Feast of Corpus Christi - Year B

On the feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ), the faithful are invited to return to the event that had already been commemorated at the beginning of the Easter Triduum within Holy Week. On the Thursday of Holy Week, the Last Supper is remembered, the event in which Jesus gave his body and his blood on the eve of his Passion and Crucifixion. According to the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the meal was the Passover evening meal: a meal in which the Jews remember the exodus from Egypt and the passage from slavery to freedom. In the 13th century, the Church fixed another feast in which the giving of the body and the blood of Christ are celebrated, a feast that comes at the conclusion of the major feasts of the Christian calendar - after Easter and Pentecost.

Among the most important verbs that are attributed to God in his relationship with the human person are the verbs "to feed" and "to satisfy". As a father, God takes care of us and from the time of the creation of the world he feeds us from his goodness. During the days in the Wilderness, for a period of forty years, the people of Israel lived from the bread the God gave them in a place where there was nothing to eat. He fed and satisfied his people. The challenge when they entered the Land of their fathers, a Land flowing with milk and honey, was not to forget that all the good of the Land comes from God the Creator, the Deliverer of Israel. The danger is to forget his goodness and take the fruit of the Land for granted. Therefore, Deuteronomy repeats a foundational expression: "you shall eat and be satisfied":

Deuteronomy 6:11-12: "you shall eat and be satisfied. Beware lest you forget..."

Deuteronomy 8:10: you shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given to you".

Deuteronomy 11:15-16: "you shall east and be satisfied. Beware lest your hearts be seduced".

Every time we eat we must bless our Father in heaven, who feeds us and satisfies us from every good thing. In addition, we are called to remember, according to the formulation in the same book of Deuteronomy, that man does not live on bread alone but rather "by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:3). Therefore, when he gives us bread of heaven, holy bread, his word which was in the beginning, his only son, who said: "I am the bread of life" (John 6:35), our thanksgiving is multiplied.

The readings for the feast, as always, help us understand its meaning. The first reading, from the Book of Exodus (24:3-8) takes us back to the Sinai covenant. The people that received the Torah of God from the mouth of Moses says with one voice: "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do" (24:3). After Moses has read out the Torah, the people repeats: "All that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will be obedient" (24:7). The Eucharist, at whose center is the giving of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, is a covenant feast. In eating the holy bread, we are expressing our readiness to take upon ourselves the life of Jesus, the man who fulfilled the Torah to perfection - who indeed lived the "we will do and we will be obedient" of his people Israel.

The second reading is from the Letter to the Hebrews (9:11-15). It describes the priesthood of Jesus who is both priest and sacrifice. According to the Sinai covenant, the people sacrificed goats, calves and bulls in the priestly rites for the sanctification and the purification of the people. However, now "the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without blemish to God purifies our conscience from dead works to worship the living God" (9:14). In the Eucharist, we do not perform the one time sacrifice of Jesus but rather we commemorate it and make it echo. Un our standing around the table of the Lord, we not only participate in the meal together (thus becoming one body nourished from the one table) but we also present ourselves as bread to a world that is hungry just as our teacher and Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, did.

The reading from the Gospel this year (Year B) comes from Mark (14:12-16.22-26). We hear once again the astonish words of Jesus at the Passover meal before his death: "Take, this is my body" (14:22) as he extended the Passover unleavened bread to his disciples. And, taking the cup, he said: "This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many" (14:24). Jesus gives himself to us as food to nourish us on the way. He is the way along which we must walk to the Father and he is our provisions for that way - a very long way towards the reparation of the world. Let us pray, that on this feast we might indeed be one body that is nourished from the one bread so that we might become bread for a world hungry for the word of God.