TAKE IT; THIS IS MY BODY

Ex 24,3-8; Ps 115; Heb 9,11-15; Mk 14,12-16.22-26
3 JUNE
In the Eucharist, the Father, who is the source and spring of all holiness, truth and omnipotence, reveals all his love, sending the Holy Spirit to transform the bread into the body of Christ and the wine into his blood, for the sacramental mediation of the priest, who acts in the name of Christ Jesus. In this sacrament there is the work of the Blessed Trinity and of the Church in an admirable synergy of gift and faith. God puts his gift. The Church puts her faith. The gift is given for faith, but it must also be received in faith.

“This is my body”. It is the body of the sacrifice, of the atonement, of the holocaust, of the true redemption of the sin of the world. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews:

Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of them, it can never make perfect those who come to worship by the same sacrifices that they offer continually each year. Otherwise, would not the sacrifices have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, once cleansed, would no longer have had any consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices there is only a yearly remembrance of sins, for it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats take away sins. For this reason, when he came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in. Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God.'” First he says, “Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delighted in.” These are offered according to the law. Then he says, “Behold, I come to do your will.” He takes away the first to establish the second. By this “will,” we have been consecrated through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (Heb 10,1-10).

That body which has operated the great, true, universal expiation of the sin of the world, is given to us as our nourishment so that for it we bring to completion the work of our full purification from all guilt. By eating the body of Christ, the disciple of Jesus must also transform his body into an offering to the Father for the redemption of his brothers. One becomes a single body and even a single holocaust.

On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” He sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city and a man will meet you, carrying a jar of water.  Follow him. Wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”‘ Then he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready. Make the preparations for us there.” The disciples then went off, entered the city, and found it just as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover. While they were eating, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. Amen, I say to you, I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” Then, after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

“This is my blood of the covenant”. Drinking Christ’s blood, one becomes with God, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, one life, one will, one thought and one desire of salvation and redemption. The love of the Father must become love of the Christian. As the Father gave his Only Son, out of love and the Son let himself be given, so the Christian who feeds on the blood of Christ must let himself be given by the Father for the salvation of his brothers. Without the gift of the Christian, the blood of Christ lacks its powerful efficacy of redemption. The blood of Christ, having become the blood of the disciple, manifests to the world all its power of salvation. For the Eucharist Christ and the Christian become one gift, the gift of the Father for the redemption of the world. Thanks to the Eucharist, the Christian is constituted holocaust of salvation.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints ensure that the Christian never receives the Eucharist in vain.