Please read the passage above before the homily.
My sisters and brothers,
In chapters 10-14 of First Corinthians, St Paul was teaching the Corinthians and us the truths of Christ. Some of the instructions was on the truth of the Body of Christ.
One part of this instruction was about the last supper of the Lord. We know this part. Jesus took the bread and the cup, saying “This is my Body and this is the cup of my Blood.” Why did St Paul want to teach us that the bread and the wine were truly the body and blood of Christ? Because the Corinthians were treating the Eucharist as an ordinary meal, a time for talking, eating, drinking and getting drunk. Each of the Corinthians was promoting his or her own thing, not the well-being of the community. On the other hand, it was the whole community of the Corinthians who were the Body and Blood of Christ and celebrating the Body and Blood of Christ. The reality of the bread and wine is likewise the reality of us.
In the Mass it is the same for us. When we are gathered for the celebration of the body and blood of Christ in each Eucharist, we, who are the body and blood of Christ, have to see ourselves and all the rest in the bread and the wine of the Mass. We, who are truly the body of Christ, receive the body of Christ and become more so the body of Christ.
We are the Body of Christ. and we are gathered to celebrate the body and blood that we are and that is also under the forms of bread and wine.
In the Mass there are two petitions in each Eucharistic Prayer: (1) that the gifts of bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ; and (2) that “we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy spirit, may become one body, one spirit in CHrist5.ransform us into a permanent offering and form us in Christ into one body an one spirit in the words of the Third Eucharistic Prayer.
All this is to say that the celebration of the Body and the Blood of Christ is the celebration of ourselves as the body of Christ. We receive worthily the bread and wine of the Eucharist when we recognize ourselves and all the other people as the body of Christ. We cannot receive worthily by ourselves alone. We, who are the body of Christ, receive the body of Christ and become more so the body and blood of Christ.