Feast of Corpus Christi

Listen with me.  You will have to listen very carefully.  You will have to lean in and strain because it’s a tiny sound. 

But more importantly, you will have to strain because you will have to listen back through centuries of time, through innumerable retellings, past the retelling of the words “this is my body, this is my blood” commanded by Jesus to be retold, and echoes at Masses around the world tens of thousands of times a day for thousands of years, words that will echo through me today.

Listen back, past the retelling of even more ancient stories. Of Abraham from our first reading, and the mysterious priest-King Melchizedek, who was not of our covenantial line, not from Israel, not really from our story, and yet a priest of God, who offered bread and wine and, by blessing Abraham, shows himself superior. 

Listen past all of that, to the most ancient of our stories…the story of our first parents in a Garden.

It’s the tiniest sound, a simple twig-snap of a sound, a fruit being plucked from a tree.  (*pick*)

Even though God had warned them that eating the fruit would bring death, Adam and Eve picked a forbidden fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—because the serpent had tempted then with the idea of being like God.  And somehow this relates to who we are.  Explains who we are.

The Garden story and its picked fruit helps us understand ourselves as curious beings—God made us like him, and has always intended to unite us to him, and yet we sin. 

But one of the effects of sin is that we tend to forget or deny both of these aspects.  That each human person is like God…or rather that God is actually IN each one of US.  Or we deny or rationalize our sin—pretend that we can do it on our own, and don’t need God or other people.

And it all starts with a little bit of fruit… food… is the image that captures this meaning, our falleness, and it captures our imagination.  The tiny sound is sin echoing through the centuries.  Pick.

Today we celebrate The Eucharist.  The gift of the Body and Blood of Jesus.  The fruit from the tree of Calvary. 

The food that we do not reach out and take, but that we receive into our hands or on our tongue.  We receive it from someone else. 

And what the forbidden fruit promised—The dual promise of death and divinity—is satisfied in the Eucharistic food.  We share in the death of Jesus, who died for us, so that we can share in the divinity of Jesus and live forever.

As much as the fruit in the garden is trying to tell us that we have a broken nature that is prone to sin, the Eucharist is trying to remind us that God dwells in us.  The Eucharist reminds us of this fact, and it nourishes and causes this reality. 

You see.  We do not obliterate divinity when we consume it.  We do not destroy the Body of Christ when we eat it.  What would that even mean?  We become it. 

The Eucharist trains us to see God, and thereby to transform us.  The Eucharist begins to have its effect on us when we can look at the bread and wine and see—through ritual and incense and ancient words—the presence of God himself.  And worship him there.  To bend our knee before him.  To revere him there.  To care for every crumb and drop as though it was God himself.

But it only has its full effect when we also surge in our understanding that God is present in us, and in the person sitting next to us.  When our minds begin to capture the fact that we do not obliterate divinity when we consume it.  But that we are made divine.  And we should show the same respect and care for one another, that we do the Eucharistic Bread.

We together become Christ’s presence in the world. 

Jesus chose bread and wine not only because they are common everyday items, but also because of a certain kind of symmetry. 

Many grapes are brought together, and by human industry, become wine. 

Many grains are picked, and through human labor, become one loaf. 

And then, once consecrated, the bread and wine—the Body and Blood of Christ—again scatters in us throughout the world to be Christ’s ministers of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation—sanctifying the world by our lives.

So today, during this consecration, as we spiritually lean forward and strain to see God appear in the ritual echoing ancient words, and incense and mystery, pray that God will open our eyes so that we can simultaneously realize the presence of God in the bread and wine … and in every person who participates with the desires of faith. 

And as we hear the tiny sound of the Host breaking, we will know that the ancient curse of that twig-snap … is being lifted.