The difference between a who and a what: Corpus Christi

The Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

The Readings for Mass

How to think about the invisible God? The problem is God is invisible. Jesus told the Apostle Phillip,

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Jn. 14:9

 Jesus is the human face of God. Jesus, shares in God’s nature and existed before he took human flesh. Who can understand? A mystery like the Incarnation and the Trinity are not questions to be answered, but realities to be explored. What do you think of paintings depicting the Trinity? Jesus, we are ok with. He has a beard, although the first images of Jesus in the catacombs depict his as beardless. Maybe he just got tired of shaving. He is a human male after all.
 
But paintings of the Father and the Spirit; dicey business that. Here we go. The most common images of the Trinity in Western art are those of an old man, God the Father, sometimes depicted as a king, pope, or even a high priest, along with Jesus and a dove as the image of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes the Father is holding the Son on the cross, with the Holy Spirit hovering in between the two or the Father and Son are enthroned with the dove in between. The Spirit is, after all, the love shared between Father and Son, for the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.  God is not two men and a bird, obviously, so the limitations of the genre are obvious. Still, graphic representations lend themselves to misunderstanding by people who are not well-catechized. Images do, however, communicate emotion better than explanations, like the ones we have discussed in the previous weeks.
 
By the way, graphic representations of the Trinity led to a massive fight in the 8 ^th and 9 ^th Centuries called the Iconoclast Controversy. Mostly, it was a fight in the Eastern Catholic Church. Historically, Islam had overrun the Christian East and Moslems were using the Old Testament to claim that Catholics were idolaters who made idols of wood and paint. Islam didn’t even make pictures of Mohammed because of the biblical injunction against graven images. Great saints like St. John of Damascus fought back, although they lived under Islam’s thumb. St. John pointed out that the Second Person of the Trinity had taken on human flesh as the image of God in the world. He had left the Eucharist as the image of God in the world. God did not hate matter, but humans cannot make matter God. The material world, however, directs us to fuller understanding of Creations participation in God’s world. Creation, after all, includes angels, saints and the Eucharist. The Iconoclast Controversy is another example of the absolutist, puritan streak in Christianity. But God in the World? Deal with the Incarnation. But God in the World? Deal with the Eucharist. The Eucharist is God’s substantial presence in the accidental form of bread and wine, according to St. Thomas Aquinas. Did Jesus ask us to remember him through the idol of bread and wine? No. Jesus is either the Son of God, or he is not. The Eucharist is his body and blood, or it is not. Jesus says unless you eat his flesh and blood, you have not life in you. Lots at stake here. Let’s think together about the Scriptures.

The Eucharist: Source and Summit of Christian Life
The Catechism says that:

The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life.” “...For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch."  CCC 1324

 The Eucharist: A ‘who’ not a ‘what’
The Eucharist is a ‘who’ that is, the Risen Jesus, not a what, bread and wine. Jesus said of himself,

I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.  For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever." Jn. 6:51

 We have discussed metaphors as signs, symbols or typologies. Jesus’ statement is not a metaphor.  Metaphor’s makes a comparison stronger, not weaker. Jesus the human and Jesus the Second Person of the Trinity is a greater reality than just common bread and wine or the manna Moses and the people ate in the desert. Bread, wine and manna are ‘whats’.  A Human who is God is a ‘who’.  Bread and wine might sustain life until death but, in and of themselves, cannot give eternal life. Jesus claims that his flesh and blood, the living bread, will give the recipient just that. Mohammed, Buddha and Joseph Smith never claimed any such thing, because they couldn’t, only God can. The Eucharist is not idol worship because God himself gave it to us as the bread from heaven. In the Exodus, the people had to trust God’s word when they spread the lamb’s blood around their door. The Eucharist is our experience of the same choice. When the Jews responded, ‘how can this guy give us his flesh to eat? Jesus doubled down…

Amen, Amen [so be it, so be it]...unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you; and my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.” Jn. 6:52-53

 Only God can do this; your mother, dad or spouse cannot. Jesus is either who he says he is, or this is crazy. The Resurrection is the bedrock of Eucharistic faith. We are not consuming the body, soul, humanity and divinity of a dead man, but the Son of God risen from the dead.
 
Sometimes non-Catholic Christians ask “why do you Catholics make so much out of the Eucharist” or “why do you insist on receiving the Eucharist frequently, like daily even with daily Mass.” Why? Because Jesus himself said that “if you eat his flesh and drink his blood, he will abide in you and you will abide in him.” Daily Eucharist makes Christ the center of every day. It is a good way to start eternity. Jesus lived and died 2000 years ago, how is his body and blood available to us now? Here is how,

“This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever." Jn. 6:51

 The Eucharist is heavenly bread. This is why in Chapters 4 and 5 of the Book of Revelation, St. John describes the heavenly liturgy. Our mass at St. Mark participates in Divine worship of the Trinity in heaven. We are fed from that heavenly altar. That is why in Eucharistic Prayer Number 1, the priest says

In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son, (He stands upright again and signs himself with the Sign of the Cross), saying: may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.

 It is why we pray for the dead and invoke the angels and saints at every mass. Heaven and Earth come together in Christ, the Eucharist and the Mass.

The Eucharist: Early Christians and St. Paul
The visible miracle of the manna in the Old Testament helps us understand the invisible miracle of bread and the wine changed into his body and to his blood. St. Paul said,

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 1 Cor. 10:16

 The Greek word St. Paul used that we translate as participation or communion is koino ̄ nia. St. Paul talks about the sacrifices of Israel, and even the sacrifices of the pagans in the temple. When the Israelites offered sacrifice, they are communicants in the altar. He uses the same word koino ̄ nia. That is why you can’t eat meat sacrificed to idols because you participate in the demonic idol. St. Paul believes that the Eucharist is really Jesus’ body and blood, and is a real sacrifice, a real participation in Jesus's sacrifice on the cross of Calvary, when he gave his life for the salvation of the world.
 
The Eucharist: The Image that God gives us
Paintings of the Trinity have the same flaws and can mislead as may the other analogies of the Trinity we have discussed over the last several weeks. The image of the love of God that the Son of God gave us is his body and blood as food for everlasting life. It becomes so by the Will of the Father and the Power of the Holy Spirit, all of whom are invoked in Divine Worship. Sacraments are visible signs of unseen grace. God binds himself to the sacraments but is not in turn bound by the sacraments. If you recall, when God appeared to Moses in the form of the burning bush, he told Moses that his name is “I Am.”  Jesus used that same phrase in the Gospels. My Hebrew professor, warning… I had only one semester, told us that the Hebrew that we translate as “I am” could also mean “I am what I do” or “am doing.” God is pure act. God is what God does. In the Eucharist, the true image of God is food and care for his people. It is the meaning of Creation. It is God’s image, come down from the heavenly liturgy, as the gift of the Father, in the body and blood of the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Eucharist is the image of the Triune God doing what God does; Leading and feeding his people.