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Letters Feast of Corpus
Christi |
The Catholic Telegraph
June 23, 2000The feast of Corpus Christi is not an ancient feast in the Church’s calendar. It grew up gradually in the Middle Ages, in part because of increased devotion to the Real Presence of Christ in the reserved Eucharistic species, in part because of a concern that the liturgy of Holy Thursday could not give adequate attention to the Holy Eucharist because of the other demands for attention made by Holy Week.
In the universal calendar of the Church, the feast of Corpus Christi is a holy day of obligation and is observed on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Here in the United States it has never been a day of obligation. Yet Church authorities thought it deserved more attention than it received as a mere weekday observance. So in 1969 the Holy See determined that, in places where the feast was not a holy day of obligation, it was to be observed on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday. The result is that now more American Catholics know and celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi. Of course its observance on Sunday also postpones for one more week the return to the Sundays in Ordinary Time and the continuation of our reading of Second Corinthians.
The Holy Eucharist is both sacrament and sacrifice. Like all the sacraments, it is an encounter with the risen Christ in which He strengthens and directs us. But it is also the re-enactment, the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ, of Christ’s gift of Himself to the Father at the culmination of His life, a once-and-for-all act of submission and generosity that brought salvation to all of humankind.
Our second reading speaks of the sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist. It is from the Letter to the Hebrews. This book of the New Testament is addressed to Jewish converts to Christianity who were experiencing difficulty and doubt in their faith and who were nostalgic for the Jewish rituals they had grown up with. In order to offer them encouragement, the author of Hebrews writes of the superiority of Christ and His priesthood to what they had known before. In this Sunday’s passage the author deals with the superiority of Jesus’ sacrifice to the sacrifices of the Jerusalem temple.
He portrays Christ as the new high priest, replacing the Jewish high priest. He points out that Jesus presented His sacrifice not in a man-made sanctuary but in the inner chambers of heaven itself. His sacrifice of Himself is so effective that it does not need to be repeated as did the sacrifices of the Old Law. His sacrifice did not consist in the blood of animals, which merely symbolized human self-gift and could only bring about ritual purification. Jesus’ sacrifice consisted in His own blood, His own life freely offered as part of His mission. This offering reversed the history of human self-centeredness and sinfulness and brought humanity into a new posture of interior cleanness. Human beings were now fit to offer appropriate worship to God. This sacrifice of Jesus made up for all the sins of the past and oriented the future humankind to a sharing in the intimate life of God.
The celebration of the Eucharist in our churches is a re-enactment of the self-sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. It does not constitute a new sacrifice. Jesus doesn’t suffer again. But the once-and-for-all gift of Himself that Jesus made through the offering of His physical body and blood on Calvary is offered again under the appearances of bread and wine. The purpose of this offering is not to make up for any deficiency in the original sacrifice, as if Christ’s death has to be repeated over and over in order to keep the Father satisfied. The purpose of the weekly - and daily - offering of Christ in the Eucharistic sacrifice is to provide us with an opportunity to be part of His self-giving, to direct His self-sacrifice to the needs of our own particular human context. We are thus enabled to join with Christ in offering honor and glory to the Father through His gift of Himself. His offering becomes our offering.
This is why active participation in the Eucharistic sacrifice is so important. When we go to Mass, it isn’t merely to have a chance to receive Holy Communion. It isn’t to be a spectator as Christ offers Himself to His heavenly Father. Our presence at Mass is an opportunity for us to be part of Jesus’ sacrifice, to give ourselves in union with Him in reparation for our sins and the sins of all humankind. When we sing and pray and respond together in the various parts of the Mass, we join in offering praise and thanksgiving to God, and the praise and thanksgiving we offer is not just ours but Christ’s as well.
At the end of the eucharistic prayer at every Mass the Christian community gives its solemn "Amen" to the priest’s proclamation that, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is given to the Father "through Him, with Him, in Him." As participants in the Eucharistic celebration we are part of the gift. We are part of the giving.
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Conversation Questions
What aspects of the Holy Eucharist do I find must beneficial?
What does it mean to me to unite myself with the self-sacrifice of Christ?
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