The last four Sundays, we’ve celebrated one Solemnity after the next. It started with the Ascension, and Christ showing that He truly is the Son of God, that He is that one thing that can truly fill the void and emptiness within each of us.
Next we had Pentecost – where we are consumed with serenity in the Holy Spirit through its glorious gifts, that if we are open to the Spirit and allow it to find us and guide us, God’s love and grace and our potential that we have bottled up within us will pour out.
Last week, we brought it all together to celebrate the Holy Trinity to form the bigger picture and see how God is all around us and in everything we do.
This week it comes full circle. Today on this Corpus Christi Sunday, we celebrate the cornerstone of our faith, the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. This is where we get down to brass tacks, where the rubber meets the road, or whatever other idiom you want to use. Simply put – this is the moment of truth. Today we come full circle and celebrate the very gift that God gave us, the only gift He had in mind after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.
When God made humanity through Adam and Eve, we were perfect. God was within us, and we were in Him. But after the Fall, we were broken. We were separated from God and sin became a part of our DNA. God is perfect, and we were no longer perfect, therefore we could no longer be in perfect union with God. We could no longer be in communion with Him. It would take an ultimate sacrifice to regain that union where God could physically become part of us again and we could share in that very being and grace with Him again as Adam and Eve did before the Fall.
In the readings today, God teaches Moses and the Israelite’s about sacrifice. He tells them how they should sacrifice bulls as peace offerings to Him, and how through the blood of the sacrifice, Moses says that
“This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words of his.”
God is setting the stage, showing the Israelites how powerful sacrifice can be and He’s building discipline and character in them. It’s like in The Karate Kid movie, where Mr. Miyagi has Daniel doing all of these menial work tasks that seem boring, or are making no sense to Daniel. He wants to learn karate and do the punches and kicks, but Mr. Miyagi keeps having him wax the car, paint the fence, sand the floor, and so on. Daniel is getting frustrated, but what he doesn’t realize is that Mr. Miyagi is teaching him technique and muscle memory, the various techniques and moves of karate. Soon, when the time is right, he demonstrates this to Daniel. He was learning karate the whole time, he just needed to build the discipline and learn the techniques and muscle memory first. This is what God was doing with the Israelites and all those rules of sacrifice. Through these sacrifices, God was building the discipline and character we needed to attain His graces, but He was also showing them how they will be able to come into communion with Him years down the road through a special sacrifice, when the time was right.
But for us to be truly saved, and for us to be able to come into full communion again with God, and have Him physically be part of us again and be a part of our very being, it would take more than bulls and goats. God had to send Himself down to earth – His Son, to become the ultimate sacrifice.
St. Paul goes on to write to the Hebrews today,
For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a heifer’s ashes can sanctify those who are defiled so that their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.
Sending Jesus to become one of us and die for our sins was the only way that God’s plan could be fulfilled. Yet, this is only half of the equation. The sacrifice had to happen. Jesus was to become the Sacrificial Lamb, but He had to become part of us. We had to consume the Lamb. Only by consuming the sacrifice would we truly receive God within us and where God would become part of us and we in Him again. How would this happen? And how could humanity continue to consume the Sacrifice for years to come? Let’s flashback to the Last Supper.
Mark writes in todays Gospel,
While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.
This IS my body… This IS my blood… Not, this represents, or this is a symbol of, but THIS IS.
The prophet Jeremiah states perfectly of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-33,
See, days are coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke my covenant, though I was their master. But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
“I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts.” God’s ways will be placed within us and written in our hearts. The only way for this to happen is for Him to become a part of us. The only way for God to physically become part of us is to physically consume Him. Jesus makes this feasible by taking ordinary bread and wine and transforming it into His Body and Blood. We can consume His Body and Blood through the bread and wine, and God’s grace and His law become a part of our very being.
And it’s this sacrificial offering and this dinner we can take part in every day. Through the Institution of the Eucharist, we have His physical presence every day in front of us. We can adore Him in adoration, and we can consume in Holy Communion during Mass. Its this physical presence in the Eucharist that is the same today, as it was on Holy Thursday 2000 years ago, and as it will be for eternity. It transcends time. Time has no bounds.
Christ’s presence in the Holy Body and Blood of the Eucharist is always there and always renewing. Christ brought us full circle. Back to the beginning when all was good and great. The world is not perfect, but through Christ and His Holy Body and Blood, He can get us there. He is the cornerstone of the foundation of our life.
