Please read this passage before reading the homily.
My sisters and brothers,
Today we celebrate the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. The feast recalls the manna God used to feed the Israelites in the desert and celebrates Christ’s presence to us under both form of bread and wine.
In the gospel Jesus speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He commands us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. He is speaking of his real flesh and real blood, not in a cannibalistic way, but in a real way, nonetheless. We call it real and sacramental, which means that the reality is hidden under signs. Sacramental, by the way, means “by way of signs”.
We can only eat his flesh and drink his blood because Christ has flesh and blood: he has a real body, one like ours. He shares his real body and blood with us. He does this because he shares our humanness and also because he gives his body and blood as food for us.
Some cultures eat the blood of sacrificial victim, human and animal, believing that they will share in the strength and power of the person or animal. When we eat and drink the body ands blood of Christ, we share in his triumph over sin and death, which is how we shall live forever).
There is a catch here. If we eat and drink, then we have to share. As we become more Christ, we have to behave more like Christ. As Christ has given us his body and blood, which he has by dying for us and rising from the dead for us, we have to give to others our body and blood, which is now blessed into Christ’s body and blood.
It is easy to receive communion; it is difficult to give or share communion. In receiving we take into ourselves Christ, and in sharing we are letting go of that body and blood, now joined to our body and blood.
We are the body of Christ. We, the body of Christ, receive the body of Christ and become more the body of Christ.
At Mass we are told to “Do this in commemoration of” him, that is, give your body and blood for others to feast on really and sacramentally. We must make our bodies, our selves, our lives into whatever is necessary for others so that they can live. Just as our human meals take us from the table to life’s work, so our Eucharistic meals must take us out to the others in need.