Season of Apostles
THE FEAST
OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
MATTHEW 26:26-29
INSTITUTION OF HOLY EUCHARIST
INTRODUCTION
The church celebrates the feast of Corpus Christi
on the Thursday after the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, which is two
months after the Holy Thursday. Some dioceses postpone it to the Sunday
after the Feast of the Holy Trinity for the full participation of the
faithful. When we commemorate Holy Eucharist’s institution on Holy
Thursday, we also reenact and reflect on the washing of the feet, the
institution of the priesthood, and remembrance of the agony of Jesus in
the garden of Gethsemane. So a separate feast was necessary to give
enough focus to the Body and Blood of Christ. Our Lord asked to
celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi through the visions to Saint
Juliana in Belgium from 1208 for 20 years. The Holy See approved this
feast for Liège, Belgium in 1246 and later for the universal church in
1264.
BIBLE TEXT
(Mt 26:26) While
they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing and broke it, and
gave it to his disciples saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” (27)
Then he took a cup and gave thanks, and passed it to them saying, “Drink
from this, all of you, (28) for this is my blood, the blood of the
Covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (29)
Yes, I say to you: I will not taste the fruit of the vine from now until
the day I drink anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
INTERPRETATION
Background
Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist (Qurbana) while
he celebrated the Passover with his disciples in an upper room in
Jerusalem. The Jews sacrificed a lamb in the Temple and took its meat
home to eat as the Passover meal. Then they followed an order (Seder) of
15 steps as the procedure of Paschal feast. In the fourth step, the
family places three loaves of matzo bread in three pockets of matzo
cover. The Matzo bread is an unleavened flatbread with stripes and
piercings on it. The head of the family breaks the middle loaf of the
three Matzo bread and returns the smaller piece symbolic of the “bread
of affliction” to the pocket and keeps the larger one representing
Pesach Sacrifice in a hidden place in another cover. At the 12th
step, the head of the family asks children to find the piece of matzah
bread that he hid earlier. Once recovered, they break that into pieces
and eat saying, “This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in
Egypt” (Ex 13:3). At this point, Jesus established the Holy Eucharist
using the recovered Afikoman bread.
While Jesus and his disciples were eating the
Paschal meal, and before drinking the third cup of wine, Jesus took the
bread. This specially cooked unleavened bread symbolizes sinlessness.
Melchizedek offered bread and wine to God. He
was the priest of Salem which is Jerusalem (Gen 14:18). Jesus became the
High Priest after the order of Melchizedek (Ps 110:4). He revived
Melchizedek’s offering and replaced the animal sacrifice in the Temple
with the Holy Eucharist.
Jesus said a blessing over the unleavened
bread to transubstantiate it to his body. Breaking the bread was
symbolic of the sufferings the Israelites underwent in the past. When
Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist, it became representative of his
passion and death. Jesus broke the bread and passed the pieces to his
apostles.
Jesus calls the bread his body and not a
symbol of his body. Jesus fulfilled his promise, “I am the bread of
life. Though your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, they died. But
here you have the bread which comes down from heaven so that you may eat
of it and not die. I am the living bread which has come down from
heaven; whoever eats of this bread will live forever. The bread I shall
give is my own flesh and I will give it for the life of the world” (Jn
6:48-51).
Jesus took the third cup known as “The cup of
Redemption.” This cup had wine mixed with a little water called “the cup
of blessing” (1 Cor 10:16) because of a special blessing said over it
thanking God for the wine and food the Israelites could produce by God’s
grace. It was the principal cup which they did after the Pascal meal.
The red represented the Passover lamb’s blood marked on the doorposts of
the Israelites in Egypt when the angel of death passed over their
houses. Similarly, Christ’s blood marked on the cross saved the people.
Jesus asked his apostles to drink his “blood”
of the new covenant. The Jews could not drink any blood because it
represented the life of the person or animal. Unlike Moses sprinkling
the people with the animal blood (Ex 24:6), Jesus was giving his own
sacramental blood for his believers to drink because his covenant was
not external but internal. When a believer drinks the sacramental blood
of Jesus, he receives the life of Jesus and becomes in communion with
his life.
Jesus here used the same phrase used for the
Old Covenant that God made with Israelites through Moses at Mount Sinai
as given in Exodus 24:3-8. People agreed to all the ordinances of the
Lord when Moses came down from the mountain and reported to them. Moses
then built an altar at the foot of the mountain. The Israelites offered
burnt offerings of young bulls. Moses took half of the blood in large
bowls and the other half he splashed on the altar. He read aloud from
the book of the covenant to the people who responded, “All that the LORD
has said we shall do and obey.” Moses splashed the blood on the people,
saying, “Here is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with
you in accordance with all these words.”
Just as Moses was the mediator of the old
covenant, Jesus became the mediator of the New Covenant established at
the Last Supper and fulfilled on Calvary. After using wine for his
blood, Jesus shed his blood for humanity through the torture and
crucifixion he underwent. This was the fulfilment of the new covenant
Jeremiah prophesied (31:31-33).
After Jesus blessed the cup, he shed his
blood within hours, on the same date according to the Hebrew Calendar.
Israelites killed lambs in Egypt to save their first-born children.
Jesus let the Jews crucify him in Jerusalem to save all humanity from
spiritual death.
Jesus’ life sacrifice was to save all people.
So, all are eligible for redemption. However, each one has the freedom
to accept or reject it. “Many” will accept and benefit from it.
The animal sacrifices of the past were for
ritual and ceremonial purification. They could not take away the sins of
humanity, especially the original sin inherited from the first parents.
The bloody self-sacrifice of Jesus replaced all of them because it was
the perfect sacrifice that could take away the sins of humanity.
The Father’s kingdom is distinct from the
kingdom of the Messiah. The Kingdom of Messiah had started with Jesus’
incarnation, continued through his resurrection, ascension, the descent
of the Holy Spirit, the growth of the church, the second coming of
Christ, and culminating in Jesus presenting all the saved to his Father.
After that only, the Kingdom of the Father will take place.
Christ will drink the new spiritual wine, the
best wine reserved for the last in the Father’s kingdom. This resembles
the wedding at Cana, where Jesus gave the best wine at the end of the
banquet (Jn 2:10). Then, “many will come from east and west and sit down
with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at the feast in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt
8:11). Wine and banquet are representations of spiritual joy in heaven.
The bread of presence or Showbread was a
foreshadow of the Holy Eucharist in the tabernacles in our churches.
This consisting of 12 loaves of unleavened bread representing the 12
tribes of Israel, made of fine flour. The priests arranged them in two
piles on a table made of acacia wood and covered with pure gold. The
Israelites called them “the bread of presence” because the priests
placed them at the Lord’s presence in the Holy place of the tabernacle
and later in the Temple. The priests kept the bread always on the table
and replaced on every Sabbath day. When removed for replacement, Aaron
and his sons ate the bread in the holy place (Lev 24:5-9). Jesus pointed
to this bread of presence and declared, “I am the bread of life; whoever
comes to me shall never be hungry, and whoever believes in me shall
never be thirsty” (Jn 6:35).
The feast of the Most Precious Body and Blood
of Jesus, also known in Latin as “Corpus Christi” (The Body of Christ),
was not a separate feast from the Holy Thursday until the 13th century.
Corpus Christi feast is the celebration of the actual presence of Jesus
Christ with his body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Holy Eucharist. A
visionary nun Saint Juliana and a Eucharistic miracle made the feast
popular.
Juliana (1193-1258, 5 April) and her twin
sister Agnes became orphans at five. Augustinian nuns of Mont Cornillon
educated her in Belgium. She joined the convent at 13 and later became
superior of the convent. She had a great devotion to the Blessed
Sacrament, and she wished for a special feast of the Holy Eucharist.
When she was 16, she had a vision of the church under the appearance of
a full moon with a black spot on it. Jesus revealed to her that the full
moon stood for the ecclesiastical calendar and the black spot was the
absence of the feast of the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus asked her to
communicate to the church authorities to establish a feast of the Holy
Eucharist. The visions that started in 1208 continued for 20 years. She
shared her experience with the church authorities. The local Bishop
Robert called a synod in 1246 and ordered a feast in his diocese in the
following year. However, he died in the same year and the church
celebrated the feast the next year.
Theologians had doubt and debate during the
13th century on the real presence of the Body and the Blood of Christ in
the consecrated bread and wine. Under its influence, a German priest,
Peter of Prague, also had the same doubt. During his pilgrimage to Rome
in 1263, while he celebrated Holy Mass at the Church of Saint Christina
in Bolsena, Italy, a Eucharistic miracle happened. While Father Peter
recited the consecration prayers during the Holy Mass, blood flowed from
the host onto the altar and corporal. Father Peter reported this to the
then Pope Urban IV, who had moved from Rome to Orvieto. The pope
assigned delegates to investigate the occurrence and ordered to move the
host and the blood-stained corporal to Orvieto. The church then placed
the relics in the Cathedral of Orvieto.
Based on the visions of Saint Juliana and the
confirmation of its truth through the Eucharistic miracle at Bolsena,
Pope Urban IV established the Corpus Christi Feast by his bull
“Transiturus” on 8 September 1264. At the request of the Pope, Saint
Thomas Aquinas composed beautiful hymns for the feast.
MESSAGE
1. Let us acknowledge and thank the Lord who
provides us with material and spiritual bread that we need daily.
Without God’s support, the efforts of humans to produce food would be in
vain.
2. Let us behave well in the church where we
have the altar representing the throne of the Almighty God and the
tabernacle where we have the real presence of Jesus in the form of
consecrated bread
3. Since we take part in the Holy Mass and
receive the Holy Eucharist every Sunday or even daily, they become a
routine for us. We need to make sure we take part in it with much
preparation and maintain the sanctity of the sacrament.
4. Jesus did not give the vision of the full
moon with a black spot and reveal its interpretation to the Popes,
bishops, theologians like Saint Thomas Aquinas, or any catholic kings
but only to Juliana, a humble nun. God allowed many other apparitions
and visions of Jesus and Mary to simple and humble people or children.
Let us find value in humility and simplicity and believe in the Holy
Mysteries.