Corpus Christi

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Genesis 14:18-20; Psalm 110; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 9:11b-17

“…the best thing since sliced bread”?

Why is pre–sliced, standardized, slabs of bread one of the best things? So much so that we compare other aspects of our lives to sliced bread. Pre – packaged in plastic for convenience, is this really a leap forward from the pre–dawn aroma arising from bakeries and cloaking a waking neighborhood each morning? Is there any experience filled with more earthiness, texture, aroma and hospitality than tearing off a piece of bread from a single loaf and passing it around the table?

And Jesus took bread and broke it. He tore the matzoh of Passover and said, “This is my body.”

Your body? Your body is ragged and in shreds. Your body is messy and crumbling. Your body is broken, Lord Jesus.

“This is my body.” But we are your body, Jesus. The Church, the Body of Christ.

Your body, the Church, is in shreds, torn by a scandal from which we seem not able to find healing. Your body, the Church, is breaking up as crumbs falling off a table to the floor as people leave us. Your body, the Church, is broken as we close parishes and schools and seem to be dying. Your body, the Church, is like sliced bread for what worked in the past is empty and sterile of nutrients.

“This is my body.” But we are your body, Lord Jesus.

Are not our personal and family lives at times ragged and in shreds? We try and hold things together…for the children’s sake, for our co–workers, for the world to see… but in reality we know our lives are messy and often crumbling around us.

And sometimes we can’t hold things together for anyone.

There is no plastic packaging to hold us and everything together. For… bread does not come from a store but from the heat of an oven. Bread is pounded and allowed to rise to be pounded down again. Bread is the result of wheat cut down in the prime of its life.

And so, our lives are made in the heat and pressures of daily life. Pounded down, we pick ourselves up. The prime of life passes us by quickly.

The bread and cup of the Holy Eucharist is your body and blood, your life and dying, Lord Jesus.

It is also our body and our life. The two mingle as one – broken, messy and torn. And as you feed us each Eucharist with your ragged, broken body and split blood, so you instruct us to do the same. The world is hungry. We are hungry.

Yet you say, “Give them some food yourselves.”

We reluctantly make excuses and grab for fishes and loaves rather than realize we are the food and drink, the body and blood to be given to our hungry world one person at a time.

It is not about bread or wine or fish. It is about you and me. Me and us. Us and them and you, Lord Jesus.

Torn. Spilt. Messy. Broken. Thankful……for being fed.