13/14 June 2009

Introduction

Our celebration of this Eucharist is a sign of Christ’s sacrifice: the one, eternal sacrifice which brings us salvation. In this celebration we find unity and peace. With grateful hearts we come before the Lord.
Lord, we are your servants.
Lord, have mercy
We call on your name.
Christ, have mercy.
You have freed us from all that bonds us.
Lord, have mercy

Homily

Do you ever have a session in your house when you get out the old photos and go through them? Perhaps they are kept in an old battered album, or like in our family, in a series of old biscuit tins. It is normally some family celebration – a significant birthday, an anniversary, weddings, baptisms and funerals, or perhaps Christmas? You can’t help but be drawn in and be fascinated by the pictures themselves and the running commentary that one and all contribute.
Through the photos and the commentary, the past can almost be re-lived, re-membered (put together again). It is as if so and so’s wedding is happening again, that incident on a family holiday is coming to life again, that special day is present even though it happened a long time ago. Do you know what I mean?
We keep mementos around us to re-call events, people, occasions which are special to us and we like to be reminded of them and to be surrounded by them. We have to be a little bit careful, because there can be a tendency sometimes to want to stay in the past, to become so nostalgic that we reject the present in preference to the past. That is not a good thing, but remembering, re-minding, re-presenting things is good and human and natural.
When Jesus gathered with his disciples at the Last Supper, as we heard in the Gospel, there was such an atmosphere of re-calling the past, remembering what God had done. That was what the feast of the Passover was all about, recalling God’s wonderful deeds in saving the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. So even before a word was spoken, a piece of bread broken or a drop of wine drunk, there were certain underlying expectations which we might miss if we hadn’t realised this.
The Jews, when they ate the Passover meal were re-living in a real but mystical way what had happened at the great event of the original Passover – deliverance, freedom from slavery, God’s powerful actions on behalf of his people. So when Jesus tells them to eat the bread and drink the cup in memory of him, that word memory had a very strong and evocative significance. Something like the atmosphere when we are looking at photographs, when we re-call the past and re-member events and occasions in our own lives and the lives of our family and friends. However, with the Last Supper and the Eucharists that we celebrate, the event is happening in a real but mystical way. Once more we are part of that last supper, we are part of Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross, we begin to participate in his risen life. It is not just imagination, but real and mystical.
This is the meaning of this feast of Corpus Christi. We remember the real, true mystical presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. We believe that in the bread and the wine, through the power of the Spirit, Jesus is truly present, body, blood, soul and divinity. Jesus promised to be with us until the end of time, and in and through the Eucharist we know that he has fulfilled that promise. We can receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we are fed by him, strengthened by him, nourished by him.
One of the great saints said that we become what we eat, in other words, as we are fed by Jesus in the Eucharist, we grow more and more into his image, we grow into the body of Christ, the people of God and our unity and communion are strengthened.
There is a wonderful hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas, the one to whom we owe so much concerning our grasp of this great sacrament. He says:

O Sacrum Convivium!
O sacred banquet!
in which Christ is received,
the memory of his Passion is renewed,
the mind is filled with grace,
and a pledge of future glory to us is given.
Alleluia.

It is hard to express our wonder when we think about God’s great gift to us in this sacrament, but I think it is summed up well in the preface to be sung just before the Eucharistic prayer:

In this great sacrament you feed your people and strengthen them in holiness, so that the family of mankind may come to walk in the light of one faith, in one communion of love. We come to this wonderful sacrament to be fed at your table and grow in the likeness of the risen Christ.