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Sunday Scripture Study

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) - Cycle B

June 10, 2012

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Opening Prayer

First Reading: Exodus 24:3-8

Psalm: 116:12-13, 15-18

Second Reading: Hebrews 9:11-15

Gospel Reading: Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

This Sunday’s Gospel reading takes place in Jerusalem on Holy Thursday, the night Jesus was betrayed. It is on the first day of the Jewish feast of Passover.

Rather cryptically, Jesus instructs his disciples to prepare for the Passover meal in a certain place in the city. According to tradition, the mother of St. Mark, the writer of this gospel, owned this room. She was also thought to own the Garden of Gethsemane.

In words identical to those he uses when he multiplied the loaves and fed the 5000 (Mark 6:41, CCC 1335), Jesus accomplishes three things: (1) He changes the Passover bread and wine into his Body and Blood—the same Body and Blood that will be sacrificed for the sins of the world on the Cross. (2) Since a sacrifice requires priests, he establishes the priesthood. His apostles, and their successors the bishops, will comprise that priesthood. (3) He establishes the Holy Eucharist, so that in receiving Communion his people for all time and places may participate in his once-for-all sacrifice until he comes again in glory.

Thus, just as the Old Covenant was sealed by sacrifice and blood on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 24:3-8), the New Covenant is sealed in Christ’s blood on Calvary (Romans 5:9; Hebrews 9:22), anticipated at the Last Supper, and perpetuated in the Sacrifice of the Mass (John 6:53; CCC 610, 1392-93).

QUESTIONS:

Read the other, parallel, accounts of the Last Supper found in the New Testament (Matthew 26:26-28; Luke 22:17-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). What other interesting and enlightening details about the institution of the Eucharist do you find there?

Why would secrecy be needed as this meal was planned? What risk was involved?

How does the Last Supper relate to the Passover (see Exodus 12)? To this Sunday’s first reading (Exodus 24:3-8)?

What new meaning does Jesus give to the unleavened Passover bread (see John 6:51-58)? The wine?

How much do you think the disciples understood when Jesus spoke about his Body and Blood? What might they have been thinking? How would you have felt had you been there?

What is your focus when you receive Holy Communion? What should it be?

Catechism of the Catholic Church: §§ 1323, 1328, 1339-1344, 1403

In all He did from the Incarnation to the Cross, the end Jesus Christ had in mind was the gift of the Eucharist, his personal and corporal union with each Christian through Communion. He saw in It the means of communicating to us all the treasures of His Passion, all the virtues of His Sacred Humanity, and all the merits of His Life. -St. Peter Julian Eymard

Jesus Died in My Place

Pastor’s Column

Corpus Christi, 2012

This past week I read an incredible and true story of a pilot who tells of the time when he signed up to work a trans-continental trip. He then waited for a confirmation call from crew scheduling to tell him that his bid to work was accepted and that he would in fact be flying this trip. Later that evening, he realized to his surprise that a confirmation call never came. When he looked it up on the computer, he discovered that another pilot, with just a little bit more seniority than he, had outbid him and bumped him off the job that day.

It was only the next morning, watching the news that he realized what had happened. In case you haven’t guessed the secret, the flight he was bumped off of was American Airlines flight 11; the day, Sept 11, 2001; the plane, one that never made it to its destination because it flew into the World Trade Center. This extraordinary experience is recounted in a book called: In My Seat: A Pilot's Story from Sept. 10th-11th by Megan Ann Scheibner.

The pilot went on to say: I should have died that day. That was my flight, but someone else took my place; someone else died instead of me. Have you ever had someone die in your place? Or narrowly avert death because someone saved your life? Actually, we all have --- someone else took our seat and died in our place to save us from the eternal death of sin, and this is Jesus. This was the extraordinary insight of this pilot.

Without Jesus, I risk being on a flight going ultimately nowhere, leading in the end to disaster. I need Jesus to “take my seat.” In the Holy Eucharist, we see Jesus who has taken our place die for our sins to save us from eternal death.

It is not an accident that Jesus gives us his Body and Blood on the night before he died, the night before he entered into death and paid the price for us, the night before he took your seat. Jesus was to become weak, and vulnerable, and able to be hurt. As God, Jesus was none of those things, but he took a frail human body in order that he might be vulnerable. What Jesus asks of us is faith.

Jesus in the Eucharist does not speak, but he is not silent. If you come to him and believe in him, he can work mighty powers in your life. Jesus in the Eucharist appears to be weak and vulnerable, easily crumbled and violated, but he does this in order to be loved and believed in. One cannot offer oneself for love unless one is willing to be vulnerable.

The Eucharist is also vulnerable. Jesus has taken this form in our own time that we might allow him, even now, to be vulnerable for him and allow him to be vulnerable to us. He is vulnerable to our lack of faith, to our indifference, to our sins. Some people don’t realize that they need someone to die in their place; that heaven requires someone to pay the price; that the plane we are on will not land there unless Jesus takes over the flight for us.

Father Gary