IN COMMUNION WITH CHRIST, we find our ourselves both at one with his humanity and divinity; sharing his ministry and his glory. For never was a promise more fulfilled than that of Christ’s real presence among us, both sacramentally through the Eucharist and spiritually through the working of the Holy Spirit in his body, the Church.
The celebration of today’s solemn feast is not just a reminder of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but also a call to participate in the fullest extent of communion with Christ, which begins with the intimate encounter with Christ in the Mass and proceeds from this intimacy to community, where we both encounter and become the living body of Christ in the world.
Undoubtedly the greatest gift of Christ’s abiding presence with us in the world today is the Holy Spirit, sent for the sanctification of our lives and as the fulfilment of Christ’s promise to be with us until the end of days. It is this Holy Spirit that makes real the presence of Christ today, for the salvation of mankind; for without it the story of salvation would have ended with the ascension of the Lord to God’s right hand, and we would have been lost forever.
This same Spirit comes upon the gifts of bread and wine so that the perfect offering may be made of Christ’s body and blood in the holy sacrifice of the Mass. The Lord’s presence in the bread of life and the cup of eternal salvation is thereby made real, that through nourishment with his body and blood, we may partake in this most intimate communion with Christ and come to know him as Lord and Saviour, just as surely as he was known thus by the apostles who shared this sacred meal with him on the night before he suffered death.
How blessed we are then, that we should have God in the flesh as the sustenance of our faith and the object of our most profound adoration! How blessed, and in equal measure, how challenged! For this bread is Christ's real flesh and this wine is his real blood; the blood of the New Covenant, which challenges us to live as Christ lived and to love as he loved. For what is participation in the Eucharistic Feast without a gratefulness of heart that moves us to share the Good News of salvation with the world? And what is adoration of his presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament without that love overflowing into our lives and touching all those whom he loved?
The communion to which we are called – the experience of Christ’s real presence in our lives – is not only to be found in the Blessed Sacrament, but also – through our participation in this living sacrifice – in the community of the faithful; “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” [1Cor.10:17].
The Church – the communion of saints triumphant, penitent and militant – which is the guardian of the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, is imbued with his Holy Spirit and is one body, one spirit in Christ. For not any man who eats bread and drinks wine is the recipient of the grace of Christ's presence. The Church stands as guardian and guide, as giver and guarantor of the truth of his abiding presence – a mission that each of us is called to fulfil. For each of us is reborn in the Spirit, baptised in the very name of God, and filled with God’s graces through the sacraments, the chiefest of which is that of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us then, on this feast of Corpus Christi, give the Blessed Sacrament the highest veneration possible, by renewing our faith in Christ’s real presence therein, and by rekindling our desire to seek perfect communion with him: Firstly, our personal communion with the Lord through which our souls find nourishment and our mortal bodies taste the divine, and through which we awe in his presence and recall his love for us. And also our communion with Christ in all who partake of the bread of heaven and the cup of blessing; we who are now the living body of Christ in the world; we who have received the gifts of his Spirit, (as the Apostle Paul says) some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and others pastors and teachers, but all of us equipped, as the many parts that make up Christ’s body, for the work of his ministry and the building up of the Body of Christ.
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