Brief synopsis of the readings: Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, previously known as “Corpus Christi.” In the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy we find Moses speaking to the people. They are at the end of their journey in the desert and Moses reminded them that they spent 40 years there “so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.” He reminded them that when they were hungry God fed them with manna, a food they had not seen before. Finally he said they must never forget that God liberated them from slavery in Egypt. In John’s Gospel Jesus told the crowds that he is the “living bread that came down from heaven” and whoever eats this will live forever and that this bread is “my flesh for the life of the world.” Some in the crowd asked how he could give them his own flesh to eat. Jesus responded with: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”
Did you notice that Jesus really didn’t answer the question? When asked how we could eat his flesh, Jesus doubled down and said that he is “living bread” without really explaining what that was. But some enemies of the early church used this as a way of accusing Christians of cannibalism. We can’t know if they really believed this or if this was just a way of making fun of Christians.
But when we think of Eucharist, we take it seriously and it’s really the heart of our sacramental system. Indeed it’s called the “Blessed Sacrament.” From our earliest days we didn’t simply follow a set of beliefs: were given a relationship with Jesus that was physical, and even nutritional. And it even had its roots in the Old Testament in the middle of the desert when Moses’ followers were saved from starvation by manna from heaven.
Today as we look at our history with the Eucharist, there have been noticeable changes in how we celebrate it. Some good, some bad. Most of us celebrate the fact that in 1910 Pope Pius X decreed that children as young as 7 should be able to receive; previously it was thought that children were too young to “understand” the sacrament, as if any of us could. Pius reasoned that Eucharist was more about God’s generosity than human understanding.
But along with that we’ve also seen a subtle belief that we had to somehow prove our worthiness. Though it was never an official teaching, generations of Catholics were taught that they needed to go to confession before receiving Communion. This, and other practices, concerned Pope Francis so much that he famously wrote in 2013 that Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” We don’t need full healing to receive Eucharist, it provides healing.
Given that, it may come as a surprise that in our first reading, when Moses spoke about the 40 years in the wilderness, he didn’t frame the 40 years as God’s test of our worthiness. Read it again. They were tested to see if they wanted to accept the covenant that God offered.
At first blush this may sound crazy. What starving person wouldn’t want manna from heaven, particularly after liberation from slavery? Well, there are passages where the people complained to Moses that they had it good in Egypt and were taken against their will. That wasn’t true but they never had to remain faithful to a covenant with Pharaoh and their life was easier, if not better.
The gift or Eucharist brings with it certain demands. We are called to follow the command to love one another without exception. Without regard to skin color, economic status, immigration status or sexual identity. That’s a heavy lift and we can see how some would prefer to take a pass. Frankly we find ourselves surrounded by people who create hierarchies, deciding who is better and who is worse, and claim that God follows their models. Frighteningly many of them identify as Christians and they see the Body and Blood of Christ as something reserved to themselves and those like them.
But if we believe what we read in our first reading we need to approach Eucharist only after having decided if we want what God offers us. Eucharist binds us to God but the covenant demands that it bind us to each other. Different Christian denominations have different understandings of Eucharist but we are fairly uniform in how we distribute it. It’s not left on a table for people to pick up, as if it were on a buffet table. We pass it to each other and make eye contact.
Every time we receive Eucharist we renew this covenant. When we look at each other and say or hear “The Body of Christ” we reaffirm that we are bound together in Christ. We bring our dreams, hopes and prayers for each other but we also bring our wounds and our need for ongoing healing. We are “ready to receive” not when we’ve cleaned up everything in our lives but when we acknowledge that God is not done healing us, nor is God done healing those who have hurt us.
When I was a priest I was sometimes asked if I would give communion to someone (normally a politician who had views that differed from the person I was talking to). Obviously I would not offer Eucharist with someone who didn’t share our faith but I would share with someone who approached Eucharist with an honest and sincere faith, no matter how visible their wounds were. I also felt that if, one day, I’d need stand before God and defend my decisions I’d rather be taken to task for being too generous than for being too stingy.
This is obvious but it bears repeating: Eucharist enriches us in ways that we will never fully understand but in ways we continue to celebrate. Let us offer and receive in ways that remind us of what we’ve agreed to and been given.