The Body and Blood of Christ Ex 24:3-8; Heb 9:11-15; Mk 14:12-26 & 22-26 (Year B)
Every meaningful relationship is built on the self-sacrifice of those entering into the relationship. It is a willing sacrifice, a mutual self-giving in which the one is entrusted to the other.
The relationship that Moses mediated between God and his people, the Covenant, was such a sacrifice. God had entrusted himself to his people as their saviour and deliverer. The people, in their turn, entrusted themselves to God and the observance of his Commandments. The mutuality of this self-giving was ritually expressed in the sacrificial blood sprinkled on both the altar and the people.
Jesus Christ, in his life and death, was the fulfilment of this ancient Covenant between God and his people. Moses had been the mediator of that old covenant, bringing salvation and God’s commandments to the people, and returning the prayers and loyalty of this people to their God. Jesus became, in his Incarnation, the God who gives himself to his people. In his death on the Cross he became the sacrifice through which a sinful people is taken to God. “He brings a new covenant, a mediator, only so that the people who were called to an eternal inheritance may actually receive what was promised: his death took place to cancel the sins that infringed the earlier covenant.”
The Eucharist, at the heart of the Church, expresses our enduring communion with the Father. It unites us to the sacrifice in which the Son of God gave himself to a sinful people. It embraces the willing response that we make to so great a love. “As they were eating he took some bread, he broke it and gave it to them saying: ‘Take it, this is my body.’ Then he took the cup and said: ‘This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many.’ ”
Christ’s whole life, in his day-to-day ministry, was given to the poor and needy. As he had selflessly given himself in life, so it was in death. The Lord who comes to us in Holy Communion comes as the one who is given and poured out for us. In Holy Communion we respond as those whose lives are given to the Lord.
The National Eucharistic Congress, to be held in Liverpool this September, calls us to worship Christ’s enduring presence in the Eucharist. Here his presence is not unmoving. It embraces us in a love that lays down its life for his friends. It calls forth in us the surrender of ourselves to this loving, healing presence.
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