SOLEMNITY OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

CORPUS CHRISTI
Today’s Solemnity is a celebration of the gift of the Eucharist “the source and summit of the Christian life.” “The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.” The traditional day for this celebration is the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. The reason Thursday is chosen is because Jesus celebrated the Last Supper on the Thursday before he died when, according to the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), he shared the gift of himself with his disciples during the Passover meal. Many local churches have moved the celebration to the Sunday after Trinity Sunday.
The Passover meal or Seder meal is the meal celebrating the Jewish exodus from slavery in Egypt. This meal has great and profound religious meaning in the Jewish community. It recalls their exodus from slavery of Egypt. Hence this meal expressed the heart of the faith of Israel. However, in the midst of the meal Jesus changes its meaning. The bread was no longer the bread of exodus; rather Jesus said this is my body. And the wine will no longer recall the old covenant but now a new covenant would be formed with God and Jesus would be its mediator.
The Eucharist is a reality that one cannot adequately explain in a single aspect: it is Sacrifice, just as much as it is a meal, and also a Covenant and Memorial. The controversy of this change and the mystery around the Eucharist evokes intellectual feisty. Meanwhile, the Eucharist is not the problem it is only the human being who constitutes a problem to it. Scholars over the years have attempted to unravel this mystery, but because it is a mystery every explanation requires further explanations.
The controversy over the doctrine of the real presence, that is, that Christ is present corporeally in the Eucharist has a long history in the Western Church. As such the council of Trent was convoked by Pope Paul III and it took place in Trent and Bologna between the years of 1545 and 1563. This council was basically one of the most paramount cum crucial ecumenical councils. It could be said that the immediate cause of the calling of the Council of Trent was as a result of Luther and the Protestant Revolution of 1517 that engulfed half of Europe. Three years after, Luther nailed the 95 theses to the wooden door of the Church of Wittenburg, on June 15, 1520, Martin was condemned by the papal bull “Exsurge Domine” of Pope Leo X. He was given 60 days to recount his heretical teachings and summit to the Pope. But Luther with the protection of the prince of Saxony attacked the Pope in two pamphlets calling him the anti-christ. Therefore, a General Council is the solution to this. The Council of Trent issued condemnations of what it defined to be heresies committed by Protestantism and there were basic clarifications made concerning the Church’s doctrines and teachings. The Council adjudicated that the Lord is truly present in the most Hoy Eucharist after the consecration of bread and wine. That we are to do this in remembrance of his wonderful works and Christ asked that we do it in his memory. It stressed also on the Excellency of the most holy Eucharist over the rest of the sacraments. The sacred Council talked on Transubstantiation when it stated that:
“… because our Lord and redeemer said that it was truly his body and blood that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moments of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist. Christ is present whole and entire in each of the species and whole and entire in each of their parts, in such a way that the breaking of the bread does not divide Christ.”
 Perhaps we need to pay more attention to the communal dimension of the Eucharist and how it affect human in his/her day-to-day activity, so that the fellowship of the people of God will improve. CCC asserts:
“The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.”
Jesus has provided us with the Eucharist as a place where we can go in to bathe our aching feet and to be refreshed in body and soul for the journey that is still ahead. When we give communion to a sick person we call it viaticum which means “provisions for a journey.” My beloved in Christ you have as obligation under Christian charity to call the priest to administer the sacrament to the sick according to the code of canon law
Can. 911
§1 The duty and right to bring the blessed Eucharist to the sick as Viaticum belongs to the parish priest, to assistant priests, to chaplains and, in respect of all who are in the house, to the community Superior in clerical religious institutes or societies of apostolic life.
§2 In a case of necessity, or with the permission at least presumed of the parish priest, chaplain or Superior, who must subsequently be notified, any priest or other minister of holy communion must do this.
 The Eucharist is always a viaticum: in the Eucharist we derive strength to continue our upward journey toward God.
Church Fathers on the Eucharist
St Ignatius of Antioch says it is the one bread that provides the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that make us live forever in Jesus Christ, sin came into the world through the eating of a meal ‘The Apple’ so also in the new covenant, salvation came onto the world through a meal ‘The Eucharist’. According to Cyril there is a transformation in the Bread and the Wine at the prayer of epiclesis, he said; “we beseech the merciful God to send forth his Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying before him; that he may make the Bread the Body of Christ, and the Wine the Blood of Christ; for whatsoever the Holy Spirit has touched, is surely sanctified and changed.” According to him the Eucharist is a typology of Christ. He said; “Trust not the judgment to your bodily palate no, but to faith unfaltering; for they who taste are bidden to taste, not bread and wine, but the anti-typical Body and Blood of Christ.” As such it must be received with great reverence;
“In approaching therefore, come not with your wrists extended, or your fingers spread; but make your left hand a throne for the right, as for that which is to receive a King. And having hollowed your palm, receive the Body of Christ, saying over it, Amen. So then after having carefully hollowed your eyes by the touch of the Holy Body, partake of it; giving heed in case you lose any portion thereof; for whatever you losest, is evidently a loss to you so to speak from one of your own members. For tell me, if anyone gave you grains of gold, would you not hold them with all carefulness, being on your guard against losing any of them, and suffering loss? Will you not then much more carefully keep watch, that not a crumb fall from you of what is more precious than gold and precious stones?”
St Cyprian of Carthage opines that the Church must continue to offer the blood of Christ and to celebrate the sacrifice of the Lord, which is a reply, so to speak, to the passion. He narrates that on the eve of the passion Jesus took the blood and gave to his disciples saying this is the blood of the New Testament offered for the remission of the sin of many. We see here the cup which the lord offer is mixed and that which he called blood was wine, it follows that the blood of Christ is not offered if there is no wine in the cup. And that the sacrifice of the lord is not legitimately celebrated if our oblation and sacrifice does not relate to the passion. It is the people who are united with Christ. This mingling, this union of wine and water in the lord’s cup is indissoluble. Hence the Church cannot be separated from Christ. St John Chrysostom teaches that He who is offered in many places is one sole Body and not many Bodies, so the sacrifice is one. We do it in memory of what has been done; we do not offer another sacrifice, rather it is a commemoration of the sacrifice of the Cross. St Ambrose of Milan in De sacramentis says ; recalling, therefore, His most glorious passion, His resurrection from the dead and His Ascension into heaven, we offer thee the unblemished host, this spiritual host, this unbloody host, this sacred bread and cup of eternal life, and we ask thee to accept this offering from the hands of thy Angels around thy alter in heaven as thou deigned to accept the gift of thy servant Abel, the sacrifice of Abraham our father and which was offered by thy High priest Melchizedek. Having looked at how the church fathers explained this reality that is, the Holy Mass is the same sacrifice offered on the Calvary starting from the last supper.
CHURCH DOCUMENTS
Pope John Paul II shares the same opinion with the Church Fathers in his encyclical Ecclesia De Eucharistia when he says;
“The Mass makes present the sacrifice of the Cross; it does not add to that sacrifice nor does it multiply it.16 What is repeated is its memorial celebration, its “commemorative representation” (memorialis demonstratio),17 which makes Christ’s one, definitive redemptive sacrifice always present in time. The sacrificial nature of the Eucharistic mystery cannot therefore be understood as something separate, independent of the Cross or only indirectly referring to the sacrifice of Calvary.”
It is obvious that the origin of the Eucharist cannot be separated from the passion of Jesus and his glorious resurrection. When we partake in this solemn sacrament we as his followers are individually united with Christ, we are equally united with one another in the deepest and most intimate manner possible. According to the Vatican Council in the Constitution on the sacred liturgy, “Christ is always present in his Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass… “the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross,” but especially in the Eucharistic species.” The holy mother Church,
“From that time onward the Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the paschal mystery, reading those things “which were in all the scriptures concerning him” (Lk. 24:27), celebrating the Eucharist in which “the victory and triumph of his death are again made present,” and at the same time “giving thanks to God for his inexpressible gift” (2 Cor. 9:15) in Christ Jesus,” in praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:12) through the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Hence the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church decrees;
“As often as the sacrifice of the cross by which “Christ our Pasch is sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7) is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out. Likewise, in the sacrament of the Eucharistic bread, the unity of believers, who from one body in Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 10:17), is both expressed and brought about. All people are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and towards whom our whole life is directed.”
Finally, Vicesimus Quintus Annus demonstrated that by this principle of the Re-enactment of the paschal mystery, the Constitution on the sacred liturgy tends to recall the Church to the fact that it was from the side of Christ, as he died on the cross, that the sublime sacrament of the whole Church come forth, Hence it is in the liturgy and especially in the Eucharistic sacrifices and other sacraments that the church draws up the living springs of redemption.
My fear after reflecting on the Eucharist
OH Lord! Have mercy on me! I am now afraid of your greatness, you oh lord has seduced me and yes I allowed myself to be seduced. You called me to walk on a path the Angels dread, to bring life to man through death. Should I continue or return to my father’s house
The call to priest hood is a call to die! No one told me before now. My God have called me to lay down my life for others. Should I answer or run away? I remember seeing a dead snake in the bush and the amazing story told by my father of a particular female snake that lays eggs, during the hatch period she swallows the egg and quietly goes to stay in a place till the eggs are hatched in her stomach, the younger snakes feeds on her till they will eventually eat her up to find their way out. In turn every female among them will die for their specie to continue. Oh mother snake you die for your off spring to live, what a sacrifice? This is what our lord Jesus did at the Calvary, the bread that I will give you is my flesh, and the wine is my blood! He said. What love is greater than this? But my fear lies in his injunctions “do these in memory of me”! I remembered what happened and trembling took over me. He took the bread, gave thanks to his father, he broke the bread and gave it to his apostles. The same way I was taken from my tribe, from my home, I was consecrated in thanks giving; set aside to be slaughtered, yes! I must be broken just as he was broken ,each I time I celebrates the sacrament, I am broken, my life a constant sacrifice , every Christian carries cross to follow him but alas! My will be a cross of fire. As a religious as a priest whenever I am called to obey the superior I am broken, when I love to do my private things but must be in the community activity I am broken, I must die so that the world will live.
Ogundipe O Lawrence Sdv