Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ Read more
Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ
First Reading
Exodus 24,3-8
Moses went and told the people all Yahweh's words and all the laws, and all the people answered with one voice, 'All the words Yahweh has spoken we will carry out!' Moses put all Yahweh's words into writing, and early next morning he built an altar at the foot of the mountain, with twelve standing-stones for the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he sent certain young Israelites to offer burnt offerings and sacrifice bullocks to Yahweh as communion sacrifices. Moses then took half the blood and put it into basins, and the other half he sprinkled on the altar. Then, taking the Book of the Covenant, he read it to the listening people, who then said, 'We shall do everything that Yahweh has said; we shall obey.' Moses then took the blood and sprinkled it over the people, saying, 'This is the blood of the covenant which Yahweh has made with you, entailing all these stipulations.'
Psalmody
Psalm 115
Antiphon
Trust in the Lord all ye who are afraid.
I trusted, even when I said :
'I am sorely afflicted,'
and when I said in my alarm :
'No man can be trusted'.
Now can I repay the Lord
for his goodness to me?
'The cup of salvation I will raise;
I will call on the Lord's name.
My vows to the Lord I will fulfil
before all his people.
O precious in the eyes of the Lord
is the death of his faithful.
Your servant, Lord, your servant am I;
you have loosened my bonds
A thanksgiving sacrifice I make :
I will call on the lord's name.
My vows to the Lord I will fulfil
before all his people,
in the courts of the house of the Lord,
in the midst, O Jerusalem.
Second Reading
Hebrews 9,11-15
But now Christ has come, as the high priest of all the blessings which were to come. He has passed through the greater, the more perfect tent, not made by human hands, that is, not of this created order; and he has entered the sanctuary once and for all, taking with him not the blood of goats and bull calves, but his own blood, having won an eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkled on those who have incurred defilement, may restore their bodily purity. How much more will the blood of Christ, who offered himself, blameless as he was, to God through the eternal Spirit, purify our conscience from dead actions so that we can worship the living God. This makes him the mediator of a new covenant, so that, now that a death has occurred to redeem the sins committed under an earlier covenant, those who have been called to an eternal inheritance may receive the promise.
Reading of the Gospel
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Mark 14,12-16.22-26
On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb was sacrificed, his disciples said to him, 'Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?' So he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 'Go into the city and you will meet a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him, and say to the owner of the house which he enters, "The Master says: Where is the room for me to eat the Passover with my disciples?" He will show you a large upper room furnished with couches, all prepared. Make the preparations for us there.' The disciples set out and went to the city and found everything as he had told them, and prepared the Passover. And as they were eating he took bread, and when he had said the blessing he broke it and gave it to them. 'Take it,' he said, 'this is my body.' Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he handed it to them, and all drank from it, and he said to them, 'This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for many. In truth I tell you, I shall never drink wine any more until the day I drink the new wine in the kingdom of God.' After the psalms had been sung they left for the Mount of Olives.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Homily
"Behold the bread of angels, the bread of pilgrims. Lead your brothers to the heavenly banquet in the joy of the saints." This is how we pray in the liturgy of Corpus Christi, the feast day on which we celebrate Jesus' presence in the Eucharist. God is not an abstract idea; He is not a vague and timeless philosophy, elusive and distant. Jesus is never a ghost; he is a body, a physical body that is present today as the pilgrim who walks by our side. He- accompanies us through the entire day, till evening. Jesus' body is present in the Eucharist and this is why the Church contemplates the Consecrated Host. In the Host is the body of Jesus, crucified and risen, a body that accompanies us in the different seasons of our life ever since, with emotion, we received it for the first time. Every time we nourish ourselves with it we should feel as we did the first time, always amazed at such a great love that becomes nourishment for us.
This Bread never becomes a right: we cannot buy it; it does not have a price, for us people who calculate and think that nothing is done for nothing; for us who make of everything a convenience, an advantage, even life itself. It is a Body that teaches us to love freely; it is the Body of God's love. The altar of the Eucharist makes the table of Passover present, when Jesus took the bread, broke it, then gave it to his disciples and said, "This is my body." Then he took the cup and said, "This is my blood."
This Body refers us to another body of Christ, that of the poor, the weak, and the sick. The flesh of Christ is also in them. "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me," Jesus said. We cannot honour the Corpus Domini on the table and then show disdain for the same Corpus Domini in our poor brothers and sisters. The Gospel helps us to love concrete human flesh, the body. That body marked by life is Christ's body.
The body of Christ is also the body of the poor immigrants: of women full of dreams and fears; of lost children; of men, who desperately seek future and are forced to entrust themselves to traffickers who treat them like things. They are bodies of men and women whose stories, faces and names people did not want to know, as they drowned in the sea forever. God knows the names of these poor bodies. He knows the name of each one of them. As Pope Francis urges, blessed are those who love the body of Christ in the suffering body of the poor. Let us love Jesus' body in his Eucharist. Let us love the Lord's body in the bodies of the poor and of our brothers and sisters. The weakness of others is that of God. Let us go visit those who are alone; let us honour the Corpus Domini by stopping in front of those who ask and by making them beautiful with love. Venerating His body, broken and poured out on the altar, will make us love the weakness of Christ's body in the smallest of His brothers and sisters.
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
