Homily for Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Homily for the 

Solemnity of Corpus Christi

June 6, 2021
Mark 14: 12-16, 22-26
Ex 24: 3-8
Blessed Sacrament, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many” (Mark 14: 24).

Jesus and his apostles celebrate the Passover meal in the guest room of a friend, a place that has become known to Christian tradition as the upper room and also as the cenacle (which means dining room).  It’s Jesus’ Last Supper.

St. Mark says right off that it’s “the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb” (14:12).  Jesus will take some of that unleavened bread and consecrate it as his body, the body that he’s about to sacrifice on the cross.  He’ll take a cup of Passover wine and consecrate it as his blood, to be shed on Calvary “for many,” that is, for many peoples and not only for his own Jewish people, as a sign of the new covenant that he is establishing.  Jesus becomes the new Passover lamb sacrificed to save God’s people, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

There was already a covenant between God and the Jewish people, the one established thru Moses.  We heard in the 1st reading how it was ratified with a sacrifice of “young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord” (Ex 24:5).  At Mt. Sinai God agrees to protect the Hebrews and to lead them into the Promised Land; they agree to be his people, to worship him alone, and to obey his commandments.  They seal the agreement by sharing in the blood of the sacrifice:  blood splashed upon the altar, representing God, and blood “sprinkled on the people” as Moses proclaims, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words of his” (24:8).

In the most holy Eucharist which Jesus gave us at the Last Supper, we share in his sacrifice.  We literally eat his body and blood and so become parties to his new covenant.  This sacrament, this Blessed Sacrament (your parish feast!), is truly the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood—not merely a symbol, not merely a commemoration, but a present reality that touches us with salvation:  this is his blood of the covenant shed for many, even for us in New Rochelle in 2021.

That, of course, is why it’s so important for us to come to Mass on Sundays and celebrate the Eucharist as a Catholic community.  Here we renew our covenant with our Lord Jesus by partaking of his sacrificed body and blood.  Without that, we have no spiritual life.  Without that, we separate ourselves from his people.  Without that, we can’t hope to enter the Promised Land, to feast with our Lord Jesus “in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25).

But when we share in the Lord’s body and blood at the Eucharistic sacrifice, we commune with the Lamb of God who saves us from the angel of death that passed over the land of Egypt in Moses’ time and still lurks, demonically, looking for more people to slay and drag into eternal death.  We commune with the Lamb who takes away our sins, protects us with his grace, and leads us to eternal life.