Feast of Corpus Christi: Remembering the Gift of All Creation

Lectionary Readings:

• Genesis 14:18-20. The Old Testament Priest and King Melchizedek offer’s a sacrifice of bread and wine to the God of Abram. This is the only recorded use of bread and wine sacrifice in the Hebrew Scripture.
• 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. Paul recounts the last supper and the words that Jesus spoke in installing the sacrament of Holy Eucharist.
• Luke 9:11-17. Luke’s account of the feeding of the five thousand. The symbolism of communion is demonstrated in the in the act of feeding the multitude who hunger spiritually and physically.

 Thoughts for Your Consideration: By Fr. Stephen Dunn, CP

When you think of the crowds of people pictured for us in today’s Gospel, do you wonder if their outlook on life changed because of the miraculous event?   Or do you think they simply enjoyed the abundance of food that staved off their hunger there on the hillside?  If, as was very likely, they were poor, the bread and the fish were a step up on their normal diet, so even on that account, this was quite a feast.  Chances are that after an initial sense of wonder about it all, the event did not greatly change their way of life. But it had that potential, which is why the Evangelists recalled it in their writings, and why we are asked to consider it in this light today. 

The liturgy today is implying that even our richest gifts can become too familiar, so it is a good idea to place them at the center of our attention, to commemorate them.  That is especially true as we celebrate the Solemn Commemoration of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Scripturally, we remember it’s foreshadowing in the offering of the priest Melchizedek, and with St. Paul, we momentarily strip away all the things two millennia of devotion have added to the celebration of Eucharist, and re-describe it in its simplest form.  And most significantly, we allow the Gospel story to put it in the context of a response to an ordinary human need — hunger – that, by exceeding all our expectations, challenges us to think of the Divine generosity we experience each day.  

Years ago, an artist, Sara Rubin, cast an image of the Earth on a clay tablet, surrounded by the words: “This is My Body, This is My Blood”.  It was meant as a gift to a Canadian Passionist Center that celebrated the work of Thomas Berry in ecological spirituality.  Unfortunately, the tablet cracked in the furnace, so she cast another to present to us.  However, we chose the first one … how perfectly it illustrated Fr. Berry’s expression: the Passion of the Earth!

What could be more lush, more lavish, more extravagant than the fruitfulness, abundance and generativity of the Earth?  In choosing to establish the most common and life-giving of the Earth’s gifts, bread and wine, as the tangible elements that would sustain his presence within the faith community over the ages, Jesus was affirming the marvelous gift of all creation, while reinforcing it with the yet more marvelous gift of saving Divine presence.

As one commentator has remarked, we need Jesus’ words to reveal his gift: “This is my Body that is for you … Do this in remembrance of me”.  But we don’t understand the fullness of the gift if we forget that it is more than the words. We have the tactile, the everyday reality of the bread and wine, without which the words would not find their fulfillment.  This is not a “concession” to our bodiliness, but a reminder of its sacredness, of the sacredness of Creation, of the Earth, of bread, of wine. 

And yet, the significance of the crack, the scar, across the image of the Earth is clear.  It can be perceived in the gushing of oil on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, which is all too quickly killing off the food of other creatures in the sea and in the marshes, or in the alarming numbers who die daily from malnutrition or starvation.  Statistically, it is claimed that by the end of this day of commemorating the Body and Blood of Christ, more than 60,000 people will die of hunger, most of them children.   Such horrendous starvation is brought on just as effectively by deforestation as by warfare.   Recognizing the Passion of the Earth should lead us to yearn to pay attention to the miracle of the Earth’s abundance demonstrated in today’s Gospel to regain the sense of the sacredness of the Earth that we have lost.  We need it so much more urgently than those in the Gospel story.  That is the Gospel’s life-changing possibility.

To be aware of the saving presence of Christ to us in the bread and wine, we need to want to feel nourished by the bread and savor the uplifting taste of the wine, to appreciate the generosity of the gift, otherwise we are, in effect, rejecting the authenticity of the gift we commemorate today, of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

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