The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THE Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, or Corpus Christi, should spur us to sharpen our understanding and appreciation of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist where Christ himself, both God and man, gives himself completely to us—body, soul, his humanity and divinity—so we can be one with him. This is what is meant to be a Eucharistic life and for us to be Eucharistic souls.

Through the liturgy, the real Christ comes to us, remains here on earth and makes himself intimately available to us. With the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, Christ and us are not held hostage by the limitations of space and time. We manage to be together—in fact, in so direct and personal a way as to be properly termed as communion, a union of life and love.

With this sacrament, time and eternity merge, and so do heaven and earth. United to it, even our smallest and most insignificant detail in our life, including our sufferings and things we don’t like, acquire eternal and redemptive value.

This is the supreme treasure of a truth that we all need to be more aware of. Hopefully, we can then start to earnestly conform our whole life to this reality—our thoughts and desires, our feelings, outlook and attitudes, etc.

In fact, this is the ideal that we should pursue always. This is because the Eucharist, the real Christ in the sacrament, is the ultimate and constant food for our life. We don’t depend only on food, water and air. We depend wholly on Christ.

And neither do we depend only on our intellectual progress and technological and scientific advancement. These things can be very impressive. But they don’t completely satisfy our soul. We long for more. It’s Christ that does that.

Our usual problem is that we don’t go all the way in our Eucharistic faith. Our devotion to it often appears simply posed, scripted and staged, and not really issuing vitally from our heart and life. Thus, it is also not abiding, but rather intermittent. It’s on and off depending on conditions.

It should be no surprise if we are often dominated by our weaknesses, not to mention, the continuing temptations around us.

Our catechesis on this truth of our faith should never stop. Parents in their respective families should talk ceaselessly about this. Priests, of course, should preach about it in homilies and in other occasions.

Everyone should do something to help one another live an authentic Eucharistic life. We have to foster going to Mass often, making visits to the Blessed Sacrament, spending time adoring our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament chapels, making frequent spiritual communions, etc.

We have to understand that our life should not be any other than Eucharistic! That is how we can be truly human, because the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist is where we have our most precious treasure, our everything, our light, our purification, our salvation.

That’s where we have Christ not only in real presence, as in the Blessed Sacrament, nor as spiritual food, as in the Holy Communion, but primarily as our savior who continues to offer his life on the cross for us, as in the Holy Mass.

For this, we need to be theological in our thinking to capture this reality and live in accordance to it not only from time to time, but rather all the time and everywhere, whatever our situation is.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com