Feast celebrates our unity as a people
The blood of Christ purges sin and allows us to be reconciled with God
June 18, 2006 -- The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)
By Fr. Richard Ver Bust
The feast of Corpus Christi (the Body and Blood of Christ) focuses our attention on different levels of meaning.
It is easy for us to look at the readings of the liturgy and see how the Word of God in different times helped shape the importance of what we do.
Much more difficult is the attempt to realize how this mystery has changed us. We have shared again and again the Body of Christ, yet how it helps us grow as disciples of Christ is not so clear.
Our first reading is from Exodus, one of the pivotal books of the First Testament. The action of this event shaped Israel and was the source of repeated reflection in later periods of time.
The Book of Exodus comes from a time much later than the event it describes. Thus we have a theological reflection on the meaning of Exodus. Central is the fact of a covenant created and shared.
After the departure from Egypt, Israel wandered for a period before entering the land of Canaan. It was in the desert that Israel was formed as a people and took to heart that God was their God and they were the Lord's people.
The authors of Exodus describe a covenantal in today's reading in which the people pledge to accept Yahweh and to live responsibly.
They use an ancient ceremony to ratify what this covenant says. They shed the blood of animals and sprinkle that blood on both the altar and on the people. This symbol of life unites them and it is the sign by which they are united.
They agree to live in response to God's call. They, in action, give thanks for God's saving action and promise to abide by those laws which help them to more deeply follow God and unite the people.
The Letter to Hebrews is built upon the notion of this covenant. The author tried to show how the life and death of Christ fulfilled and expressed this covenant.
Christ shed his own blood and created a new covenant. The action of Christ changed our history and united us to God more perfectly.
The priests of the earlier covenant could not really effect the remission of sin. The blood of animals could not really change us. The blood of Christ achieved redemption and offered to all the chance of becoming the full children of God.
The blood of Christ purged the sin of humanity and gave us the possibility of being reconciled with our God. The author of Hebrews shows how the worship of the First Covenant pointed to and helped us appreciate what Christ has achieved.
Yet it is the Gospel of Mark that joins together the action of Exodus and the event at Sinai in presenting the scene of the Last Supper. He recalls the Passover Feast and tells us that Christ at that meal pointed to the bread and wine as symbols of the new Covenant.
They, when repeated, remember Christ's action and help us realize our own unity as a people. The feast celebrates not a past event but a continuing mystery of the union between ourselves and God.
(The late Fr. Ver Bust directed the master's program in theology at St. Norbert College, De Pere.)
(A June 17-18 column by Fr. Mike Stubbs was not available.)
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