The Body and Blood of Christ, June 22, 2025

2025 Jun 22 SUN: THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST S
Gn 14: 18-20/ Ps 110: 1. 2. 3. 4/ 1 Cor 11: 23-26/ Optional Sequence Lauda, Sion/ Lk 9: 11b-17

This solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ was instituted in the 13th century. There were people at that time who said, "There needs to be a celebration of the Holy Eucharist which is apart from Holy Thursday." Apparently they had the idea that celebrating the Eucharist on Holy Thursday, the day it was instituted, made things too somber because Jesus' betrayal and arrest and condemnation and crucifixion immediately followed. 

Well, I don't think that we can separate the mystery of the Holy Eucharist from those events because Jesus was instituting the Eucharist so that, as Saint Paul says today, we can proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again. So we have from Saint Paul this most ancient account of what the earliest Christians did right away after the resurrection and after Pentecost, after the Pentecost event: they gathered together to celebrate the Lord's Supper. 

We also have today this very brief passage from the book of Genesis. There is a concept in Scripture study and it's called typology. In other words, when we examine the Old Testament we can discover things that seem to point to persons and things that happen in the New Testament; and probably the strongest example of typology is Melchizedek. We have to think about this figure who very quickly appears and then just as quickly disappears. He is described as the King of Salem or Jerusalem, so he can [also] be understood as king of righteousness.* That's what we get out of Melchizedek or from the name of Salem, Jerusalem, a king of peace, Shalom. He is described as the king of Salem or Jerusalem and this is more than a thousand years before David claimed Jerusalem as his city. We don't know the origins of Melchizedek and we don't know where he goes after this incident recorded for us in the 14th chapter of Genesis; and he offers bread and wine. So this is a very powerful image of Jesus himself, king of righteousness, king of peace, eternal high priest. These are the many things that we find in Melchizedek which point to Jesus himself. 

So then we come to the Gospel, and I believe that every one of us is always conscious of our need for food such that we will not wander out somewhere where we can't eat or drink. But this is exactly what the people following Jesus did, and I think that this is an indication to us that the people who were following Jesus were well aware of a hunger that went much deeper than the hunger for physical food. They considered all the woes and griefs of their life and they said, "I am in fact hungry for something deeper. I am hungry for my life to make sense and especially for interactions among people to make sense." And so we have this incident recorded. This is actually one of many in the four gospels of Jesus multiplying food. And we see that it is saying, "Yes, we have the deepest needs and hungers of them all. We hunger for life to make sense, for our relationships to make sense, and we find the fullness of sense, of peace, and of love." As Jesus says, "I will not simply feed you with loaves and fishes. I will feed you with myself."

*The "tzedek" of his name refers to righteousness.