Lining up for communion?

Sermon for the Sunday in the Octave of Corpus Christi

You know what the Lord says, don’t you? “This is my body. This is my blood.” Yet, when you come up for communion, you still can’t get away from the fact that you are given a small white disc that tastes like rather papery bread, and a sip of some red fluid that tastes remarkably like wine.

Let us suppose that you are shown into a room in which are a line-up of ten wafers and ten chalices of wine. You are told that one of the wafers and one of the chalices have been consecrated at a Mass. Would you be able to pick out the Body and Blood of Christ from that which is not?

Well, why not?

Does that not bother you?

[PAUSE]

For some, the question doesn’t matter. They will say that the wafer and wine are only the body and blood to the person who believes that when they receive them, otherwise they are just wafer and wine and nothing else. To them, the fact that one of the wafers and the chalices have been consecrated means nothing – none of them are the Body and Blood.

If that’s true, then what is the point of consecration? What’s the point of the Mass if we only receive the Body and Blood of Christ as a result of our personal faith? How can there be communion with the person next to us at the altar rail if we believe that we receive Christ, but they might be suffering from a crippling doubt?

If we receive the Body and Blood only by virtue of our own personal faith, then we could never know with whom we are in communion within the same Mass. Indeed, if the Body and Blood are only present subjectively, then how do we know that we are all receiving the same Body and Blood? It’s Body and Blood in name only. There’s nothing substantial.

So much for a sacrament of unity. We are only united insofar as we say we are.

[PAUSE]

Our Lord says more than that, though. We must eat of His flesh and drink of His blood to have life within us. At the Last Supper, the Disciples are receiving that flesh and blood even though Our Lord is sitting there distributing it. Oh yes, it’s a mystery, but think of the feeding of the Five Thousand. We don’t know how it is done. We only know that it is done.

There, at the Last Supper, there can be no doubt that the Disciples are all receiving the same thing in the same way from the same person, and it is this that they are commanded to do in remembrance of Him so that all might receive the same flesh and the same blood of the same person that these Disciples themselves receive.

We all receive the same body and blood, stretching back to that one event. This is why Our Lord calls Himself the true vine, because we are all receiving the same nourishment from Him in the same way throughout History. Along these branches that spring from Our Lord, we grow and pass on so that we become united in one in His flesh so that we can become one in His Divinity.

What you receive is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, objectively, really, truly and fully – body, blood, soul and divinity!

[PAUSE]

But at that line-up of wafers and chalices, which do you pick?

They all look the same. The unconsecrated looks like the consecrated.

That’s true. We do not perceive the Body and Blood physically, but only spiritually through faith. The sacrament is not for the eyes of our body, but for the eyes of the soul. We all receive the same thing, but that same thing enters into us at the deepest levels to make us whole where we need to be made whole. This is the point: we are united in what we actually receive, but once it enters into us it fits us better for Heaven.

This is our communion with Our Lord and with the Church. It is not made on the basis of who we are, but on the basis of Who Christ Is.

[PAUSE]

So which wafer and which chalice do we pick?

None of them.

If the wafer and the chalice were truly consecrated, then they would be in a Church safely guarded and revered and not permitted to be subjected to silly experiments like this.

We cannot play games with the King of Heaven. We cannot put Our Lord to the test.

If He is truly present under the appearance of wafer and wine, then He is to be worshipped with reverence and love. If a mouse eats a crumb from a consecrated wafer, then it consumes Christ, but what does this say about the reverence for His presence if this is allowed to happen?

This is why we have all the elaborate ceremony. We need corporals to catch any crumbs. We need the ciborium to carry the wafers. We need the priest to hold his fingers together after touching the consecrated host in order to prevent any particles from falling. We need the chalice to be thoroughly cleansed after communion to ensure that all the Body and Blood of Christ is truly consumed.

[PAUSE]

So what do you do at the line up?

Walk out and pray for those who created this line-up. They are in dire need of the nourishment that only Christ will provide for His Church.