Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Solemnity of Corpus Christ is a very important feast for the Church, and I am very happy to celebrate it with you today. The Lord becomes one with us when we receive the Eucharist so that no one is alone. It is a wonderful gift to be able to receive Jesus Christ in person and not to live our faith on the couch watching the Mass on the TV or the computer. Faith is to go out of ourselves and to be with others. This requires that you leave your home, your comfort and be with your community to listen to the Word and above all to receive communion which is Christ, in his body and his blood. We say this is the feast of Corpus Christi, but it is really the feast of his body and his blood.
This feast came about because Martin Luther and others who said that the Eucharist is not really Christ, but only represents him. So in response to this the Church gave more important to the body and blood of Christ by making processions, exposition and benediction to make this point: Christ is truly present. But the Body and Blood of Christ is much more than these rites or celebrations. The truth is that the Body of Christ is under the appearance of bread and wine, why? So, you can eat and drink them. It is good to expose Jesus Christ in a monstrance and in a procession and exposition to pray before his physical presence. However, it is most important that you receive his Body and Blood. The bread from heaven who has come down from heaven and whoever eats of this bread will live forever. If you don’t eat this bread, you will not live forever.
This is fundamental since to eat Our Lord because he wants to feed us, nourish us, protect us with himself. You cannot do better than this. He gives us the fullness of himself. First, he lowers himself by becoming man and then even more so by taking on the appearance of bread and wine, very common and simple things. He does this so he can enter you and become one with you.
When you receive the host it becomes part of you. Your body assimilates it and is nourished by it. He remains in your cells so even physically you become one with him. Your cells are being filled by the Lord and also by the blood of Christ. What a pity it was for priests to say for many centuries – take and drink all of you, and then he was the only one who drank! When you receive the blood of Christ, where does it go? It goes directly into your blood; how profound is this? Even before it goes to the stomach, it is absorbed in the blood and circulates through your veins and arteries, goes through your heart, brain and joints. Your blood is co-mingled with the blood of Christ. How amazing is this and who can show us love greater than this? Christ’s blood and yours are co-mingled.
Even if we are not able to understand the mystery of Christ becoming man and has this immense power in the Eucharist, it touches us deeply. You are the body of Christ. This feast is to remind you that you are called to be the body of Christ. If the husband doesn’t come to church and does not eat the body of Christ, he has no life in him. If you are the body of Christ for him, then your husband has a chance, and the same with your kids. Allow them to cling to you if they don’t believe in anything, how else can you save them? Let yourself be eaten up. How will the world be saved? Allow yourself to be killed. You are the Body of Christ.
Weren’t the martyrs aware of this reality? That is why they died so full of joy. They knew that they would immediately be saints. They knew that a martyr goes directly to heaven. What does a martyr show with his martyrdom? That Christ is in them!! We are called to be like a monstrance, which is something so beautiful. You might even say it is too beautiful. The important thing is what it carries, which is Christ. It can be made of metal or wood or gold, but it should not be cheap, dusty or dirty. What is important is what is inside of the monstrance.
You and I are called to be that monstrance, no matter what is inside of us. Christ wants to dwell in you, to show the world that he is risen and alive and he has the power to make himself present in the bread. The procession will carry the body of Christ. You will also make a procession when you go to work tomorrow morning, where all the workers can see that you have Christ in you. You are able to bring Christ to the office or home. A Christian always carries Christ. This is the real procession. This is the meaning of today’s feast.
The words that we hear in the gospel and in the Mass come directly from the Last Supper: he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, take it, ‘This is my body’ and similar words for the blood. The bread, which is Christ, is broken, and given to the other. So, for a Christian to give yourself, is to break yourself for the other. Love is to give yourself! To break the other is not to love them. Those who don’t donate themselves are not loving their spouse or their children. If you don’t teach your child how to suffer or to bear difficulties with patience, you don’t love them.
In the primitive Church, a pelican was the symbol of Christ. When there was a lack of food for pelicans, the mother would peck at her chest and draw blood in order to give it to their offspring, so they don’t die. They are like Christ who gives himself to us today and always so that we don’t die. This feast invites us to reflect on this gift of our Lord and who he is for us. Perhaps we are eating other bread that is vanity, pride, sexuality, etc. All of them will die eventually, but Christ wants us to live forever.