Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (2 June 2024)

1. Today's celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ sums up the entire mystery of our salvation and we can well say that the Eucharist is the heart of the Church, the face on Earth of the Most Holy Trinity. With today's solemnity, Christians proclaim that Christ, the only-begotten Son of God made man is truly present under the signs of the consecrated bread and wine. So true is this, that even the greatest mystical gifts, the experience of visionaries and the miracles performed by the saints are worth far less than communion received with devotion and sincere faith. Jesus in the Eucharist is the one great and extraordinary miracle that unfortunately often goes unnoticed because of the habit and ease with which we can approach communion and participate in the celebration of holy mass. Precisely in order to help us not to forget that the whole of life must be oriented towards Christ, the Church wanted today's solemnity of Corpus Christi, which takes us back to the Upper Room where the Eucharist was instituted on Holy Thursday, the Bread that, as Origen writes, "is the salvation of the world" (panis pro mundi salute). The bread and wine, the basic elements of our nourishment, were chosen by the Lord for this mystery of communion between heaven and earth. Pope Benedict XVI, on the feast of Corpus Christi (15 June 2006), invited us to see in the sign of bread the pilgrimage of Israel during the forty years in the desert. The Host is our manna with which the Lord nourishes us and is the true bread from heaven, through which He gives Himself.  First great truth: "With each of the two signs (the bread and the wine)," notes Benedict XVI, "Jesus gives himself entirely, not just a part of himself. The Risen One is not divided. He is a person who, through signs, draws near to us and unites with us. The signs, however, each represent, in their own way, a particular aspect of the mystery of Him and, by their typical manifestation, they want to speak to us, so that we may learn to understand a little more of the mystery of Jesus Christ".

2. First of all, the bread! In many parishes today, if it has not already taken place last Thursday, the solemn Eucharistic procession parades through the streets of cities and towns, showing everyone the true treasure of the Church: the Blessed Sacrament. In other processions, statues of Mary and saints are carried according to popular devotions, but today everyone looks and tends to the consecrated Host, solemnly carried by the bishop or priest. The procession thus becomes a time of adoration and itinerant praise contemplating the Host, which is the simplest kind of bread and nourishment, made only of a little flour and water. Bread, said Pope Benedict, "is the fruit of the earth and at the same time of heaven... bread of the poor, which appears to us as a synthesis of creation. Heaven and earth as well as man's activity and spirit come together. We thus begin to understand why the Lord chooses this piece of bread as his sign. But to truly enter into the mystery of Christ, we must return with our minds to the request that some Greeks made: that of being able to see him, to meet him. On that occasion, a few days before his passion and death, Jesus said: "Truly, truly, I say to you, if the grain of wheat that falls into the earth does not die, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (Jn 12:24). In the bread made of ground wheat grains lies the mystery of the Passion. "The flour, the ground grain," notes Pope Benedict, "presupposes the dying and rising of the grain. In being ground and baked, it then carries within itself once again the same mystery of the Passion... Through his suffering and dying freely, Jesus became bread for us all, and... accompanies us in all our suffering until death. There is more: the ground grains together form one bread, and this is a sign for every community. "We ourselves, from the many that we are, must become one bread, one body", says St Paul (1 Cor 10:17). Thus, the sign of bread becomes both hope and a task of fidelity for every baptised person, called to live from the Eucharist and to bear witness to the joy of being part of the people who feed on Christ. "Behold the bread of angels, the bread of pilgrims, the true bread of children: it must not be thrown away" (From today's Sequence before the Gospel).

3. Then there is the sign of wine, which is also very eloquent for our life. Benedict XVI notes: "While bread recalls everyday life, simplicity and pilgrimage, wine expresses the exquisiteness of creation: the feast of joy that God wants to offer us at the end of time and that he already now always anticipates in the manner of a hint through this sign".  However, wine also recalls the Passion and the meaning and value of suffering. Every vine must be pruned repeatedly to be purified so that it can produce abundant fruit. The grape harvest represents a destiny similar to that of the harvest: to be crushed in order to satiate man and intoxicate him. The vine suffers under the vinedresser's hand, it feels its shoots, which are growing luxuriantly, mutilated, but only then will it be able to offer rich and tasty bunches of grapes. By participating in the Eucharist we also learn to remain patient and trusting in the hands of God who mysteriously prunes us through the difficulties, sufferings, events and every occasion of existence. We learn the docility of the grapes that ripen under the sun and rain, are then picked and pressed, that is, crushed so that they become wine. Only in this way, by joining Christ in his passion, can we be transformed into "fine wine that gladdens the heart of man" (cf. Psalm 104:15). In the Bible, the vine symbolises prosperity and fruitfulness to which wine is closely linked, as a symbol of joy, of feasting, of banqueting. And it is the evangelist John who gives new meaning to the vine, identifying it with Jesus, when in the Upper Room he speaks of the "cup of my blood". In the gospel we read that Jesus took a cup of red wine and said: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (1 Cor 11:25), in my shed blood. When blood is spilled in an accident, for surgery or in a crime, it has no value because it is lost and must be discarded. When it is taken from a donor, it is carefully collected and preserved because it can serve to save another person's life. Blood can also be poured out in religious sacrifice, in which case it is chosen because one sacrifices the best one has: blood poured out and collected so that it can be offered. The 'chalice' makes us understand what blood is involved in the Eucharist: precious blood, gathered to be offered in a chalice and shared with all so that each one may drink from it. "The blood of the new covenant poured into a cup" therefore means the gift of the life and blood of Christ, offered to the Father as a sacrifice of infinite value and given to Christians in a communion of salvation. It is "the cup of blessing" (1 Cor 10:16) that replaces definitively "the cup of wrath" (Jer 25:15ff) and fills the believer's soul with joy and peace. "O Blood of life, of unity and peace, mystery of love and source of grace, inebriate our hearts with the Holy Spirit" (From the prayer of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood). I conclude with this invocation of Benedict XVI: 'In the procession we follow this sign (the consecrated Host) and so we follow Him. And we pray to him: Guide us on the paths of this our history! Show the Church and her Pastors the right path again and again! Look at humanity that suffers, that wanders insecurely among so many questions; look at the physical and psychic hunger that torments it! He gives men bread for body and soul! Give them work! Give them light! Give them yourself! Purify and sanctify us all! Make us realise that only through participation in your Passion, through "yes" to the cross, to renunciation, to the purifications you impose on us, can our life mature and reach its true fulfilment. Gather us from all ends of the earth! Unite your Church, unite torn humanity! Give us your salvation! Amen!

+ Giovanni D'Ercole

N.B. Which bread and wine should be used for the Mass? In 2017, the then Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in a circular letter to bishops on bread and wine for the Eucharist specified that: a) "The bread used in the celebration of the Holy Eucharistic Sacrifice must be unleavened, exclusively of wheat and freshly prepared so that there is no risk of decomposition. It follows, therefore, that that which is prepared with other matter, even if cereal, or that to which matter other than wheat has been mixed, in such a quantity that it cannot be said, according to common estimation, to be wheat bread, does not constitute valid matter for the celebration of the sacrifice and the Eucharistic sacrament. It is a grave abuse to introduce other substances, such as fruit, sugar or honey, into the bread of the Eucharist. It goes without saying that the wafers must be made by people who are not only distinguished by their honesty, but who are also expert in preparing them and equipped with suitable instruments" (n. 48). b) "The wine used in the celebration of the Holy Eucharistic Sacrifice must be natural, from the fruit of the vine, genuine, unadulterated and not mixed with foreign substances. [...] The greatest care must be taken to ensure that the wine intended for the Eucharist is kept in perfect condition and does not become vinegar. It is absolutely forbidden to use wine about whose genuineness and provenance there is any doubt: the Church demands, in fact, certainty regarding the conditions necessary for the validity of the sacraments. Let no pretext be admitted, then, in favour of other drinks of any kind, which do not constitute valid matter" (n. 50).  Those who make the bread and produce the wine for the celebration must nourish the consciousness that their work is oriented towards the Eucharistic Sacrifice and this demands honesty, responsibility and competence from them".