Body and Blood of Christ, Year B
First Reading: Ex 24:3-8
Second Reading: Heb 9:11-15
Gospel Reading: Mk 14:12-16, 22-26
“In 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,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
“Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species” (or appearance) “of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God ... 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,” a change we call “transubstantiation.”
Some people think of the Eucharist as a “metaphor” or “symbol” for Christ’s body and blood and regard the Church’s statement as an “abuse of language.” Some note that the Church avoids words like “literally,” “physically,” and “actually.”
Consider what the Catechism calls the literal sense of Scripture on the Eucharist: “the meaning conveyed by the words.”
“The bread that I will give is my flesh,” Jesus said. “My flesh is real food and my blood real drink.”
His hearers must have understood the plain sense of his words, for they exclaimed, “This sort of talk is hard to endure!” and many “would not remain in his company any longer.” However, Jesus made no attempt to explain away what he had said. Evidently, he meant it literally.
Then, at his last supper, “Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples. ‘Take this and eat it,’ he said; ‘this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them. ‘All of you must drink from it,’ he said, ‘for this is my blood.’”
Now Christ is God the Son. His words must have actually accomplished their literal meaning. What still looked like bread and wine, then, were no longer bread and wine, but his body and blood.
Then he added, “Do this as a remembrance of me,” or, in Hebrew, zikaron.
In Greek, zikaron is anamnesis, but English has no adequate synonym, says a Jewish rabbi. “Memorial,” “commemoration,” and “remembrance” suggest “recollection” of the past, but zikaron means making it present, as if past and present coalesce into now.
In an anamnesis, “we mysteriously become contemporaries of the event: the event is present for us and we are present at the event,” explains Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to three popes.
Accordingly, we supplement “memorial” and “remembrance” with words like “re-presenting,” “re-actualizing,” and “renewing,” which focus on the presence of the event to us, or “re-living,” “participating,” and “celebrating,” which focus on our presence at the event.
Perhaps the image my mother used best combines both aspects: the sun is always shining on the earth, she said, but, every morning, the rotation of the earth “re-presents” it to us and we “participate again” in its warmth and light.
When Jesus said, “Do this as an anamnesis,” he was commanding his apostles to do and say what he had just done and said: both his natural and his supernatural words and actions.
Now the apostles could perform his natural words and actions by their own power, but not the supernatural transubstantiation. Christ’s command, therefore, implied a promise that their natural words and actions would accomplish the supernatural change by God’s power.
The Church understands Jesus’ command literally: to feed us with his body and blood until he comes again: not just to recall or imitate what he did, but to re-present, re-actualize, and renew it so that we re-live it, celebrate it, and participate in it.
The Eucharist is “truly,” “really,” “substantially,” literally, actually, even physically (“as the nature of man demands”) Christ’s body and blood. To say anything less is “an abuse of language.”
Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth Himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.
O Godhead (Adoro Te Devote) — St. Thomas Aquinas
Father Hawkswell’s course, “The Catholic Faith in Plain English,” has now ended, but all the materials (video and print) will remain available online free of charge at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course until the end of August.