 |
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati Main Page || The Catholic Telegraph || Live Letters index |
Live
Letters Solemnity of the
Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ |
The Catholic Telegraph
May 31, 2002Like the feast of the Holy Trinity, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ is not an ancient feast in the Church. It only goes back to the time of Urban IV who established this liturgical observance for the universal Church in 1264. (Thus this feast of Corpus Christi is about seventy years older than the feast of the Holy Trinity.) Urban IV was responding to some visions and miracles connected with the Eucharist that seemed to call for greater attention from the Church to the sacrament of the altar.
Our live letter for this feast comes from First Corinthians. In the section of First Corinthians from which our reading is taken, Paul is dealing with the question of idol meats. Was it appropriate for Christian believers to take part in banquets in which the meat came from animals that had been sacrificed in pagan temples? The answer is yes and no. On the one hand, the pagan gods do not really exist, so what has been offered to them is no different than if it had not been offered to them. On the other hand, less sophisticated believers could be confused to see their brother or sister apparently partaking in pagan celebrations. They might be led to think that it was acceptable to worship these pagan gods. In addition to that, pagan gods are often stand-ins for demons and getting involved even remotely with pagan cults could open the door to the powers of evil in the lives of Christians.
In our reading, Paul uses the Christians’ experience of the Eucharist to make a point about their need to be cautious about involvement with pagan religious practices.
He reminds them that, when they share in the Eucharist, they become participants in the body and blood of Christ. They are given a share in the life of Christ. Likewise, because the Eucharistic bread is one, all those who partake of it share in one body. They are made one in the one body of Christ.
Paul’s main point here is that there is a parallel between the Eucharist and other sacrifices. Sacrifices establish a communion. If you take part even in the marginal formalities of a pagan sacrifice, you run the risk of establishing communion with the demonic pagan gods, as well as with the pagan believers who form the pagan community.
Paul is talking about a particular pastoral problem of his time, but what he says is still of significance to us today. He reminds us that the Eucharist is about unity. The unity it expresses and brings about is both vertical and horizontal. Sharing in the Eucharist makes us one with Christ, but also one with all those with whom we share Christ’s life.
It’s important for us to be aware of the unity that is called for and provided by the Eucharist, because the temptations we face are not all that different from those the Corinthians faced.
First of all there are the demonic pagan gods. We may not worry much about Jupiter and Venus, but we are nonetheless threatened by demonic forces which are hostile to our Christian beliefs and priorities. In many different ways our world tries to teach us that self-fulfillment is what’s really important, that sex is an entertainment, that every desire should find immediate attainment, that the value of human life is determined by its convenience, that our worth depends on our possessions and our individual accomplishments. These are all pagan ideas. We need to stay in constant touch with the Lord Jesus in order to keep these anti-christian energies from getting into our souls.
We also face temptations to horizontal disunity. There are the temptations to undermine the Church by buying into the values of the pagan community around us, but there are also temptations to disunity within the context of the Church itself. The issue here is not matters of taste and opinion and personal judgement. There will always be differences over whether the church thermostat is set too high or too low, over whether the school principal’s contract should be renewed or not. These are matters that mature people can disagree on and still remain friends. What is dangerous to the Church is the kind of difference that involves personal judgement and rejection. "How can those people love Christ if they are not deeply involved with the latest social protest movement?" "Those people can’t possibly believe in the real presence if they want to move the tabernacle." "Nobody can really be a good Catholic unless he or she thinks exactly as I do."
Shortly before his death, Cardinal Bernardin established the Catholic Common Ground Initiative. This organization is dedicated to helping people speak and listen respectfully to one another in the context of the Church community, to bringing those of different viewpoints together in the context of their common Catholic faith. The criticism and, indeed, hostility that was addressed to the cardinal’s undertaking was disappointing in a community that claims to express unity in Christ.
We need the Eucharist to maintain our identity as individuals and as community. We need the Eucharist to foster and nourish our unity with Christ and our unity with one another.
###
Conversation Questions.
What contemporary "demons" are most appealing to me?
How does my participation in the Eucharist strengthen the unity of the Church?
###
Main Page
|| The Catholic Telegraph || Live Letters index
Copyright © 2002 Archdiocese of Cincinnati.