Corpus Christi, June 7 2015
Ezek 17:22-24; 2 Cor 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34
Brookdale
Today is the feast formerly known as Corpus Christi, now the solemnity of the body and blood of Christ. I remember when my little sister, then about seven years old, made her first communion. She marched off to the communion rail in her beautiful white communion dress and veil, looking radiant. When she returned, she was crestfallen. She told my mother, “I don’t feel any different!” She had expected some kind of mystical experience.
My own understanding of communion has developed over the years. I’d like to share how it deepened when I saw the film Romero, about the Salvadoran archbishop who was recently proclaimed a martyr of the church. Two scenes in the film brought home to me the meaning of Eucharist and communion. The first takes place when Oscar Romero, a conservative cleric and the sort of person who doesn’t rock the boat, goes into the countryside and encounters soldiers who are machine-gunning an altar. Consecrated hosts spill out onto the ground, and Romero, appalled, races in front of the guns to collect the hosts on his knees and restore them to a ciborium.
Now, since earliest times, the church has seen, in the consecrated bread and wine, the symbol of Christ’s presence and of the church itself. Individual grains come together to form one bread; individual grapes are crushed and their juice made into one wine. As Saint Paul says, “We who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread, (1 Cor 10:16-17).” By eating and drinking the material elements that now make present Jesus’ living-self, the assembly of his disciples gathered around the table becomes his living body, sent out to live his “Way,” in the world: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked and visiting the sick and those in prison.[1]
Some people regard the consecrated host as “just a symbol.” But Romero didn’t say, “Oh well, it’s just a symbol, not worth risking my precious neck for.” The consecrated hosts are a sacred symbol. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas tried to explain how the symbol works with his theory of transubstantiation, which will mean a lot to you if you are into Aristotelian metaphysics.
Some people regard transubstantiation as a sort of magic change that turns bread into meat. In fact, I found a web site written by an outraged ex-Catholic who complained bitterly that the church had turned him into a cannibal. (I’m not making this up.) South Park had a similar theme in one episode. Thomas Aquinas had a much deeper understanding. He did a little thought experiment. Imagine a mouse that breaks into the tabernacle and eats a consecrated host. Thomas asked, “What does the mouse eat?” His answer was that the mouse eats only bread, because the mouse is unable to perceive the real presence of Christ in the host. Not that we want to feed consecrated hosts to mice, but that Christ’s presence is real precisely for those who are able to perceive it in the sacred symbol.
Toward the end of the film Romero, long after the scene in which he saves the consecrated hosts, Romero has become an outspoken opponent of the military regime, with its oppression of Indians, its torture and death squads, and its contempt for true religion. On Monday, March 25, 1980, Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. In the film, he raises the chalice at the consecration and says, “This is my blood,” and at that moment they gun him down. The chalice flies into the air, and now it is his blood, mingled with the blood of Christ. All this happened because he took seriously what St. Paul said: “We who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”
[1] Bernard P. Prusak, “This Is My Body,” America Magazine, March 23, 2015, accessed June 5, 2015, http://americamagazine.org/issue/culture/my-body.