Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 22, 2025: Do this in remembrance of me...

Do this in remembrance of me…
Are we ready to give flesh to the Body of Christ with our lives? 

   Church tradition tells us that the institution of the Eucharist took place at the Last Supper, at which Jesus said to his disciples, This is my body that is for you – all of you! Do this in remembrance of me. Paul reminds the Corinthian community of these words of institution because they are not celebrating Eucharist appropriately and inclusively, as Jesus taught his disciples to do. The Corinthians seem to have forgotten the very point of Jesus’ sacrifice: as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. Jesus came to save humankind, becoming flesh, one with us, to save us from our sins; we enter into the sacrifice of the Mass to participate in his death and rising, that we might proclaim his death until he comes again. 

   We find echoes of Jesus’ sacrifice in a variety of biblical texts, in both the Old and New Testaments. When, in the Book of Genesis, Abraham intervenes in a war to save his nephew Lot and Lot’s family, Melchizedek, the priest-king of Salem, brings out bread and wine and blesses Abraham. Psalm 110 will remind us of the lineage that results: You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek. Similarly, Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, will take five loaves and two fish, bless them, break them, and distribute them to the crowd. It is not, strictly speaking, a Eucharistic miracle, but the loaves and the fishes prefigures the institution of the Eucharist that will come with Jesus’ passion, death and rising. 

   

   Do this in remembrance of me, Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper. In other words, remember me into the present, make me present in the world! Having ascended to the Father, Jesus leaves behind no tangible body to walk the earth; we his Christian followers are called to remember what the sacrifice of Jesus was all about – charity and mercy for all – and to embody that love and mercy as we embrace our communal identity as the Body of Christ. Do this in remembrance of me! Are we ready? 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 2, 2024: This is my blood of the covenant...

This is my blood of the covenant…

What does sacrifice have to do with salvation? 

    Moses desperately wants the Israelites to obey the commandments of the Lord. When, in the Book of Exodus, Moses relates all the words and ordinances of the Lord to the people, they all answer with one voice: We will do everything that the Lord has told us. To solemnize this moment, Moses creates a formal covenant by means of a sacrifice: taking the blood of young bulls, Moses splashes half on the altar, then sprinkles the rest on the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you. A blood sacrifice was traditionally a way to ask for forgiveness of sin; when the people are marked with the blood of the covenant, they agree to participate as one body, bound together in a binding contract with the Lord. Therein lies their salvation. 

    Jesus’ disciples also participate in a covenant established in and through blood. At the Last Supper, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus breaks bread and then, when all have drunk from the cup, Jesus says, This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. His words, echoing Exodus, are meant to help the disciples to realize that they too are bound up in a covenant in which they must participate. In this, Christ is, as the Book of Hebrews tells us, the high priest who offers himself unblemished to God, the perfect sacrifice, offered freely, once and for all. Through the sacrifice of his own blood, Jesus washes away our sin, cleansing our consciences, and thereby making possible the salvation of the world – all this, that we might, as Psalm 116 suggests, offer the only sacrifice remaining to us: a sacrifice of thanksgiving in gratitude for the cup of salvation that is ours. Christ’s blood binds us; his sacrifice trumps all sacrifices. We too are called to participate in this covenant by obeying the commandments of the Lord, and by offering a sacrifice of praise for the tremendous gift of the Body and Blood of Christ, sacrificed on the cross. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 11, 2023: I am the living bread that came down from heaven...

I am the living bread that came down from heaven…

Why do we come together for Eucharist?

   The people of Israel know that it is important to celebrate the work God does every day in their lives. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem, goes the refrain of Psalm 147. Your prosperity is God’s gift to you; peace is the sign that God is taking care of you, as God takes care of Moses and the people in the desert. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people, Remember how for forty years now, the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying. God accompanies them through every difficulty, feeding them with manna, sharing with them his word, for not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. We have Scriptures such as this to help us understand what happened in our past and what could happen in our future; we understand from the stories of the manna in the desert and the water from a rock that God will never abandon us, but will provide us with the merciful care we need. 

    I am the living bread that came down from heaven, Jesus tells his disciples in John’s Gospel; I am, in other words, that very merciful care you need. Remembering past events into the present moment as he references the manna in the desert, and stating that, whoever eats this bread will live forever, Jesus calls us together in Eucharist and fills us with life, not temporary life, but life eternal. Through our participation in Eucharist, in his death and rising, we are spiritually fed; it is in Eucharist that we find our identity and our union, in the body and blood of Jesus himself. For, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, This cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? This bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? When we share together in Eucharist, we are one in Christ; the Eucharist is our participation in his blood, his death, his resurrection. Community is about unity with; communion is about union with and in. There is no room for division; we, though many, are one body, the Body of Christ, if only we gather to partake of that living bread come down from heaven.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 19, 2022: This is my body that is for you...

This is my body that is for you…

What is your experience of Eucharist?

    What happens when we come together for Eucharist? In his Letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives the first known account of the Last Supper, during which Jesus took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me, then repeated this with a cup of wine. To offer bread and wine is a common practice in Jewish celebration: in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus includes bread in his feeding of the five thousand, while in the Book of Genesis, Melchizedek, king of Salem, a priest of God Most High, makes the standard offering of bread and wine to Abram on the occasion of Abram’s great military victory. Melchizedek’s is the paradigm of the new priesthood that Jesus will come to establish. But there is a crucial difference: unlike Melchizedek, Jesus offers himself, the perfect offering, for our sins, once and for all. Jesus is a priest forever, in the line of Melchizedek, echoing Psalm 110, but Jesus’s is the ultimate sacrifice. But if Jesus’s is indeed the final and only sacrifice necessary, why do we come together to experience the sacrifice of the Mass?

    In fact, at the Last Supper, Jesus takes elements common to the Passover feast – the bread and the cup – and invests them with new meaning. Jesus is about to offer himself as a sacrifice for all: This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Our repetition of this moment is our ongoing participation in his death and rising; the sacrifice of the Mass is timeless -- it stands outside of time. This is the key point: every time we come together to celebrate Eucharist, we are participating in his death and rising, forever, giving witness to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and thus proclaiming the death of the Lord. It is this participation in Jesus Christ’s death and rising, and our concomitant proclamation, that we celebrate on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. 

    The abundance of God’s grace as seen in the feeding of the five thousand is a foreshadowing of the abundance of Eucharist and its power in our lives. At the sacrifice of the Mass, the essence of the bread and wine changes, becoming Christ’s essence; when we take Communion, we take Christ into our body, and Christ’s essence becomes a part of us. This is a stunning truth of our faith, an experience unlike any other, in any faith tradition. Do this in remembrance of me, Jesus told his disciples. When we open ourselves to his presence, to his essence, we are one with him – we are the Body of Christ. And that is what Eucharist is all about. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class. 

Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 3, 2018: This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many...

 This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many… 

 What does it mean to live in a covenant relationship with God? 

   In the Book of Exodus, Moses reads the book of the covenant aloud to the people. It is their first real experience of covenant, and it is grounded in a ritual that involves holocausts and sacrifices, after which blood is splashed on the altar and sprinkled on the people.  This common offering, an offering made by the community to God, unites them as a people under the law, and the people respond, All that the Lord has said, we will heed and do.  The people of Israel have thus, in ritual form, committed the whole of themselves, their life and their being, to God.  As such, their promise is not unlike the ritual commitment evoked in Psalm 116, in which the psalmist takes up the cup of salvation and calls upon the name of the Lord, offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving in the presence of God’s people.

   We recognize a similar ritual in the sacrifice of the Mass, as described in Mark’s Gospel:  Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, gave it to them, and said, Take it; this is my body.  Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it.  Jesus clearly references the sacrifice typical of Jewish ritual in this passage, but here, he indicates that he is the new sacrifice: This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.  Jesus is, as the Letter to the Hebrews points out, the mediator of a new covenant, the one and final oblation.  Having shared a common cup with his disciples, Jesus becomes both high priest and sacrifice, obtaining our eternal redemption with his own blood.

   When we celebrate Jesus’ death and rising, we are participating in the one sacrifice, in the very death of Jesus.  The Mass is not symbolic of that death; it is participation in it, and in the new covenant effected in his blood, in his flesh.  His is the blood that cleanses our consciences, that we might learn to participate fully in his life.  Like the people of Israel, we are called to dedicate our very lives, the whole of our being, to Jesus – Eucharist calls for just such a commitment of the whole of our selves to life in Christ.  It is what unites us as a people; through ritual, we come to live that covenant with God, with full participation, the whole of our life.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordle.net