Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ

 The best way, I think, to sum up this feast is that it reminds us that the Holy Eucharist is what the Church says it is. When we come forward o receive Holy Communion we are told: "The Body of Christ" and "The Blood of Christ." To this we affirm a personal "Amen" which echoes the Great Amen we make at the conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer. Furthermore, I hold that this feast needs to be seen in tandem with the Feast of the Word of God which recently was promulgated for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. Since the Mass is comprised of the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist, in one unified celebration, the two are necessarily linked. In the former we are told: "the Gospel of the Lord" to which we reply "Thanks be to God." In that we affirm that the words spoken are not simple literature but the living Word inspired by the Holy Spirit to feed us with the truth about God. Likewise, the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist are no longer that but become something different. That process is fittingly called, according to the Fathers of the Council of Trent, "transubstantiation." The entire eucharistic celebration, therefore, is the deployment of tangible elements transformed by God and used by Him to mediate his presence and life to us. This has implications not just for us who are present to the celebration but for the whole world. In the gospel for today we hear: "And taking the five loaves and two fish, he (Jesus) looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd." (Lk 9: 16) Like the disciples on that day we are called to cooperate with Jesus in feeding the world, not just with food and drink for sustenance, but also with the sacrament of his Sacred Body and Precious Blood which is food for eternal life.