just any ordinary bread, but the Flesh of Christ.

And many of the early Church Fathers, reiterating what they themselves had received, what had been handed on to them by the Apostles who received it directly from Jesus, all taught that this bread does not merely symbolically become the Body and Blood of Christ, but that it truly and substantially becomes the Body and Blood of Christ.

Like Saint Ignatius of Antioch, for example, who warned against those who held heterodox opinions and denied that the bread they consumed and broke together was actually the Flesh and Blood of the Savior.

So, my brothers and sisters, there are many heresies out there. Be careful of those heresies. For the truth of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist goes all the way back to Christ Himself.

“Just as the living Father sent me,” said Jesus, “and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

May the Lord give us all the grace to draw closer to His Eucharistic Heart, and therein may He heal us, illuminate our hearts and minds, and protect us on our journey, until one day we stand before Him face to face — the Word of God who descended into the world and has given His Flesh for the life of the world.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Go in peace.