By Father Ed Liptak, SDB<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cO God, who in this wonderful Sacrament have left us a memorial of your Passion<\/em>.\u201d That is the opening prayer of today\u2019s Mass of <\/strong>Corpus Christi, the living Body of Christ. But not \u2018just<\/em>\u2019\u2019 a memorial. It is the \u2018sacred mystery of His Body and Blood\u2019<\/em> 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 \u2018just\u2019<\/em> 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, \u201cThis is my Body,\u201d <\/em>the priest \u2018does this<\/em>\u2019 in Jesus\u2019 Name, He who offers Himself, Savior, to God who willed our salvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s covenant, their agreement to be His people, and to remind them that they be faithful to Him: \u201cWe will do everything that the LORD has told <\/em>us,\u201d they said. They, too, were sprinkled with the blood of sacrifice, and they cried out, \u201cAll that the LORD has said, we will heed and do.\u201d<\/em> In the Sacrifice of the Mass, we are those sprinkled with the Blood of Christ shed in sacrifice on the Cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. \u201cIt is not with the blood of goats and calves,\u201d <\/em>as of old, that we are cleansed, Hebrews says, but with Christ\u2019s Blood, shed in sacrifice for us. Let us not betray Christ\u2019s own words, \u201cThis is my Body,\u201d \u201cThus is the chalice of my Blood.<\/em>\u201d 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<\/em> what Jesus said it was, HIS Body, HIS BLOOD.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n St. Mark\u2019s Gospel confirms all this. He states Jesus\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This Wondrous Sacrament!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Father Ed Liptak, SDB \u201cO God, who in this wonderful Sacrament have left us a memorial of your Passion.\u201d That is the opening prayer of today\u2019s Mass of Corpus Christi, the living Body of Christ. But not \u2018just\u2019\u2019 a memorial. It is the \u2018sacred mystery of His Body and Blood\u2019 willed by Jesus to be offered again and again in unbloody sacrifice; His true Body lifted up to His Father for our continuing … Continuar leyendo This Wonderous Sacrament<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":10336596,"featured_media":12531,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[777629889,2343517,20310044],"tags":[782003455],"class_list":["post-12457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fr-ed-liptak","category-gospel-reflection","category-province-news","tag-fr-ed-liptak"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/salesianbulletin.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/intouch-scripture-graphic-feature.jpg?fit=1600%2C510&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p59ePG-3eV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10336596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12457"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12461,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12457\/revisions\/12461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}