Solemnity of Corpus Christi B
Thursday, May 30, 2024. Holy Sepulcher
Ex 24:3-8; Heb 9:11-15; Mk 14:12-16.22-26
Beloved, may the Lord give you peace!
Today we celebrate Corpus Christi. It is a solemnity that was introduced in the Middle Ages with the Transiturus bull of Urban IV to remind us that the Church is founded on the Eucharist. The first redaction of the bull introducing this feast was addressed by Pope Urban IV to the Patriarch of Jerusalem on August 11, 1264 and was linked to the new office of St. Thomas Aquinas. It preceded the second drafting of the bull, which extended the feast of Corpus Christi to the entire Catholic Church.
It was a difficult time in which the Real Presence, the very meaning of the Eucharist, was called into question. A recurring temptation that returns periodically and in various forms to the life of our communities. Even today, we may be tempted to reduce the Eucharist to a social moment, to a community meeting. It is in fact a meeting of the community, but a community that gathers and finds unity around the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection. The Eucharist is a celebration of praise to God; it is a participation in the heavenly banquet. The God who becomes flesh and gives us life remains with us in this special form of incarnation, in the heavenly Bread that nourishes our hunger for life. There is no community without the Eucharist. What is more, the Eucharist forms the community. The Eucharist is the starting point of community life. From it we draw the strength to give ourselves to one another. In the celebration of Christ's sacrifice for the life of the world, the sacrifice of each individual also gains significance. There, in the celebration, our eyes are opened to see a new heaven and a new earth, to learn the style of God, which consists of giving our lives for one another and loving one another.
Jesus promised that there would never be a lack of this food; it is a gift from God: "It is my Father who gives you the Bread from heaven, the true bread." (John 6:32). God is Father, and a father never leaves his children without bread.
Man has often been faced with the choice of whether to trust the Father or not, whether to wait for the Father's bread or try to get it himself. The first sin arose when Adam and Eve preferred to feed themselves rather than nurture their relationship with their Creator. And often the quarrel between siblings in every age is also due to this very question: Is there bread for all in the father's house?
The Eucharist is a school of trust, because trust is already a way of giving ourselves to others, giving them space and placing them at the center of our attention. In a certain sense, trust is a Eucharistic act.
How much we in the Holy Land need this special Eucharist in order to trust one another! We live in a time when hunger has become a real, close problem for many, one that not only affects populations far away from us, but has now penetrated our homes and families. But even more than physical hunger, we hunger for trust. We need to regain the ability to look at others with love and without fear. We hunger for life and dignity.
Where can we get this ability from, how can we quench this hunger that grips us?
The answer to this question can be found in today's Gospel (Mark 14:12-16,22-26), the account of Jesus' Last Supper with his own.
Jesus takes the bread and first of all blesses the Father, because he recognizes that this bread is a gift.
The bread reminds Him that the Father is faithful and never ceases to give life.
But then, after the blessing, Jesus does not keep the bread for himself, he does not eat it alone, but shares it with his own so that all may be filled and all may experience that the Father nourishes.
However, there is a novelty that makes this gesture unique. Jesus accompanies this gesture with a word that gives new meaning to this bread, saying that this bread is his body to be offered on the altar of the cross (Mark 14: 22). The bread with which God feeds his people is Jesus himself.
He is the answer to our need for trust, life, love and acceptance: Jesus.
In the first reading, we heard a passage from the book of Exodus that contains a passage that has become famous: "What the Lord has said, we will do and listen" (Exodus 24:7). What was said there seems to be a flaw in logic: first we will do it and then we will hear it, i.e. we will understand it, whereas according to logic it should be the other way around. This is the response of the people of Israel in the desert of Sinai to Moses after hearing the reading from the Book of the Law. The people may not have understood everything that was proclaimed to them, but they trust and say that they will nevertheless do what they have been told because they trust God. If they do this, they will gradually understand. In the Gospel, Peter says something similar: "We have caught nothing, but at your word I will cast the nets" (Luke 5:5).
Today we are here to renew our trust in God the Father. To tell Him that there are many things today that we do not understand. That we do not know how to decipher what is happening around us, that we too are confused and hurt by so much hatred, pain and fear, by the smell of death around us. But we are also here to say that on His Word we will continue to cast our nets, that we will continue to "do and then listen" At his word we will continue to give ourselves, to give our lives, to offer what little we have and to make our own the longing for life that Christ has left us in the sign of bread and wine, in all circumstances, always, trusting and relying on Him.
We will offer the little that we are, limp and battered, our lives full of limitations, full of sins, always lacking something. But it is precisely this life that Jesus needs so that he can offer it to the Father.
Today we want to bring Jesus our whole life and leave nothing out, because everything we have brought to the Lord will be saved, for sure. He will take it into his hands and offer it to the Father to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
The Eucharist is not just a moment in Jesus' life, any more than it is in ours: it is above all a style. Jesus lived the Eucharist throughout his life, confidently taking into his hands every experience of life, every joy and every sorrow that the people he met brought Him. And he always gave everything back to the Father.
This is what the Church is called to do today, this is what our community in the Holy Land must accomplish: to take all these experiences of pain, suffering, fear and mistrust that surround us and unite them with our desire for life, love, sharing and giving, so that the Lord Jesus can transform them into an offering to the Father.
So let us rise from this special place, from the Holy Sepulcher, where the table of heavenly Bread is also the place of Jesus' death and resurrection, to go forth, in the Holy Land and throughout the world, to break the bread of life and love with whomever we meet along the way.
A happy feast to all!
