Body And Blood

Once upon a time, a miser hid his gold at the foot of a tree in his garden. Every week he would dig it up and look at it for hours.  

One day a thief dug up the gold and stole it. When the miser next came to gaze upon his treasure all he found was an empty hole.

The man began to howl with grief so his neighbors came running to find out what the trouble was.  When they found out, one of them asked, “Did you use any of the gold?”

“No,” said the miser. “I only looked at it every week.”

“Well then,” said the neighbor, “for all the good the gold did you, you might just as well now come every week and gaze upon the hole.

What gold, what treasure, do we look at every week?  It’s the Body and Blood of Christ, although we do more than look at it. It is our food and drink that gives us spiritual nourishment.

Still, are we like the miser who just gazes upon it without using that gold each day of the week and throughout the year?  In other words, does the neighbor’s insight apply to us. Does the Body and Blood of Christ – the Eucharist – really and truly give us spiritual nourishment?  Because if it doesn’t transform us when we receive Christ and take him into us, then when we leave this church to love and serve the Lord, we might as well have been gazing upon an empty hole.

Today is the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ so this story takes on special meaning for those of us who don’t fully understand and appreciate what we will receive later in this Mass – Christ’s real presence.  

What does real presence mean? We could go to the US Conference of Catholic Bishop website, and if we do, we would find a five-page question and answer sheet.  TMI – too much information presented with formality and in great historic detail.

As an alternative we can refer to Father Ronald Rolheiser who wrote of the real presence in his 2011 book “Our Great Act of Fidelity: Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist.” He wrote: “A God who is everywhere is, for us, at a certain point, nowhere. We are human.  We need a God who has some skin, who can be located, who can somehow be physically touched. In Christ, God took on physical flesh and became tangible, physical, someone who can touch and be touched.

The Eucharist is God’s physical presence, God’s real presence in the world. The Eucharist is the place where God continues to take concrete physical flesh just as he once did in the womb of Mary. In the Eucharist, the word continues to become flesh.”

Those are Rolheiser’s insights.

God also has skin or flesh in the world through us. Christ’s real presence is found in the person of the priest who offers the sacrifice of the Mass. Christ’s real presence is in his Word spoken by the lectors and the deacons.  Christ’s real presence is in you – the assembled people gathered here to worship, sing, and pray.  Christ’s real presence is in all the wonders of creation.  

A useful way to understand this profound claim about Christ’s real appearances is when each of us approaches the altar to receive a host raised before our eyes, we hear “The Body of Christ.” We are reminded that we are the body of Christ. We are in communion with him.  Christ is present in us, and we must be present to him; that is, to welcome Christ and to be his body – his arms, his legs, his mouth, his heart to do his will which is to love and serve God with all our hearts, minds, and souls and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  All very challenging but necessary tasks especially with our nation and so many Catholic worshipers being so divided on and angry about many religious and political issues.

Now, we are also the blood of Christ. We don’t hear those words when the host is held before our eyes. Perhaps we think of the blood only as the consecrated wine in the chalice left on the altar.  Let’s remember that the Eucharist – the host – is the body and blood as well. Therefore, we need to have an understanding about blood, not just the body.  

We usually only think about blood when we have wounded or cut ourselves, and out it comes.   Some people faint at the sight of bright red blood. Other people are fascinated by it and even study its live-giving and saving properties, such as hospital laboratory hematologists involved with blood types, blood diseases, and blood donations. 

What is blood?  Blood is a specialized body fluid composed of plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.  Blood has many different functions including: transporting oxygen and nutrients to the lungs and tissues; forming blood clots to prevent too much blood loss; carrying cells and antibodies that fight infection, such as COVID; bringing waste products to the kidneys and liver that filter and clean the blood; and regulating body temperature.  

Most of us give great deference to the heart – the seat of love, so we romanticize it. But the heart is only a pump. What’s most important and impressive is that which runs through our body in tubes and tiny channels – arteries, veins, and capillaries – our blood enabling us to live. Lose too much blood and we pass out. Blood transfusions can save us when we begin to bleed out after an accident, for example. Blood donors give life to those who desperately need it.

By the way, Jesus had to be blood type O – not A, B, or AB. We know this because if you are type O, any person having the other blood types can receive a transfusion with your blood. Therefore, Jesus was and still is what is called a universal blood donor. We can all receive his blood – ad donation we receive at every Mass.

We all know of the sacred heart of Jesus. He pumps us up, and through the Eucharist his blood enters us and gives us spiritual life. Through his blood – the Eucharist – we are to heal, to save, to fight those terrible infections we call evil, and to rid ourselves of waste products we call regret and guilt thereby making us clean. Yes indeed, the Body and Blood of Christ has life-saving properties.

We end with this story written by Father William J. Bausch – a retired, and very well-written priest from New Jersey.  It can be found in his book “A World of Stories for Preachers and Teachers,” 

There once was a wealthy man who always gave a dinner once a month for his friends. It so happened that on one occasion a few of his closest friends were sick and unable to attend.

The man wanted to save a part of the celebration for his absent friends, so he took a bottle of his best wine from the table and put it in a special box. That way he would have it when his friends arrived.

He then went to his servant and told him: “Please make sure you respect what’s in that box because what is there has a special purpose for our guests.”

The servant didn’t really understand, but he respected the wishes of his master by bowing every time he passed the box.

Well, not long after, the master died, but the monthly meals continued. The servant would tell the guests of the master’s wishes; that they, like he, were to respect the special box.  So the meals began to grow more and more serious.  Instead of celebrating together as friends, they began to eat in silence and to gaze with respect at the box.

No question about it, each Mass is a serious event, but not so serious we should eat in silence and only gaze at the box – the Tabernacle. When we do this, we tend to face forward and forget our neighbors sitting besides us and around us. We forget we are a community.

Our sacrament of bread and wine is about the death and resurrection of Jesus but it’s also about sharing of food and drink in the company of friends – new and old – and even with our enemies.  

This sharing was a central feature of Jesus’ mission because meals were linked to his healings and teachings. They were about unity, empathy, and relationships.  We are here in this Church to celebrate, to share, and to be with each other as friends.  We are to be present to each other in a very real and tangible way.

And by the way, today is Father’s Day so all fathers, grandfathers and those serving as fathers never forget we must be present to our children in real and tangible ways. After all, they are our “blood.” 

Deacon David Pierce