The feast of the Body and Blood of Christ is all about relationship. Its form -A shared sacramental ritual meal of eating and drinking -means a sharing of life, in this case divine life. It is a sacrament in that what appear to be symbols, are really the body broken and the blood shed for us on the Cross.
The
bread and wine are not human symbols expressing what Christ does for us. The
symbolic bread and wine actually become Christ, the flesh and blood of God's
Word. When we eat his Body and drink his Blood, Jesus tells us of a divine
friendship, just as when we share an ordinary meal with others we speak of
human friendship.
The
Body and Blood of Christ is the point/at which the Father commits himself to us
in love, absolutely, for Jesus is true God and true man. The Body and Blood of
Christ is also the point at which we must commit ourselves to the Father, to
live in his love, 'draw our life from him and share that life with others.
Whenever we say "Amen" to the Body and Blood of Christ, we acknowledge again what happened to us at baptism/when we became new persons, reborn into the Body of Christ. We now have access to an infinite treasure, God's divine life. This life remains with us/unless we choose to turn away from God. Even then, with sorrow, we can return to God/because of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Why
do we neglect the Body and Blood of Christ? Are our failures too painful? At
the Last Supper, Jesus gave himself as a gift between the betrayal by Judas and
the desertion by his apostles. The gift of the Body and Blood of Christ was
never intended as a prize for goodness and holiness. It is for the weak and
sinners.
The
gift of the Body and Blood of Christ is not a private or personal affair. Jesus
offers himself to all, for all. We must accept the one bread and the one
cup/believing that we become precious gifts of God for others. We receive the
Body and Blood of Christ in vain if we do not bring his presence, his love, his
forgiveness and his peace to each other even to those who have rejected him,
and to those separated from us. That is the real challenge of today's feast.