This Sunday we celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi.
One of the Fathers of the Church described how the first Christians received communion. They did it the way we do it today, offering their outstretched hands, one over another. And he offered this instruction: “Make of your hands a throne,” he wrote. Make yourselves ready to receive a king.
Do we understand that today? I’m not so sure.
We are receiving an incalculable gift. We are taking into our hands, and placing on our tongues, something astounding.
We are being given God.
Look at the host, and you look at Christ.
Too often, we take it for granted. It’s just one more part of the Mass. Something else to do.
No. It isn’t.
Look at the host, and you look at Christ.
Everything we are, everything we believe, everything we celebrate around the altar comes down to that incredible truth. What began two thousand years ago in an upper room continues at altars all around the world.
The very source of our salvation is transformed into something you can hold in the palm of your hand.
Just think what we become when we receive the body of Christ. We become nothing less than living tabernacles. God dwells within us. As the hymn tells us, we become what we receive. And what we receive becomes us. That is the great mystery, and great grace, the great gift of this most blessed sacrament.
My question on this feast: what will we do with that knowledge? Once we have been transformed, by bread that has been transformed, how can we leave a holy place without seeking to transform the world?
We carry something greater than ourselves. And that makes us instruments of God’s great work in the world – literally.
In some small way, we have been changed.
When we receive communion we become instruments of Christ, bearers of Christ.
