BIBLE STUDY #136


THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

June 2, 2013



READING 1 GENESIS 14:18-20



In those days, Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine,

and being a priest of God Most High,

he blessed Abram with these words:

"Blessed be Abram by God Most High,

the creator of heaven and earth;

and blessed be God Most High,

who delivered your foes into your hand."

Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.



The Word of the Lord



READING 2

1 CORINTHIANS 11:23-26



Brothers and sisters:

I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,

that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,

took bread, and, after he had given thanks,

broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me."

In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,

"This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,

you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.



The Word of the Lord



GOSPEL

LUKE 9:11B-17



Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God,

and he healed those who needed to be cured.

As the day was drawing to a close,

the Twelve approached him and said,

"Dismiss the crowd

so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms

and find lodging and provisions;

for we are in a deserted place here."

He said to them, "Give them some food yourselves."

They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have,

unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people."

Now the men there numbered about five thousand.

Then he said to his disciples,

"Have them sit down in groups of about fifty."

They did so and made them all sit down.

Then taking the five loaves and the two fish,

and looking up to heaven,

he said the blessing over them, broke them,

and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.

They all ate and were satisfied.

And when the leftover fragments were picked up,

they filled twelve wicker baskets.



The Gospel of the Lord



Reflection



Jesus is speaking to the crowds about the Kingdom of God, so we are going to hear something important about the kingdom.



The first sign of the kingdom is that Jesus heals. When the kingdom is established in its fullness, there will be no more pain and suffering. Healing is a sign of things to come. It also tells us about Jesus; not only that he has the ability to heal, but also that since sin was thought to cause illness and other physical problems, than healing the sick is tantamount to forgiving sins. Who can forgive sins but God? So Luke is saying something about Jesus’ identity: he must be God if he forgives sins.



The disciples approach Jesus and ask him to "dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here." Many people try to downplay this miracle by saying that there wasn’t really a miracle of multiplication, but a miracle of sharing. If this is true, why didn’t Luke just say so? Human nature being what it is, there really would be a miracle if Jesus could get all those people to share. But I think this is reading too much into the text. If they had food, why did the Apostles want to send them away to find food? There obviously wasn’t enough to feed everyone. Besides, if everyone shared, would they have brought enough to feed all 5,000 people and have 12 baskets left over? I think not. Let’s not take the sacred, the miraculous out of our gospel stories. We need these things.



In response to their request to send the people away, Jesus tells the Apostles, "Give them some food yourselves." This section of the Gospel, Jesus is beginning to do on the job training: his followers will have to carry on when he is gone. They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people." They are trying their best, but they need Jesus’ help to succeed. They will learn to always rely on Jesus in their ministry.



The language Jesus uses is Eucharistic in nature (taking, blessing, broke, gave) and makes us think of the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist, where the bread and wine become the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus.



Feeding is a constant theme in scripture. Elisha fed 100 men with 20 loaves of bread (see 2Kings 4:42-44). Also see Is25:6, Psalm 78:19, and 81:16-17. Jesus feeding is the fulfillment of God’s willingness to nurture his people with food. In Psalms 37 and 132 promises of rich and abundant food were signs of the Messiah.



Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and the fish showed God’s power acting in Him. This abundance of food indicates that a new era has begun in Jesus. He is the Messiah whose body is broken on the cross, raised on the third day, and who leaves us his body and blood in the Eucharist as food for our journey. God fed the people with bread in the Old Testament, but Jesus feeds us with spiritual bread in the New Testament. The 12 remaining baskets shows us God’s abundant love and how much he will do for us.



This passage tells us that we are to bring people to God’s table to be nourished by the Eucharist, so they can be spiritually strengthened on their journey to follow Christ. It also tells us that we need to take care of the physical, emotional, and economic needs of those in need. We who have plenty can’t ignore the needs of those who need our help.



Today’s feast day, The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, dates from the 13th century. It’s had many names over the course of time, but you probably remember it as Corpus Christi. It was celebrated on the Thursday after the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity (Trinity Sunday). It has since been moved to the Sunday after Trinity Sunday.



This feast is largely due to Blessed Juliana of Mount Cornillon, who was born near Liege, Belgium in 1192. She was an orphan at an early age and was educated by Augustinian nuns. She later joined this order and became prioress. She had a great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament from an early age and always wanted a feast in its honor. She had a recurring vision since age 16: the appearance of a bright moon streaked by a dark band. In a dream, our Lord told her the black band denoted the absence of a feast for the Blessed Sacrament.



After she became prioress in 1225, she began to speak to John of Lausanne, a learned canon, and asked him to consult theologians about the feasibility of this feast. One of the men he consulted with was James Panteleon who later became Pope Urban IV who promulgated the Bull Transiturus on September 8, 1264 ordering this feast to be celebrated. Pope Clement V confirmed the Bull in 1312, and since then this has been a feast throughout the Roman Church. Blessed Juliana did not see this feast come into existence since she died in 1258. (Thanks to Butlers Lives of the Saints for this information).



Today’s feast celebrates the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. As Catholics, we believe that the Eucharist contains the “body and blood, soul and divinity” of Jesus, that Jesus is truly present in the substance of bread and wine.

The doctrine of the Real Presence asserts that in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus is literally and wholly present—body and blood, soul and divinity—under the appearances of bread and wine. Evangelicals and Fundamentalists frequently attack this doctrine as "unbiblical," but the Bible is forthright in declaring it (cf. 1 Cor. 10:16–17, 11:23–29; and, most forcefully, John 6:32–71); (from Catholic Answers, copyright 1996-2012, on the internet.



Following are several paragraphs form the Catechism of the Catholic Church concerning the presence of Christ in the Eucharist that you may find interesting and informative (the numbers are paragraph numbers in the catechism):



The presence of Christ by the power of his word and the Holy Spirit



1373 "Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us," is present in many ways to his Church: in his word, in his Church's prayer, "where two or three are gathered in my name, in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned, in the sacraments of which he is the author, in the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the person of the minister. But "he is present . . . most especially in the Eucharistic species."



1374 The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."



1375 It is by the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament. The Church Fathers strongly affirmed the faith of the Church in the efficacy of the Word of Christ and of the action of the Holy Spirit to bring about this conversion. Thus St. John Chrysostom declares:

It is not man that causes the things offered to become the Body and Blood of Christ, but he who was crucified for us, Christ himself. The priest, in the role of Christ, pronounces these words, but their power and grace are God's. This is my body, he says. This word transforms the things offered.

And St. Ambrose says about this conversion:

Be convinced that this is not what nature has formed, but what the blessing has consecrated. The power of the blessing prevails over that of nature, because by the blessing nature itself is changed.... Could not Christ's word, which can make from nothing what did not exist, change existing things into what they were not before? It is no less a feat to give things their original nature than to change their nature.



1376 The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body 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 the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation."



1377 The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment 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.



1378 Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. "The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession."



1379 The tabernacle was first intended for the reservation of the Eucharist in a worthy place so that it could be brought to the sick and those absent outside of Mass. As faith in the real presence of Christ in his Eucharist deepened, the Church became conscious of the meaning of silent adoration of the Lord present under the Eucharistic species. It is for this reason that the tabernacle should be located in an especially worthy place in the church and should be constructed in such a way that it emphasizes and manifests the truth of the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.



1380 It is highly fitting that Christ should have wanted to remain present to his Church in this unique way. Since Christ was about to take his departure from his own in his visible form, he wanted to give us his sacramental presence; since he was about to offer himself on the cross to save us, he wanted us to have the memorial of the love with which he loved us "to the end,"[207] even to the giving of his life. In his Eucharistic presence he remains mysteriously in our midst as the one who loved us and gave himself up for us, and he remains under signs that express and communicate this love:

The Church and the world have a great need for Eucharistic worship. Jesus awaits us in this sacrament of love. Let us not refuse the time to go to meet him in adoration, in contemplation full of faith, and open to making amends for the serious offenses and crimes of the world. Let our adoration never cease.





Fr. Phil