Please read the passage first.
I like family meals. Each member serves herself or himself from the same platters and bowls. Those who share the same food likewise share the same life. Those who eat the same food make up one family, one community. The family meal brings together all who share the same food.
The blessing-cup, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The loaf of bread which we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Sharing in the Eucharistic banquet is sharing in the oneness of the body of Christ. Many of you, however, were not able to receive communion from this banquet during the pandemic. This communion at Mass, however, is the climax and the seal of your communion and oneness with Christ and with the rest of the human race.
In the sharing of your food, your time, your energy, your wealth, and your lives with your families, with your friends, with the needy and with the sick, you had communion with the body and blood of Christ. You can call this a spiritual communion, a real and true communion with Christ and his body, which includes all people with Christ.
St Augustine says that, “We who are the body of Christ, eat the body of Christ and become more the body of Christ.”
This is a deep mystery. The Son of God became a human being. The bread and the wine become the body and blood of Christ. The body and blood become the one and only Christ. This one and only Christ includes the divine and human natures of Christ along with all those who believe, including you and me, under the forms of bread and wine.
This communion is not only a communion of God with each of us, but a communion of God, of all of us and of all others together. It is a communion that excludes no one.
The cup unites us all together. The bread unites us all together. The bread, which is made from many grains of wheat, and the wine, which is made from many grapes, forms the many of us into the one body of Christ. Just as there is only one God, so likewise there is only one Christ. The body of Christ in its glory is the same body of Christ which is Christ’s Church, and the same body of Christ made with the Eucharistic bread. Christ unites the many into his one body. There is only one body of Christ, but there are many facets of this one body.
On this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, we celebrate the oneness of God with us through the body of Christ.