478. Solemnity of Corpus Christi (I)
Meditations no. 221 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
The Church is filled with joy at our Lordâs remaining with us in the Blessed Eucharist.
The Paschal season has finished, and now it is as though the Church looks back in order to celebrate in a special way the mystery which lies at the heart of her daily liturgy: the Holy Eucharist. The evening of Maundy Thursday, the eve of our Lordâs Passion, went by so quickly that we hardly had time to adore the great mystery of love that Jesus brought about at the Last Supper.
The weeks of our Lordâs glorious life on earth after his Resurrection are over. We have received the Holy Spirit as he promised. And now the Churchâs life is filled with the contemplation of the mystery of the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ. We join in her song of praise: Pange, lingua, gloriosi⌠Sing my tongue, the mystery of the glorious body and of the precious blood, which the king of all nations, born of the noble womb of the Virgin, has offered for the redemption of the world!
St Thomas gives the following description of the mystery: The only-begotten Son of God, wishing to enable us to share in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that by becoming man, he might make men gods.
Moreover, he turned the whole of our nature, which he assumed, to our salvation. For he offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the Cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation; and he shed his blood for our ransom and our cleansing, so that we might be redeemed from wretched captivity and cleansed from all sins.
Now in order that we might always keep the memory of this great act of love, he left his body as food and his blood as drink, to be received by the faithful under the appearances of bread and wine.
Our Father invites us to look at the joy which invades todayâs liturgy: âLet the anthem be clear and strong and full of joyâ. It is a great Christian celebration which sings about a new era: âThe old pasch is by the new replaced; the substance hath the shadow chased, and rising day dispels the nightâ.
This is a miracle of love. âThis is truly the bread for Godâs childrenâ. Jesus, the first son of the eternal Father, offers us himself as food. And the same Jesus is waiting to receive us in heaven as âhis guests, his co-heirs and his fellowsâ, for âthose who are nourished by Christ will die the earthly death of time, but they will live eternally, because Christ is life everlastingâ.
Eternal happiness begins now for the Christian who is comforted with the definitive manna of the Eucharist The old life has gone for ever. Let us leave everything behind us so that everything will be new, âour hearts, our words, and our actionsâ.
This is the Good News. News, because it speaks to us of a deep love which we could never have dreamed of. Good, because there is nothing better than uniting ourselves to God, the greatest Good of all It is Good News, because in an inexplicable way it gives us a foretaste of heaven.
The love of Jesus in the Blessed Eucharist.
Many people have sought God earnestly, yet sometimes they have taken a long time to find him. We have him close to us, within easy reach of our heart and our sight: in the Blessed Sacrament, the mystery of faith, which contains in itself the whole mystery of Godâs love for mankind.
Our Father advised us: When you come before God to pray, think about him as the Creator of all things. Then think how mankind fell, by original sin. Think about Jesus Christ, who came to earth and took flesh in the most pure womb of the ever-virgin Mary. Think of his years of hidden toil in the workshop at Nazareth. Think of the three years of his public life. Think about his Passion, and the Cross, which was the worst possible humiliation. Think about Christâs Death, and his Resurrection. Think of the get-togethers our Lord had, especially after the Resurrection, when, in multis argumentis (by many proofs), we read in Holy Scripture, he talked about all sorts of things, everything his disciples asked him⌠Think about his Ascension into heaven.
All of this is wonderful But if you consider our Lordâs life with Love, youâll see that the most wonderful thing of all is that he didnât want to leave us. He, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who assumed our mortal flesh, and became the same as us in everything except sin, with a heart beating so powerfully, has chosen to stay here to be our food.
Suppose he had stayed here as a little child: what respect and affection we would have felt for him⌠He has left himself absolutely defenseless, hidden under the sacramental species. But he is waiting and hoping for your love and mine. Doesnât the thought of it make you love him really and truly?
Love means wanting to be close, to become more like the person we love. Jesus Christ, in his love for us, his boundless charity, has gone to extremes which the human mind cannot grasp; it can only bow down in adoration. Under the appearances of bread and wine he gives himself to us totally, so that, as St Cyril of Jerusalem says, we have the same body and the same blood as he does. The Eucharist shows the absolute truth of the words: my delight is to be with the sons of men. Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is truly Emmanuel, âGod with usâ. Holy Communion, in which our Lord gives himself to us with his Body and his Blood, his Soul and his Divinity, is a wonderful foreshadowing of our final, definitive union in glory in heaven, and a pledge of eternal life. St Irenaeus tells us that the bread, fruit of the earth, receives the invocation of God over it and is then no longer bread but the Eucharist ⌠and in like manner our bodies receive the Eucharist, and are then no longer doomed to perish, but hold within them the promise of resurrection.
The Divine Office for the Feast of Corpus Christ contains a hymn to the love of Jesus Christ, by which he gives himself constantly in unlimited surrender to us and for us. By birth he makes himself manâs kin; / As Food before his guests he lies; / To death he bears manâs cross of sin; / In heaven he reigns as manâs blest prize. As we consider Jesusâ self-giving, we feel very small - overwhelmed, in the face of such great love. And we try to follow our Fatherâs advice: My children, when you are contemplating the Sacred Host exposed in the monstrance over the altar, or hidden away in the tabernacle, see how tenderly Christ loves us! I can understand it by thinking about the way I love you: if I could be far away from here at my work, and yet at the same time close to each of you, how willingly Iâd do it! But Christ really can do it. His love for us is infinitely greater than the love of all human hearts put together, and he has stayed here so that we can always stay united to his sacred Humanity; to help us, and console us, and strengthen us, so that we can be faithful.
The Sacrifice of the Altar, centre and root of our interior life.
On this feast of Corpus Christi in cities and towns throughout the world, Christians accompany our Lord in procession. Hidden in the host he moves through the streets and squares - just as he did during his earthly life - going to meet those who want to see him, making himself available to those who are not looking for him. And so, once more, he comes among his own people. How are we to respond to this call of his?
Love is repaid with love. The Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the tabernacle is an indescribable mystery, which requires faith on our part: faith which in turn expresses itself in love, in the tenderness and affection with which we adore the Blessed Sacrament. If we lack that sort of love, it is because our faith is weak. No soul who loves God could be left indifferent before the tabernacle, where Jesus Christ, perfectus Deus, perfectus Homo, true God and true Man, is really present.
Love is repaid with love. The important thing is that we should love the Mass and make it the centre of our day. If we attend Mass well, surely we are likely to think about our Lord during the rest of the day, wanting to be always in his presence, ready to work as he worked and love as he loved. And so we learn to thank our Lord for his kindness in not limiting his presence to the time of the Sacrifice of the Altar. He has decided to stay with us in the host which is reserved in the tabernacle.
Love asks for love in return: and ours must be a generous, complete response. The mystery of our Lordâs Passion, renewed in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, invites us to. make a total offering of ourselves, giving ourselves entirely. Think about the Holy Mass, our Father suggests to each of us: how we should celebrate or attend it Consider how the Angels are there. Consider that what you are doing or taking part in is something divine. Think how, on the altar, Christ is offering himself once more for you and for me. And you will earnestly desire to imitate him in his humility, in the way he empties himself completely in the Host; and you will be filled with thanksgiving and adoration, desires of reparation, and petitions. You will offer yourself up, your arms outstretched, as another Christ, ipse Christus (Christ himself), ready to be nailed to the sweet wood of the Cross for love of souls.
In union with our Blessed Lady we will learn how to take full part in the mystery of the Altar, so that our whole life may be a continuation of our last Mass and a preparation for the next one.