Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ
Preaching by Sister Marilyn Barnett, OP

Sunday, June 22, 2025
Genesis 14:18-20
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Luke 9:11b-17

 

I prepared this reflection on The Body and Blood of Christ well before the event that happed last night when we learned that President Trump ordered the bombing and destruction of three nuclear facilities in Iran. We, as a nation, are now in a place we hoped we would never again be. Our thoughts and feelings are many, and our fears real. What will happen? Where do we turn? What do we do?

Yesterday, in this holy place, we celebrated in The Eucharist the lives of so many of our Sisters and the myriad ways they have made this world a better place through the many years of pouring out their love of God.

Today, in this holy place, we gather again to celebrate the Eucharist on this Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. And what better place to be. We who are the body of Christ. God speaks to us in so many ways and Eucharist is God’s chosen way. I hope this reflection will renew your hope that this is where we turn and what we do as Christ’s Body.

Today’s feast of The Solemnity of The Body and Blood of Christ, for most of us, is still referred to as the Feast of Corpus Christi. This feast of Corpus Christi was first proposed by Thomas Aquinas to Pope Urban IV, and created in 1264 as a feast which focused solely on the Holy Eucharist.

It became associated with processions of the monstrance carrying the Holy Eucharist around the church – or outside, in climates that were amicable – and usually after the processions the celebration of Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament took place. (Tantum ergo…)

Corpus Christi became a yearly festive event with wreaths of flowers, green boughs, and the ringing church bells, and it took on the culture of different countries in its celebrations. In Brazil/Portugal, people laid down street carpets of sand, salt, flowers; in Peru it was surrounded by festivals and music.

Over the centuries it developed primarily as a devotional feast. Its name was changed after Vatican Council II to "The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ," in consideration of the developing theology taking place in scripture and ecclesiology, as well as in the emerging understanding of our place in the universe.

The Council in 1962 tried to move us from adoration to ‘meal.’ In 1826, Brillat-Savarin, the French gastronome, wrote, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."

When we gather for worship, we bring to public ritual expression our understanding of and relationship with
   • the God of Jesus Christ, 
   • Jesus, The Word and Sacrament, 
   • and one another, as the Body of Christ.

This public ritual expression, or liturgy, expresses and forms our identity as Christians – It is a communal act. Together, we celebrate sacraments.

Vatical Council II in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy describes public worship/liturgy as the heartbeat of Christian life, the gathering of the body of Christ together – to pray, to give thanks, to remember the ancient stories that tell us who we are – and then to send us back into the world to live out these stories.

Eucharist is the center of this life. As we know there are four distinct sections to our Eucharistic celebrations:
   • Introduction 
   • Liturgy of the Word 
   • Liturgy of the Eucharist 
   • Closing.

The first and last sections are deliberately short and are, as they say, a way of getting to the ‘meat’ of the liturgical celebration. The Liturgy of the Word has been described as an opportunity 
   • to eat and consume the readings proclaimed,
   • to listen and digest the scriptures of the day,
   • to make these scriptures an integral part of our lives and our prayer.

The Liturgy of the Eucharist depicts what we do. The Eucharist prayer, which is addressed to God, is a prayer of thanksgiving to God for all God’ s blessings and for the gift of Jesus. It describes in great beauty our purpose for gathering as a community of faith. It describes the energy of Divine Presence amidst us, which we might call grace or the Spirit, and it describes God’s gift of God’s self in the bread and wine transformed into the body and blood of Christ. ‘It is almost beyond imagination that we are being fed with the very life of God.’

While I was studying Sacramental Theology, one of my colleagues also studying in this field told me something I will never forget. She said, “Marilyn, if we really understood what we were doing when we celebrate Eucharist, our knees would tremble.” And, sacramental theologian Kathleen Hughes adds: “We celebrate the Eucharist as promise-makers, as those who know their need of God and the nourishment of holy food and drink to live a faithful life.”

Proclaiming the scriptures feeds and resolves our minds & hearts, eating the meal feeds and strengthens our hearts and bodies.

How we partake and eat the foods of Word and Sacrament affect/impact us, just as much as the meals we consume. So, as we reflect back to yesterday and the meal we consumed as a continuation of our identity as The Body of Christ, and as we recalled today’s Gospel narrative of the multiplication of loaves and fishes, we pray that the love expressed in that meal be multiplied, and feed a world today hungering for peace.

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."