June 6, Sunday

The Body and Blood of Christ

 

My Body and Blood for You

      We admire great men and women who dedicated their lives to the good of others and were even willing to die for them. This is precisely what we celebrate whenever we come together for the Eucharist. We celebrate Jesus’ life and death for us, but also his resurrection, for he is alive here among us, in his Church, in our world. But when we do what he told us to do, “Do this in memory of me,” we must also learn to give ourselves to God and to people, the way Jesus gave himself. In this Eucharist he gives us this disposition.

 

First Reading: Exodus 24:3-8

So Moses went to the people and told them everything God had said—all the rules and regulations. They all answered in unison: “Everything God said, we’ll do.”

Then Moses wrote it all down, everything God had said. He got up early the next morning and built an Altar at the foot of the mountain using twelve pillar-stones for the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he directed young Israelite men to offer Whole-Burnt-Offerings and sacrifice Peace-Offerings of bulls. Moses took half the blood and put it in bowls; the other half he threw against the Altar.

 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it as the people listened. They said, “Everything God said, we’ll do. Yes, we’ll obey.”

Moses took the rest of the blood and threw it out over the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God has made with you out of all these words I have spoken.”

 

Second Reading: Hebrews 9:11-15

Pointing to the Realities of Heaven

But when the Messiah arrived, high priest of the superior things of this new covenant, he bypassed the old tent and its trappings in this created world and went straight into heaven’s “tent”—the true Holy Place—once and for all. He also bypassed the sacrifices consisting of goat and calf blood, instead using his own blood as the price to set us free once and for all. If that animal blood and the other rituals of purification were effective in cleaning up certain matters of our religion and behaviour, think how much more the blood of Christ cleans up our whole lives, inside and out. Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.

 

Gospel: Mark 14:12-16,22-26

Traitor to the Son of Man

On the first of the Days of Unleavened Bread, the day they prepare the Passover sacrifice, his disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations so you can eat the Passover meal?”

He directed two of his disciples, “Go into the city. A man carrying a water jug will meet you. Follow him. Ask the owner of whichever house he enters, ‘The Teacher wants to know, Where is my guest room where I can eat the Passover meal with my disciples?’ He will show you a spacious second-story room, swept and ready. Prepare for us there.”

The disciples left, came to the city, found everything just as he had told them, and prepared the Passover meal.

“This Is My Body”

 In the course of their meal, having taken and blessed the bread, he broke it and gave it to them. Then he said,

Take, this is my body.

Taking the chalice, he gave it to them, thanking God, and they all drank from it. He said,

This is my blood,
God’s new covenant,
Poured out for many people.

 “I’ll not be drinking wine again until the new day when I drink it in the kingdom of God.”

 They sang a hymn and then went directly to Mount Olives.

 

Prayer
Lord our God,
you do not accept our soulless sacrifices
if we do not commit ourselves to you and each other.
We stand before you without any other sacrifice
than that of your beloved Son
who shed his blood out of love.
Fill us with his Spirit,
that we too may live for you
and for one another
with a generous, self-forgetting love
that unites all, loves all, serves all.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection
– Body and Blood of Christ

From the first moment, disciples of Jesus understood that their last Passover dinner with Jesus was not an ordinary meal. There is a sense of secrecy shadowing the narration of preparation for Jesus’ Passover meal. Not only was it a moment of farewell, but it was also there that Jesus dictated his final Will before his death. A Will often carries instructions on the future use of the property of a person, after his death. Jesus, in his final Will, dictated through the images of bread and wine, gives away all that he possessed – his blood and his body – his whole person. A Will gets legal sanctity after the death of the author of the Will. And this bread and wine shared will be a sign of the New Covenant that God was going to make with humanity.

God had entered into covenant with Israel in the past. Covenants were signed with blood to show the weightage of the commitment they are entering into. Hence, in the Old Testament covenants, the blood of the animal was used to mark the contract. But the people were unfaithful and soon broke those covenants.

Now Jesus speaks of a New Covenant. But this time, it would not be signed with the blood of an animal, but with the blood of Jesus himself. The events that have taken place during this supper would never be forgotten. The disciples would repeat the act of sharing the bread and wine as a constant reminder for them of the Will of the Master, that he is truly present with us in Body and Blood.

Today, we continue to celebrate that supper, where we repeat the words of Jesus about the bread and wine that has become a living sign of God’s love for us. In the Mass, God makes us all brothers and sisters.

The bread that is Christ and the chalice of his blood make us a community of “blood-relatives” with Christ and with each other. It creates us a new people whose only law is the service of their brothers and sisters to the point of giving their own lives as “food” to satisfy every form of human hunger. Here we meet as brothers and sisters and no one feels excluded, because we are all God’s children. And we give thanks to God because, in Jesus, God has freed us from death and sin.

Is the celebration of Mass a joyful occasion to meet the brothers and sisters? Or do I try to escape it because it is a boring and meaningless rite?

 

Video available on Youtube: Body & Blood of Christ