By Leon Bent –
This little known feast is far more important, solemn and doctrinal, than lesser festive Commemorations and Liturgical Celebrations that, are given much more prominence. “Corpus Christi,” if properly understood, lived and proclaimed, reinforced with charisms, grace and faith, is a sure path to holiness. The context and cradle for this crucial feast is Christ’s ‘Sacramental’ oblation.
The 1.285 billion Catholic Church’s official doctrine is that every Mass is a ritual “re-enactment” of Our Lord’s one bloody sacrifice on Calvary. St. Peter Julian Eymard, Founder of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, confirms: The Eucharist is the “crowning act of Christian worship” and the “holiest act of religion”. “The Holy Eucharist,” Vatican II tells us, “is the source and summit of Christian life” (Lumen gentium, no. 11; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1324). This last scripted definition has now become ‘threadbare!’
The Symbol of Bread – It’s Rich History
As we bring our bread to the altar, we realize that it has come a long, long way to this table. This is the bread which sustained the Israelites in their flight to freedom; it is the bread which nourished Elijah on his journey to the mountain of God; it is the bread which Jesus multiplied to feed his hungry people in the desert; it is the unleavened bread of the original Passover Meal (Ex.12:1-8; 11-14); it is also the festive meal of “remembering” (CCC1356/57/58; 1 Cor.11:24ff). We eat any ordinary bread that, it may become like us; we eat this bread (the Eucharist), so that, we may become like it. “We take, we bless, we break, we share it” again and again, just as Jesus did; it is the unleavened bread of the Passover. This ancient journey of bread adds a new depth, a new richness, and a more-than-personal resonance to our life. It is one of the ways in which God begins to speak to his people again.
Why is the Bread and Wine Transformed?
St. Thomas said the Eucharist is the one instance of change we encounter in this world that is exactly the opposite. The appearances of bread and wine stay the same, but the very essence or substance of these realities, which cannot be detected by a microscope, is totally transformed. What was once bread and wine are now Christ’s Body and Blood. A precise word was coined to describe this unique change. Transformation of the “sub-stance”, what “stands-under” the surface, came to be called “transubstantiation.”
What makes this happen? The power of God’s Spirit and Word! God does not want dead works or animal sacrifices. He wants our own flesh and blood, our own lives, consecrated to him, offered as a living sacrifice. This is the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving that we sing in the Eucharist.
What we do in memory of Jesus is to pledge our lives to him, to renew our promise to live by the words of his covenant, and to be his servants. There is no better return we can render him for the eternal inheritance he has won for us. So, let us approach the altar, calling upon his name in thanksgiving, taking up the cup of salvation.
The Church’s teaching on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the significance of the Feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus, gives us a greater understanding of our vocation to be the living presence of Christ in the world. The Paschal Mystery is never locked in the past, but exists in the ever-present—especially in the Eucharist, so that, the entire people of God can be offered to the Father, “through him, with him, and in him (Doxology of the Mass).”
Ascension
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (Jn.12:32). The lifting up of Jesus on the cross, after his atonement for humanity’s sin, signifies and announces his lifting up by his Ascension into heaven, and, indeed, begins it. Jesus Christ, the one priest of the new and eternal Covenant, “entered, not into a sanctuary made by human hands. . . but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.” There the ‘wounded,’ but, now, ‘exalted’ (Ascension Psalm 47) Christ permanently exercises his priesthood, for he “always lives to make intercession” for “those who draw near to God through him.” As “’High Priest’ of the good things to come” he is the central and principal actor of the liturgy that honors the Father in heaven (CCC 662). Henceforth, Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father: The glory and honor of divinity, where he who exists as Son of God before all ages, indeed, as God, of one being with the Father, is seated bodily after he became incarnate and his flesh was glorified” (CCC 663).
Transubstantiation and Real Presence
The “breadness” and “wineness,” so to speak, are changed into the living Jesus, true God and true man, whole God and whole man; not symbolically or metaphorically! The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states, “The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring:‘…by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread, into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation’” (CCC, 1376).Catholics worship and adore these elements because they are the very person of Christ himself. “The Real Presence is the Real Jesus!” (cf. Sacramentum Caritatis). “Jesus knocks at the door of our hearts and asks to come in, not just for a moment, but forever” –Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI.
In his historic encyclical The Mystery of Faith, Paul VI goes into great detail to show that, transubstantiation produces a unique presence of Jesus Christ on earth. The Real Presence is unique because “it contains Christ Himself” (Mysterium Fidei, September 3, 1965).
The classic expression of faith in the total and permanent Real Presence was drafted by Pope Gregory VII in a Eucharistic Creed that leaves no room for compromise.“I believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine placed upon the altar are, by the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the Redeemer, substantially changed into the true and life-giving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord”(Council of Rome, February 11, 1079).
Faith is an Essential Ingredient
This kind of presence corresponds to the virtue of unwavering, fierce faith, for the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ cannot be detected or discerned by any way other than faith. That is why St. Bonaventure affirmed: “There is no difficulty over Christ being present in the sacrament as a sign; the great difficulty is, in the fact that, he is really in the sacrament, as He is in heaven. So believing this is especially meritorious.” Indeed, Transubstantiation is the central dogma of the Catholic Church!
The Once-and-for-all Sacrifice is made Eternal
The Punch Lines! The Jewish High Priest in the Old Testament could enter the Holy of Holies only once a year on Yom Kippur, to offer the blood of sacrifice and incense, in atonement for sin. At the Ascension, Jesus entered the heavenly Holy of Holies “not made by human hands” (Heb.9:11), behind the veil, to offer perfect and perpetual sacrifice, which obviously did not end with the Cross. The “once and for all sacrifice” (Heb.10:10) at Calvary, is made eternal through the High Priest (Jesus) in heaven (Archbishop Fulton Sheen). “Blood and water poured out of Jesus’ side [heart – the Altar] (Jn.19:31-37). Jesus is now the New Adam, the New Temple and the Bridegroom of the Mystical Body …” the fullness of him who” who fills everything, in every way (Eph.1:17-23). The Incarnation and the Ascension have a direct connection. And, just as the divine and human Jesus (sinless), was taken up body and soul into heaven, we, too, will be taken up, likewise. The Blood and water from the Cross brought us access to heaven (Scott Hahn). This is the awesome power of God!
Now, this final, factual flourish! Corpus Christi celebrates the Transubstantiation and Real Presence of Jesus, while making sacred space and lending heavenly grace, for the adorableness of the Eucharist – the centerpiece of Catholicism! Oh! What august and awesome, mysticism and mystery! It’s time we bask in the warmth of God’s provision.
And, this gold nugget! The Eucharist, then, is the fountainhead of manifold blessings and a fruitful source of sanctity! To believe this truth, is to be a ‘profound person’, a ‘self-actualized’ (A. Maslow) believer, a deep well that never runs dry (Isa.58:11), a perennial wellspring within, welling up to eternal life (Jn.4:14), and a faith-imbued and spirit-filled Disciple! (cf. Lk.14:26).