The Dynamic Bloodied Body

 Reading through many homilies, notes and commentaries, I find that the feast of the body and blood of Christ is referred mostly to the ‘bread’ and ‘wine’, the fruits of human labour and love, as consecrated Eucharist, to be celebrated in memory of Christ. But Jesus categorically said, “Take, this is My body” (Mk 14:22). A heart wants to warm other hearts with food and drink through nourishment! The attention is not to the chalice with wine or the paten with the host, but the 33 year old Jesus of Nazareth. Probably we have robbed of his rightful place in human redemption. This feast, done in memory of Jesus, is revolutionary. Jesus, before he dies, puts himself totally at the service of humanity – a self-gift in loving service. This explosive reality is shirked away, at a safe distance, allowing only the liturgical Eucharist to emerge. Today we fail to confront the revolutionary demands of Jesus and be challenged by him.

We play safe, we place, preserve and ‘prostrate’ before the tabernacle! We do not allow Jesus to be what He is. We have kept him closed in the monstrance through certain sentimental and egoistic piety. We have failed to be sensitive to the truth. Jesus is the content and his service is the context of the feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus. If we forget this, then there is no memorial of Jesus in the Eucharist. The Eucharist, an agape, celebrates the incarnated love of God and divinizes human love when entered into a sacred relationship with the rest of the humanity, respecting others’ rights and dignity.  It is through the context of service that the incarnated Christ assumes flesh-blood today. Jesus is present in our midst. Only then, it has economic, ecological, social, moral and spiritual consequences. Like the frontline Rights activists movement, Christianity is dynamically revolutionary. We cannot be mediocre.  Jesus intended that we ‘do’ this in ‘memory’ of him.  He washed the feet of the disciples, giving example of how to ‘do’ so. Then he said, “I have given you an example so that you also may ‘do’ what I have done for you.” Jean Vanier wrote that Jesus performed these actions with his body, just before his death. They are physical gestures of love and service. Jesus does not merely teach. He gives Himself. The body and blood “given up for many” in humble service, through presence and communion. They are self-giving actions.

Statistics show few Catholics today believe in the Eucharistic Real Presence. What about us who believe in his body and blood? Of course, everyone's circumstances are different, posed with different challenges to meet with the Creator of the universe to enjoy peace, happiness and healing. It is not about ‘Sunday obligation’. It is about becoming “partakers of the divine nature” of God (2 Pt 1:4). We human become divine. Jesus taught us to ask the Father for “our daily bread” in order to propel up divineness in us. We are encouraged to get motivated through the ‘cross’ in order to radically transform our lives and that of others. The physically crucified Christ was willing to be humiliated, beaten and bloodied, to save others. What are we willing to do for the world?

The spirit of religion is a bond of exchange between God and humanity – a covenant, an alliance – made perfect with the seal of blood. The centre of all religious rituals and functions is celebration of the faith experience. Incarnation of Christ in body and blood, is therefore an intensive and continuous exercise of faith in saving action. God feeds the hungry with ‘bread and wine’. He gives what he has and what he is. Bread is life, because bread sustains life. Bread broken and shared, forms communion. But life belongs to God. The Creator maintains life so that we may have life in abundance, through Jesus, who is the “bread of life”.  Therefore, the bloodied body of Christ, in plain terms, is God’s concern for well-being of all.

Jesus was chosen, blessed and broken to be given. We are called to become bread for the world. By living our brokenness we continue to bear fruit. We bless it, break it, and share with each other.  It is not a vague memory of a person but a life-giving presence that transforms us. We become the ‘living bread’, with lives lived for others, in flesh and blood. Teilhard de Chardin says that the gift of self-giving to others is “not the overflowing tenderness of those special, preferential love” imprinted in us for our inner growth, but a basic and real attraction concretely “be revealed which transforms the myriads of rational creatures into a single monad” - in Christ Jesus.

(Courtesy: Philip John, New Horizon Homilies, St. Paul’s, 2010)