The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ C (2013)
The first reading and the psalm
are the only mentions in the Old Testament
of the mysterious figure of Melchizedek.
In the first reading,
he offers bread and wine,
he blessed Abraham
– while he still had his original name of Abram –
he received Abraham’s allegiance through tithes..
Abraham was the father of the people of Israel, the chosen people.
This made Melchizedek high status,
higher than the priests of Israel,
who had Abraham as their father.
That high status is reflected in the line from the psalm,
which looks forward to an eternal priest
You are a priest for ever, a priest like Melchizedek of old.
In the New Testament,
the letter to the Hebrews, which we do not hear today,
is unequivocal in identifying Jesus
as the fulfilment of the hope expressed in the psalm.
Jesus is the eternal priest
who offers himself on Calvary,
who pours blessings on the whole world,
who receives our allegiance.
This priesthood of Jesus is brought out in the second reading.
There,
Paul is doing more than just saying what happened at the Last Supper.
He wants to stress for the Corinthians, and now for us,
what it means to obey the Lord’s command to
Do this as a memorial of me
He reminds them, and us, of Jesus’ words
over the broken bread and the cup:
This is my body, which is for you
This cup is the new covenant in my blood
Body broken,
life-blood separated from the body
for us,
for the forming of a new relationship, a new covenant,
between human beings and God.
Then, just in case the words don’t speak for themselves,
Paul explains
Until the Lord comes, therefore,
every time you eat this bread and drink this cup,
you are proclaiming his death
As we gather round the altar
we are, sacramentally, gathering round Calvary,
the cross is the altar on which Christ, the priest,
offers his broken body and pours out his blood.
He does this, once and for all, on Calvary.
In the Mass we are sacramentally,
that is, through a sign guaranteed to be effective,
joined to that offering on Calvary.
While sacramentally joining us to the offering on Calvary,
Jesus assures us he is really present:
This is my body....This is my blood
present under the appearance of bread and wine,
present under the appearance of food and drink,
given to us as nourishment
that we may be drawn into communion
with his offering on Calvary, with his self-sacrificing love:
every time you eat this bread and drink this cup,
you are proclaiming his death
In this eating and drinking, like the people in the Gospel,
we are fed together.
Our Communion with Jesus is not solitary but shared,
Jesus feeds us together
that we may together be his presence in the world –
people nourished by love
to be loving.
Our ‘Amen’ as we receive Communion is a profound prayer.
It seems like an individual prayer, but it isn’t.
In it, we are caught up and carried along by the faith of the Church.
In it the Church expresses
faith in the real presence of the Lord,
faith in the power of his death,
faith that, by God’s power, we truly become Christ in the world.
Vatican II’s document on the Church summarises all this
by teaching that,
the Eucharistic sacrifice (which) is the fount and apex
or, in another translation,
the source and summit of the whole Christian life.
Our Christian life flows out from Mass,
we become what we receive,
we take Jesus out into the world.
Our Christian life reaches its height at Mass,
as we are privileged to offer ourselves with Jesus
associating ourselves with His selfless sacrifice.
Pope Francis has asked Catholics across the world to join him
in a time of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament today
as part of the Year of Faith.
This is a chance to spend some time in personal prayer,
dwelling on the greatness of the gift of the Mass
and giving special thanks for it.
Here we will do this at 4pm.
Please do consider coming.
And, in this Mass,
let us all strive to give our full attention to the Eucharistic prayer
and let us approach Holy Communion
with a renewed sense of wonder and reverence.