Corpus Christi

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Exodus 24:3-8; Psalm 116; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

“Who exactly is my neighbor?”

When Jesus is asked this question he tells a story of a traveler who has been beaten, robbed and left on the roadside. The purpose of the question was to clarify limits. The questioner presumes there are limits to the commandment to love God and our neighbor. Which leaves us with a very uncomfortable subtext. Who doesn’t count as my neighbor?

What the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan initially encounter is a broken, human, body. That is how all of us are first encountered throughout our lives, by our bodies. Our bodies are a plain fact of life. We live and negotiate the world as bodies. We are subject to vulnerability, dependence, and mortality common to all living embodied beings. And so, our bodies matter.

For the Levite and the priest that broken body did not count or matter. At the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd our consciences should be exceedingly disturbed that some bodies count more than others. But black and brown bodies in our national story have never counted. Why did the crowd stand around shouting and filming the murder rather than intervening? Some bodies count more than others.

For the Samaritan that broken and discarded body did matter. But the traveler is only a character in a story. Let us reflect on our times.

From unrealistic beauty norms to unnatural footwear, women are asked to change their bodies to fit cultural expectations; avoiding any appearance of aging. This requires women to be untruthful about their bodies, even to hate their bodies, and who they are. What is it saying to girls when the yearbook photos of Bartram Trails High School in St. Johns, Florida were altered to hide girl’s chests while boy’s photos in speedos were deemed appropriate? We are saying girls should be ashamed of their bodies and they are not of the same dignity as boys. Some bodies matter more than others.

The Planned Parenthood slogan, “Every child a wanted child” confers a particular dignity on some bodies in a pro-choice world – unlike the bodies of their aborted brothers and sisters, who were not chosen. In an essay for The Atlantic, Sarah Zhang counted the cost of Denmark’s universal screening for Down syndrome. Some bodies count more than others. And often a body with disabilities simply doesn’t count. A surrogate mother offered to adopt an unwanted triplet rather than allow it to be killed, the father objected, out of a sense of justice. Reported in The Atlantic, the father stated that he believed singling out one child for adoption would be cruel, and thus he preferred to reduce.

The Black Lives Matter movement is forcing us not only to confront our national history but our present as to whose bodies matter. The rise of Anti-Semitic violence throughout the world and the hateful words of people in the halls of Congress remind us that Jewish bodies do not matter; neither do Palestinian bodies. The bodies of children who are detained, caged and often treated in poor conditions at our southern border separated from their families should prick our consciences that some bodies matter more than others. Children often do not matter in our world. They never really have.

At the heart of the Sacrament of the Eucharist is a body. “Take this, all of you…for this is my body, which will be given up for you.” Whose body is Jesus referring to? Is “my body” His crucified and risen body or is Jesus referring also to us, the Body of Christ? And is not the purpose of the Eucharist to make us more and more configured to the Christ? 

The narrower our ideas about whose bodies matter, the less likely we will be to help, love, or even see others. And with the body unacknowledged, it is easier to overlook the more elusive soul. If we relegate “the Body of Christ” simply to a piece of consecrated bread on an altar, in a tabernacle or in a monstrance we regrettably reveal we missed the mark. There must be an intimate connection between “the Body of Christ” on our altars and “the Body of Christ” that stands around and beyond our altars.

Every single body is a witness that we are made in God’s image, and some part of God is denied when the goodness of the people God has made is denied. When we marginalize our neighbors, when we ignore and pass by their wounded, broken bodies, we blot out that divine image. In refusing the duty of the commandment to love our neighbor, we deny the Eucharistic presence of Christ in the world. 

A woman’s body does not need to be reconfigured.

A black or brown body does not need to be conformed to white standards.

A Jewish, Uighur, Yazidi or Rohingya body does not need to be reeducated or eliminated.

A child’s body with disabilities does not need to be abled.

A poor, homeless or mentally ill body does not need to be hidden.

A sexually abused body does not need to be rewritten.

A refugee or migrant body does not need to be judged.

Women must be seen and loved as women. Black and brown people need to be loved as brown and black people. A person with disabilities needs to be loved as a person. When we fail to recognize the Body of Christ within every person, when we fail to be a Eucharistic people sent forth from the holy table, our neighbor’s body, “the Body of Christ,” testifies against us.

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Ideas and phrases taken from, Let the Body Testify – Whose Body Matters by Leah Libresco Sargent, Plough Quarterly, Summer 2021.