Today we celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi, the feast of the body and the blood Christ. After the feast of Assension of the Lord, Pentecost and Holy Trinity we celebrate the feast of the body and the blood of Christ. Through this feast we confess our faith in the presence of God among us.
The first reading of today’s liturgy reports how ancient people made sacrifices to God and how they made covenants with God, and the second reading reports on the sacrifice of Christ in the New Testament. For example: Moses set up an altar at the foot of the mountain and slaughtered young animals. He sprinkled half of the blood on the altar and the other half he sprinkled on the people. Today we cannot imagine slaughtering animals in the liturgy and sprinkling the blood on the congregation. In ancient times, people believed that by sprinkling blood on the people, they were sealing a community of blood relation between God and the people, like a community of blood relation in the family.
We know from the Bible how it was for the Jews to make a blood-sacrifice. In several religions, a blood-sacrifice is considered an important service to worship God, even today. For example, there is a temple in Nepal where millions of people gather once in five years and slaughter 250,000 animals as sacrifices to God.
There are over 400 different sacrifices in Hinduism, one of which is the horse sacrifice, which only a king is allowed to make to worship God and ask for God’s protection for his kingdom. Historically proven horse sacrifices were last in the 17th century and before that in the 12th century, both without success and in 380 AD and 185 BC with success. If a king successfully performed a horse sacrifice, he was called king of all the world. It is interesting to know how a horse sacrifice was celebrated. To do this, a horse had to be chosen that was not younger than 24 years old and not older than 100 years old. After the ritual ceremony, this horse was allowed to run free for a year, accompanied by at least 100 armed soldiers. If this horse entered the territory of the enemy kingdom, these kings had to be fought and defeated because it was understood as the will of God. After a year, this horse was brought back to the royal palace, where it was slaughtered along with a lamb, an ox and 17 other animals and sacrificed to God. The main queen stayed with the horse all night and everyone else sang spiritual songs. The next day the meat was eaten.
In comparison with the detailed blood-sacrifice of Judaism and the blood sacrifice of Hinduism, we heard in today’s second reading that Jesus did not want to seal the blood communion between God and the people with the blood of goats and animals, but with his own blood.
The Holy Eucharist and the Feast of Corpus Christi remind us that today, in order to seal this blood-communion with God, we must not shed blood, but rather offer bread and vine as flesh and blood. Bread and vine are foods that we can use every day and the meal-community is something natural for people. In the gathering of people in the name of Jesus, Jesus is present and in the meal-community we can offer sacrifices to God in the form of bread and wine.
As we celebrate every year the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ and go in procession through the streets with consecrated bread, which is the Holy Eucharist we confess that we do not need to make expensive and bloody sacrifices to worship God to believe in his presence among us, but that through the simple sharing of meals, through human encounters in the name of Jesus, through bread and wine, we can show him our gratitude and present our requests to him. The Eucharist is a great mystery of the experience of God, which we cannot understand and explain well, but we can always experience more deeply and intensively if we believe in it and let this experience grow into our hearts.
We can be very grateful for this revelation of the simplicity of the experience of God and the simplicity of worship. We are convinced that God does not desire a blood-sacrifice or a burnt offering, but love and mercy.
The Eucharist as a meal with bread and vine is a sacrament of love and a sacrament of mercy, as we sing in “Tantum ergo”, the sacrament of God’s love. This simplicity, humanity, mercy or community is what is special in Christianity.
On the Feast of the Body and the Blood of Christ, let us try to experience the love and mercy of God through Christ’s words and signs and feel his presence in the heart.
Through the celebration of the Eucharist and through the Eucharistic procession we confess today that the life, work, message and the self-giving of Jesus is very important for us. It is our profession of faith and confession of conviction. It is a mission and an invitation with which we let many of our fellow humans to profit from our Christian values.
It was his love and commitment that motivated Jesus to surrender his life for the liberation of his people. I understand his giving of his body as food and blood as drink as his readiness to commit himself fully. In the celebration of the commemoration of Jesus‘ commitment in the Eucharistic celebration we experience personally his love, his commitment, relation to the humans, his self giving. in the form of bread and wine we experience Jesus‘ readiness and his message. We confess our faith in him and pray that let His Holy Spirit inspire us and guide us.
Fr. Joseph Pandiappallil MCBS