Watching television the other day, not something I spend much time on frankly, I was once again struck by a financial appeal on behalf of hungry and starving children overseas. Between the voiceover and the background music, the affect was total – how can you refuse to send a donation? We’ve all been hungry at times. But seeing bloated bellies, crying faces and skeletal children walking about or lying on the ground never fails to move us. And if such a scene doesn’t, well check your compassion level.
Hunger is real and seems to be a never ending concern. Various organizations, faith based and otherwise, works tirelessly to alleviate such suffering. Hunger, however, may come in a variety of forms, spiritual as well as physical. We may have full stomachs but empty souls and spirits.
This weekend the Church celebrates the beautiful Feast of Corpus Christi – the Body of Christ. This spiritual but real food, Christ himself among us, who sustains us on our pilgrim way, becomes for us, hungry and helpless without him, a source of nourishment, healing, and forgiveness.
This feast of the Eucharist is singular in its history but different in tone than the bitter-sweet events recalled on Holy Thursday. The Feast of Corpus Christi finds its beginning through a mysterious Eucharistic miracle known as the miracle of Bolsena in Italy. In 1263 a German priest, Peter of Prague, held doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
However, those doubts disappeared when during a Mass Fr. Peter celebrated, the Host he consecrated began to bleed. The blood dripped on to the corporal beneath the chalice and on to the floor. He rushed the Host to Pope Urban IV who was staying not far away in Orvieto. Not long after this event, the Pope established the Feast of Corpus Christi to reverence Christ in the Eucharist and to mark this miraculous event. The blood stained corporal is encased in protective glass above the altar at the Cathedral of Orvieto, Italy. I had the great privilege of celebrating Mass with a pilgrim group at that altar about two years ago. But, the Church does not over sensationalize such things. The corporal is visible above the altar but little is there to draw much attention to it.
Does this imply we Catholics are in to bleeding hosts? Such stories both confirm the critic’s doubts and support the faith of the believer. We have to trust the wisdom of the Church and its historical records for, with God all things are possible. The issue here is faith. But, this Eucharistic feast is not about bleeding hosts. Rather, it is a moment for us to celebrate who we are as a Eucharistic people. While the origins of the Feast are miraculous, the implications of the Eucharist are many.
This Sunday’s Gospel tells it all in the feeding of more than 5,000 followers of Jesus who are hungry for his word and weakened with physical hunger and thirst. Likely no bloated stomachs or skeletal children but certainly a hungry crowd.
In Luke 9: 11-17, Jesus has been hard at work as preacher and healer. He’s gathered outside with his Apostles and this enormous crowd, who, as the sun begins to set, are hungry and helpless - no food for them. The ever practical Apostles suggest they be dismissed to their various “villages and farms” to “find lodging and provisions.”
Jesus suggests a more hospitable idea be offered to this vast crowd – “Give them some food yourselves.” Right – with five loaves of bread and two fish? Luke tells us, “the men there numbered about five thousand,” that’s not counting woman and children so do the math and you can likely come up with over ten thousand hungry souls. Jesus does not dismiss the crowd but changes the scene – “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty,” he says to his disciples.
As the drama builds, Jesus takes the meager food, barely enough for one or two, and “. . . looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd . . .” Blessed, broken, and distributed. Do you hear the echo of our Mass? From simple bread and fish, in simple unleavened bread and a cup of wine, comes nourishment in abundance, extravagance, and overwhelming plenty! For, “They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.” (Lk 9: 17). Can you imagine the reaction of the Apostles?
The early Christian community knew Christ was among them as a source of nourishment and plenty. They knew this food would sustain them in their most vulnerable of conditions. It became, and remains so for us, the sacramental sign of our unity around the Lord’s altar. We see the Church visible and gathered before us in all its diversity. We are the hungry crowd on that hillside in Galilee about to be fed with God’s word and life. The priest stands before the congregation in Persona Christi (the person of Christ).
How beautiful and rich is this image of thousands satisfied with meager food. But, this was not the Holy Eucharist – it was a fore shadow. The Eucharist is like this – but far more; it is deeply spiritual and mysterious, not a symbol but a substance, Christ among us.
St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians for this Mass, 1 Cor 11: 23-26, verifies the source of the Eucharist: “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread . . . broke it and said. ‘This is my body’ . . . in the same way with the cup . . . ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood’ . . . Do this in remembrance of me’ . . .”
From the divine mind and heart of God in Christ, through his human hands, to our hands, to our lives – in perpetual remembrance of his passion, death, resurrection – the salvation event is forever present in the Mass, until he comes again at the end of all time as we know it.
You might imagine an alternative Christian perspective, the “altar call” of our Protestant brethren. When one is ready to accept “Jesus as your personal savior,” they stand, approach the front and confirm their belief in Christ. Don’t we do the same as we receive Our Lord in communion? The altar stands in front, you approach, you hear, “Body of Christ” and “Blood of Christ,” and you say “Amen!” I believe in Jesus as Lord of my life and ever present in this Eucharist. It’s a kind of Catholic altar call but we stand before mystery and true presence.
So much can be said about this great sacrament. We’ve heard stories about priests imprisoned in China, Vietnam, the former Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, who were forced to secretly celebrate the Mass in situations where to do so publicly would have been a death sentence: in death camps, underground in the ancient catacombs outside Rome, in communist prisons, quietly in homes endangering their lives if caught because Churches had been closed. Such stories should move us with hearts of gratitude for our religious freedom. How fortunate we are indeed to have such heroic models who sacrificed themselves to offer the ultimate sacrifice of the Mass.
Finally, Jesus told his Apostles, “Give them some food yourselves.” The Church is dismissed at the end of Mass, “Go, to love and serve the Lord.” And, as we will hear next year in the new English translation of our liturgy, “Go, glorifying the Lord by your lives.”
Therein lies the fundamental implication of the Christ we have received – to love and serve in his name is to be the presence of Christ in the world.
"When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim you death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory."
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