Corpus Christi

[SPEAKER_00]: are reading from the book of Duteronomy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Moses said to the people, remember how the Lord your God led you for 40 years in the wilderness, to humble you, to test you, and to know your inmost heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

[SPEAKER_00]: He humbled you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He made you feel hunger.

[SPEAKER_00]: He fed you with man, I which needing you, know your father's had known, to make you understand that man does not live on bread alone, but that man lives on everything that comes from the mouth of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do not forget the Lord of God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who guided you through this vast and dreadful wilderness, a land of fiery serpents, scorpions, thirst,

[SPEAKER_00]: who in this world then is fed you with manner that your fathers had not known, the word of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: The response to our Your Psalm is praise the Lord Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_00]: or prays the Lord Jerusalem, Zion, praise your God, He has strengthened the bars of your gates, He has blessed the children within you, prays the Lord Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_00]: He established peace on your borders, He feeds you with the finest wheat, He sends out His word to the earth and swiftly runs His command, prays the Lord Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_00]: He makes his word known to Jacob, to Israel, his laws and to crease.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has not dealt thus with other nations, he has not taught them his decrees.

[SPEAKER_00]: Praise the Lord Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_00]: A reading from the first letter of St. Paul's The Corinthians.

[SPEAKER_00]: The blessing cup that we bless is a communion with the body of Christ and the bread that we break is a communion with the body of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that there is only one loaf means that, though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one loaf.

[SPEAKER_00]: The word of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Reading from the Holy Gospel according to John.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus said to the Jews, I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.

[SPEAKER_01]: Anyone who eats the spread will live forever, and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then the Jews started arguing with one another, how can this man give us his flesh to eat they said?

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus replied, I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day.

[SPEAKER_01]: for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.

[SPEAKER_01]: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.

[SPEAKER_01]: As I, who am sent by the living Father, my self-drawn life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the bread come down from heaven, not like the bread our ancestors ate, they are dead, but anyone who eats the spread will live forever.

[SPEAKER_01]: On the Feast of Corpus Christi, there's beautiful Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus, meaning Body, we reflect on the gift and the court of the Eucharist on our lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wherever we are, wherever we find ourselves in our lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: In our first reading from Deuteronomy, we see an interesting contrast as Moses reminds the Israelites not to forget God when they reach the Promised Land.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we have the reminder of Israel sort of wondering in the desert which is presented as a trial and just to clarify they're wondering in the desert was a test that wasn't a punishment.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is perhaps where sometimes people get a wrong when they read about this period in the Old Testament that when the Israelites eventually reach the Promised Land that they can finally sort of relax and just chill because the test will be over.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this is not true.

[SPEAKER_01]: We can see from the text that the author thinks that the settlement in the Promised Land of Canaan will be a continuation of the test.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so the question will be then, will they continue to keep God's commandments?

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when they were struggling in the wilderness, it was a testing by a hardship.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in Canaan, it will be testing by abundance.

[SPEAKER_01]: They'll have everything that they need.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so when the people were struggling in the wilderness, they were mowning and complaining and they were better.

[SPEAKER_01]: But we see later, after they arrived in Canaan, this bitterness very quickly gave way to like self-righteousness and overconfidence, you know, we, or Israel.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it must not be this way with us, whether we, in our lives, are in the season of the wilderness or a season of plenty.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you have these two seasons of the wilderness in Plenty and we see this in real life, we see this in our own lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: And either one of them, they can both be a reason for faith or an excuse for our lack of faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so you can see sometimes people idolize the poor.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they think that they have more faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that's not necessarily true.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we see massively inflated rates of alcolism and domestic violence among the poor.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not exclusive to them, but it's certainly at a much higher rate, like up to eight times the state average than people that are well off.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so in the wilderness of poverty, people are as likely to get better towards God as they are to find solace or to surrender in trust and depend on Him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then on the flip side we see in the wealthy communities, it's sort of a type of apathy and even an antagonistic attitude to God, you know, as wealthy people become sort of distanful of religion because they think, like, self-sufficient, that don't need God.

[SPEAKER_01]: This day sort of, I'm self-made, I've worked so hard and I've built this big business or whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: But as Rick Warren put it, the problem with self-made man is that he usually worships his maker.

[SPEAKER_01]: Until, of course, they, or someone they love, is faced with a tragedy or an illness that no amount of money or power can solve.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll never forget the image of Steve Jobs when he was quite far advanced in cancer and he was a sort of sort of him in his series SL55 and I thought, well, all that money he's still dying anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: In our lives, when we are faced with hardship, do we ask, what is God allowing this to happen to me?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or do we ask, what is it that He needs me to hear or learn or become from this experience?

[SPEAKER_01]: And then in our plenty season of plenty, do we think, well, I've done really well.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm so much better at this than everybody else, you know, financially.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm certain these idiots who didn't put money aside or maybe you've achieved an academic degree.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you've got your PhD or your masters or whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you think, oh, these losers, that don't know anything.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're just ignorant.

[SPEAKER_01]: Even when you have spiritual arrogance, oh, my prayer life is great at the moment and yeah, I'll get a church every Sunday And I'm not like these other people that should maybe be pray a little bit more This is the path to spiritual death No less than than the despair during our trials when we're in the wilderness

[SPEAKER_01]: The word Communion, it suggests the sharing in the life of our Lord and becoming one with him and each other.

[SPEAKER_01]: And our union with Jesus is promoted by all the sacraments, whether it's baptism, it's confirmation, whether it's marriage or ordination, whatever it is.

[SPEAKER_01]: Through the grace that these sacraments give us.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in the Eucharist, this union happens at a whole different level, because we can receive not only the grace, but that very source of grace, and some Paul in the second reading emphasizes this unity, this quinoa, for both Christ and believers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our union with with him with Jesus and with each other, and you can think about it

[SPEAKER_01]: He becomes part of your blood flow, in your body, there is nothing more intimate than that.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are a few other feasts that are as Catholic if I can put it that way as this feast of corpus Christi.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's what distinguishes us from most of our Pentecostal or Protestant brothers and sisters.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not dissing Protestants.

[SPEAKER_01]: I married one, okay, eventually.

[SPEAKER_01]: She got voted.

[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the day, my mom was also angry.

[SPEAKER_01]: So,

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's not a dozen of them, it's just that you cannot deny the reality of transubstantiation, meaning the bread and the wine becoming Christ's body and blood, if you read our gospel, John, and John 6, and you read that it's their entirety, unless, you know, if you're a theological contortionist or you're doing some spectacular theological gymnastics to try and deny it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The text is so stock.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's so raw.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's clear.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Eucharist is not a symbol of Christ's body.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is his body.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's why the priest is a priest and not just a pastor because he offers sacrifice.

[SPEAKER_01]: Listen to the language of John.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm not the formulas that you see in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew Mark and Luke.

[SPEAKER_01]: And even in Paul, John refers to the body of Christ by the word socks, meaning flesh.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not summer, which means body.

[SPEAKER_01]: socks, flesh.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so when people try to spiritualize a way, the meaning of the text by saying it was symbolic.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is not really his body and blood.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just the the bridge just symbolizes his body and the wine just symbolizes his blood.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are showing complete disregard for the original text.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we see the significant words here of flesh, blood, eat, drink, and the repetition of the more physical verb, in Greek, then eat.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's translated as eat, but it's not that in verses 49 and 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58.

[SPEAKER_01]: The word is not eat.

[SPEAKER_01]: The word that Jesus uses is more like chew or nor.

[SPEAKER_01]: The way an animal feeds on a carcass.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so he's trying to emphasize the physicality of the reality.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just a spiritual thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: So although we know the writer doesn't be in the flesh and the blood of the earthly Jesus that we are asked to eat and drink, we're not talking about cannibalism here.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is the spurred fold flesh and blood of the heavenly Son of Man.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's why we worship and genuflet and kneel before the Eucharist.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't do that before statues.

[SPEAKER_01]: We reverence statues for what they represent, but we don't worship them, but we worship the bread and the wine that has become the body and blood of Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Jesus is here as understand fully what he means, but they cannot believe what he says could be true.

[SPEAKER_01]: If they had understood him in sort of a metaphorical or symbolic way, there would be no reason for them to be so offended, so surprised.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there'd be nothing to cause an argument, it would have been, oh, that's a nice symbol.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because, remember, the idea of eating flesh and drinking blood was offensive, deeply offensive to the Jews.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think of Genesis 9, you think of Leviticus 3, Deuteronomy 12, Ezekiel 39, so we have here a crisis of belief that disciples murmur and they take a fence.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so the scandal in a sense of Jesus confronts them with their decision, are you going to believe or aren't you going to believe?

[SPEAKER_01]: and later on in the gospel, Jesus reaffirms what he has said.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't say, I'm going to lie, sorry, but what I meant was it was symbolic.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't explain it away.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he doubles down.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so yes, Jesus eludes in the gospel to the bread that was given to the Jewish ancestors, the mannet in the desert.

[SPEAKER_01]: But he says this is different.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we mustn't ignore also the

[SPEAKER_01]: In some of the sacrifices of the Old Testament, for example, in Exodus 11, which prefigure the sacrifice of Christ as the Lamb, part of the animal that was offered up in sacrifice and burned on the altar was later used for food, so it signified a participation by the people in that sacred right.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so when we come to mess, we participate in the consuming this

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd like to make just, finish off, I want to make two final comments here with regards to the Eucharist.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this gift to the church, which is the Eucharist, which is Holy Communion, is a gift to be broken for others.

[SPEAKER_01]: So although it has been given to us as Catholics, and we would recognize the validity of the Orthodox churches as well, it is not a source of pride, but it is meant for us to be able to strengthen us so we can share our faith with others.

[SPEAKER_01]: canon law, the canon specific canon is 844.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't permit people of other faiths to take part in holy communion in our church or for us to take part in their communal bread, breaking of bread, in their shade ritual meals.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's not only because the Eucharist would not be valid, because the pastors lack the authority of the capacity to conflict the Eucharist.

[SPEAKER_01]: because they do not have apostolic succession.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we have the authority of the apostles down the bishops to the priest who can

[SPEAKER_01]: we would be symbolizing also a communion that is a unity amongst us as Christians that does not in fact exist.

[SPEAKER_01]: We pray for the unity of the Christian churches.

[SPEAKER_01]: We work towards it but it doesn't exist yet and so we do not share in communion yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, lastly, I want to say something about the need to receive communion in a state of grace.

[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, not mortal sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so our Francis Ligori wrote that we must approach communion with an attitude that suits what we are about to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, to be united to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he goes on to stress that he means suitable and not worthy because nobody can be worthy of receiving God.

[SPEAKER_01]: But we do this, we receive communion with an anxious desire of advancing in the love of Christ, of making our relationship closer to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so when Pope Francis said the communion is not a reward for being holy, this is what he meant.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're in a place at the moment where you are living a life that is not right with God and you know it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you are moving to rectify that, but you might still not quite be there.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you're struggling with an addiction, for example, that is leading you into sin, whether it's alcohol, drugs or

[SPEAKER_01]: gambling or whatever, but you are trying honestly and earnestly to overcome that particular sin with God, you're going regularly to confession, you've sought help from others, don't stay away from the Eucharist, because it was given to us for that very reason, it is the ultimate source of grace and strength.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when God keeps you and feed you on His body, very, very close in His love.

[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.