Homily for the Feast of Corpus Christi

Two months ago, on Holy Thursday, we commemorated the Institution of the Holy Eucharist, which took place at the Last Supper. Today, on this Feast of Corpus Christi, we celebrate our belief in, and our certainty about, the Lord’s continuing, perpetual and Real Presence in the Eucharist as we:
+celebrate Mass
+receive Him in Holy Communion
+revere Him in the Blessed Sacrament, reserved in the Tabernacle.

The Readings we have for this Feast Day speak of two meals for which the Lord was host, giving them Eucharistic themes. I  will add a third meal — the Wedding Feast at Cana — to show how Our Lord connects the joyful event of a shared human meal, made even more joyful through divine intervention.

These three meals of a Eucharistic theme are:
+the Feeding of the 5,000
+the Wedding Feast at Cana
+the Last Supper.

We’ll look at them in this order rather than in chronological order so that we can see how the Lord’s miracles develop in gravity and power. Very briefly, they differ thusly:

+ At the Feeding of the 5,000, He turns some bread into more bread.
+At the Wedding Feast, He turns water into wine.
+At the Last Supper, He turns bread and wine into His Body and Blood.

The miracle of the bread and the miracle of the wine are joined in the miracle of the bread and wine — the Eucharist — the Lord’s greatest gift to His Church. We might ask here: Why bread and wine? Why not:

+cookies and milk?
+pretzels and beer?
+champagne and caviar?

It goes back to our First Reading today in which the Old Testament priest Melchizedek offered bread and wine in an act of praise and gratitude to God, honoring Abraham, instead of a traditional holocaust of an ox, or a lamb, or a pair of turtle doves.  The bread and wine offered by Melchizedek, then chosen by Christ, are now handed down in the Church for what they symbolize.

Bread, the “staff of life,” found in every culture, meeting our basic need for sustenance, is paired with wine, described in the Psalms as that entity “Which brings joy to men’s hearts.” Eucharistic bread creates unity among us in that bread is one of only a few commodities that the rich cannot keep from the poor, who might suggest, as did Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat cake.” The Eucharistic wine symbolizes the joy we find in meeting the Lord, and the joy of fellowship that can be a fruit of our common worship.

Now that we have established the symbolic meaning of using bread and wine for the Sacrifice of the Mass, let’s return to our three meals. When we speak of the Lord’s miraculous power to change things into other things, we’re not witnessing a magic trick, but divine intervention into ordinary human affairs, making them extraordinary in the Lord’s concern for His people in the present moment, as well as His love for His future Church.

Saint Thomas Aquinas explains two distinct changes taking place through the Lord’s miraculous power: a change in substance, and a change in what he calls “accidents.” By “substance” is meant the essence of things: that which makes bread to be bread, and that which makes wine to be wine. We could, perhaps, speak here of “bread-ness” or “wine-ness.”

By “accidents” Aquinas means those attributes of bread and wine that appear and appeal to our senses: sight, smell, feel, taste, and alcoholic elation. Here is how these realities manifest themselves in today’s stories:

In the Story of the Feeding of the 5,000, the Lord’s miracle is quantitative, in that neither the substance nor the accidents are changed, but the quantity is multiplied. At Cana there will be change without multiplication, but here there is multiplication without change. Bread and fish it was, bread and fish it remained.

We might think that the other miracles are greater, but the Lord’s miracles are tailored to the real needs of the people whether they be physical hunger as then, or spiritual hunger as we experience it now.

In the Story of the Wedding Feast at Cana, things are quite different. Here, the Lord made a change in both the substance and the accidents. What He gave the Wine Steward was not water posing as wine, but wine itself — and of superior quality because it was produced by the hand of the Lord, and not merely the fruit of the vine. Once again, the Lord in His love caused a miracle to be performed in order to give His people what was needed.

Finally, in the Story of the Last Supper, the Lord does not do what might be expected. He changes the substance of bread and wine, but not the accidents. While the elements appear the same to human senses, the Lord changes bread into His Real Body, and wine into His Precious Blood. This miraculous change is not physical, but metaphysical, as in the way metaphysics takes us beyond the physical sciences to search for the essence of things.

What took place at the Last Supper and will take place here at this altar today is the miracle of Transubstantiation, a six-syllable word that points to the Lord changing bread into His Body, and wine into His blood, both then and now. And this bread is changed into a particular body: the body which was born of Mary at Bethlehem. The wine is changed not merely into any human blood, but the blood that was poured out on Calvary for our redemption.

It is vastly important for us to understand that as the Last Supper and the Crucifixion are intrinsically linked as one action, the notion of Meal and Sacrifice are also intrinsically linked at this Mass, which is traditionally described as “the un-bloody sacrifice of the Cross.”

Christ is present here in a way that is metaphysical, miraculous and sacramental. Here mystery and reality co-mingle. When we celebrate the Mass we are not merely commemorating the Lord’s saving and redemptive event, nor are we participating in a folkloric re-enactment of the Lord’s gift to us. We partake of both the Last Supper and the Crucifixion by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

And one last thing: at all three of these meals the Lord bids something from His human assistants:

+At the Feeding of the 5,000, He says, “Give them something to eat.”
+At the Wedding Feast at Cana, He says, “Fill the water jars.”
+At the Last Supper, He says, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

This final command comes down to us today in the ministry of the priest and in the participation of the worshippers, so that this sacrament, celebrated Sunday after Sunday, becomes the spiritual food of our earthly pilgrimage, and comforts our souls for our final passage through the Valley of Death to the eternal banquet of Heaven.