By Father Ed Liptak, SDB

“O God, who in this wonderful Sacrament have left us a memorial of your Passion.” That is the opening prayer of today’s Mass of Corpus Christi, the living Body of Christ. But not ‘just’’ a memorial. It is the ‘sacred mystery of His Body and Blood’ willed by Jesus to be offered again and again in unbloody sacrifice; His true Body lifted up to His Father for our continuing redemption. When the priest raises the Host and the Chalice high after Consecration, it is not ‘just’ a piece of bread and cup of wine that he raises to the Father. It is Jesus Himself, the real Jesus, who by His word, “This is my Body,” the priest ‘does this’ in Jesus’ Name, He who offers Himself, Savior, to God who willed our salvation.

The Sacred Scriptures remind us of all this. The first reading of our solemnity from the Old Testament recalls the many sacrifices of blood offered to God to seal our developing Church with a sign of belonging to God. Moses sprinkled the altar with this sacrificial blood, sealing Israel’s covenant, their agreement to be His people, and to remind them that they be faithful to Him: “We will do everything that the LORD has told us,” they said. They, too, were sprinkled with the blood of sacrifice, and they cried out, “All that the LORD has said, we will heed and do.” In the Sacrifice of the Mass, we are those sprinkled with the Blood of Christ shed in sacrifice on the Cross.

Our passage from Hebrews lets us know that our earliest forefathers in the Catholic Church knew they were an extension of the Church of old. “It is not with the blood of goats and calves,” as of old, that we are cleansed, Hebrews says, but with Christ’s Blood, shed in sacrifice for us. Let us not betray Christ’s own words, “This is my Body,” “Thus is the chalice of my Blood.” If that is what Jesus said, then let us accept it as he also said, that this is no mere memorial nor commemoration of His Passion, but IT IS what Jesus said it was, HIS Body, HIS BLOOD.

St. Mark’s Gospel confirms all this. He states Jesus’s intention to become for us our redeeming sacrifice, fulfilling the prophetic meaning of the Passover victim of old, the new Lamb, our Liberator from captivity. How? By the offering of His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, out of his overwhelming mercy for us. The Holy Eucharist.

This Wondrous Sacrament!