Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ
Dt 8:2-3,14-16; 1Cor 10:16-17; Jn 6:51-58
June 14, 2020

There are two feasts each year that honor the Eucharist in a special way, Holy Thursday, and the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ that we celebrate today. Holy Thursday is a time to remember Jesus’ initiation of the Eucharist and is also the traditional day for recalling the origins of the priesthood.

Today’s feast of the Body and Blood of Christ comes from a very different background. It was established in the thirteenth century, at a time when a great distance had developed between the ordinary people and the Eucharist. In earlier times, people had a very close and intimate relationship with this sacrament. Heads of households would even carry some fragments of the Eucharist home for consumption by family members during the week. By the thirteenth century, all that had been forgotten. The Eucharist had become a sacred and awesome mystery, something to be approached with reverence (awe) and trembling, and then only rarely, because of human sinfulness and unworthiness. The sacrament of the Eucharist was something to be looked at and adored from a distance, a divine miracle come down from heaven.

People would run from church to church to see the Eucharistic host being elevated at the consecration of the Mass, believing that they would benefit in some special way from its miraculous powers. The Church finally had to legislate that people must receive Holy Communion at least once a year, because many had stopped receiving the Eucharist altogether, such was their reverence and awe of it.

During the times of plague, the Eucharist was carried solemnly through the streets in a monstrance to ward off evil spirits. Even today in some countries, public processions with the Eucharist are held in honor of today’s feast.

The picture of the first Eucharist that emerges from the Last Supper Gospel accounts is in sharp contrast to these later developments. The Passover meal Jesus celebrated that night with his friends was an intimate meal. This meal expressed mutual fellowship and support, a strengthening of bonds between them, nourishment, service, and intimate love. It served to confirm their identity as Jesus’ friends and disciples at that moment of transition when he was about to leave them, because it would be up to them to carry on after he was gone.

We might ask ourselves which of these traditions has had the most influence on our own Eucharistic spirituality.

Perhaps it is a little of both. Certainly, we can see the influence of both these traditions in our celebration of the Eucharist.

Today the priest at the altar faces the people, a development that represents an effort to bring the people closer to the celebration; then, there is the tabernacle, closed and mysterious.

The Mass for today’s feast is closer to the Holy Thursday tradition of meal and community than to the thirteenth century reverence, awe, and mystery of the Eucharist. The reading we heard from the from the Book of Deuteronomy refers to the manna that nourished the People of Israel in the desert. St. Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians emphasizes the unity of all those who share the one Eucharistic bread (loaf), while the Gospel tells us of Jesus’ promise to feed his followers with his life-giving body and blood.

Throughout these readings there is the constant theme of God’s nourishing his people within a context of closeness and intimacy. That same blessing is being extended to us on this Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. God wants to give us food for our journey, to bring us together in a close unity that will powerfully witness his love to the world, and to make us joyful with the assurance that this banquet will continue into eternity.

- Fr. Stephen Lattner, O.S.B.