Corpus Christi
Gen 14:18-20; John 6:51-58; Thursday 30 May 2024.
Today we mark Corpus Christi, literally the body of Christ, and generally the tradition of giving thanks for the institution of the Eucharist. This tradition has long been celebrated on the first “free” Thursday outside of Lent/Easter. The great theologian, later Saint, Thomas Aquinas, at the request of Pope Urban IV in the year 1264, produced the Mass and the Offices for the feast. We continue in that tradition here today. Most Christians tend to treat with special respect the consecrated bread and wine and Jesus as present there. It is why, among other reasons, it takes central place in an Anglican service such as this one.
At the Last Supper, Jesus wholly identifies himself with bread and wine and he gives these to us. He says, ‘take this bread’, ‘drink this wine’. We say and hear this at least every week - and we can, through repetition, lose the drama of it. To grasp this even more fully, it’s helpful to note that Hebrew and Aramaic language identified ‘blood’ with ‘life’, ‘body’ as ‘person’. Jesus is not saying ‘this bread and wine is like my life’ or ‘when you eat and drink this bread you are thinking about my life’ or even ‘through the Eucharist, you are remembering my life’, though that is clearly part of it. He is saying ‘this is my life’[1]; even, ‘this is my life’; even, ‘this is my life’. At the Last Supper, Jesus was not instructing his friends to do a new thing. Jesus was, rather, instructing them that whenever they now did this, they do it with a new meaning.
Bread and wine are how life lives; they nourish and satisfy; they are tangible; they evoke our senses of hunger, of sight, of smell, of taste; even, as the priest’s wafer is broken, of sound. We are being fed by, through and in Christ.
In being fed, we are also called here to give ourselves and our lives away – in remembrance of Jesus. Allowing God to take us, as the bread and the wine are taken by the priest, give thanks for and over us, thereby blessing us, breaking, and remaking us, and giving us to others.
Queen Elizabeth I is reputed to have replied when questioned about Christ’s presence in the Sacrament:
“Twas God the word that spake it,
He took the Bread and brake it;
And what the word did make it;
That I believe, and take it.”[2]
Let us pray (in silence) [that through the eucharist we may grow into Christ’s life]
pause
Gracious and merciful God,
in a wonderful sacrament you have given us
a memorial of the passion of your Son
Jesus Christ;
grant that we who receive these sacred mysteries
may grow up into him in all things
until we come to your eternal joy;
through our Saviour Jesus Christ
who is alive with with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God now and for ever.
Amen[3]
[1] Corpus Christi Sunday 2021 – David Ranson