by Fr. Tommy Lane
We divide time into BC and AD: BC, before Christ, and AD, Anno Domini (in the year of Our Lord), time since Jesus’ birth. This is our way of showing that Jesus is the center of history; Jesus is the most important event in history. Everything in history pales into insignificance compared to Jesus. It is the same in our lives; Jesus is or should be the center of our lives and our week. Because Jesus is the center of our lives, we come here to celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday and afterwards we go in peace to love and serve the Lord whom we encountered here in the Eucharist.
Just as we divide time into BC and AD, before Christ and after his birth, the Sacred Scriptures do the same, and so we have the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, from time to time we get glimpses and hints of Jesus in events or people anticipating or pointing the way to Jesus. In the first reading today (Gen 14:18-20), the priest Melchizedek is one of those people giving us a glimpse and hint of Jesus to come. Melchizedek was a priest, though not in the priestly tribe of Levi, and Jesus is the High Priest of the New Testament, also not in the tribe of Levi, prophesied by our Psalm today: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (i.e., outside of the tribe of Levi.) Melchizedek offered bread and wine to God which was a foreshadowing of the Eucharist that Jesus would give. In Eucharistic Prayer I, we hear, “O Lord...Be pleased…to accept [these offerings] as once you were pleased to accept…the offering of your high priest Melchizedek.” There are other hints and glimpses of the Eucharist in the Old Testament: the manna which the Israelites received in the desert (Ex 16), and the food that sustained the prophet Elijah for forty days and nights until he reached Mount Horeb/Sinai (1 Kings 19).
In the Gospel today (Luke 9:11-17), Jesus performed a miracle by feeding thousands from only five loaves and two fish. This miracle is preparing for the greatest New Testament miracle, the Eucharist. Jesus performed the same four actions over the bread and fish when he multiplied them as he would do later over the bread during the Last Supper:
he took the bread and fish,
said the blessing over them,
broke them, and
gave them to his disciples.
The second reading (1 Cor 11:23-26) is a description of the Last Supper that is very precious to us because it is the oldest account of the Last Supper in the Scriptures, written even before the Gospels. Paul wrote this letter sometime during the two and a half years he spent preaching in Ephesus in AD 54-57. It is the earliest description of the Last Supper in the New Testament. Jesus said, “This is my body.” He did not say, “This is a symbol of my body” or “This represents my body” but “This is my body.” Transubstantiation is the name we give to the bread and wine changing into the body and blood of Jesus while retaining the appearance of bread and wine. Trans – substance, the substance is transformed while maintaining its external appearance of bread and wine—transubstantiation.
Just as Jesus is the center of time, BC and AD, our celebration of Corpus Christi today reminds us to keep Jesus in the Eucharist at the center of our lives. Jesus desires that we live each day in union with him; he is not a stranger to meet for just one hour every Sunday. Can you live your day with Jesus and also spend special time in prayer with Jesus in the Eucharist? Just as Jesus is the center of time, and the center of our lives, the tabernacle is the focal point in the church.
Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we are reminded of the great love of Jesus for us giving himself for us in his passion and death. Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote,
As if the better to remind us of His passion in the
Sacrifice of the Mass, He chose bread and wine, both of which become what they
are through a kind of Calvary. Wheat becomes bread and grapes become wine
through a veritable passion of the grist-mill and the wine-press.”
(Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Life of All Living (Doubleday Image Book pp111-112.)
Just as the wheat is beaten and crushed to become flour for bread, Jesus’ body was scourged and crucified. Just as the juice flows from the grape to make wine, Jesus’ blood flowed. The bread and wine that we offer in sacrifice during every Mass and are transformed into the body and blood of Jesus in the transubstantiation remind us of the passion and death of Jesus. Truly every Mass reminds us of Jesus’ total giving of himself for us.
There were many hints in the Old Testament that Jesus would come. In every Mass the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Jesus for us, and how bread and wine are formed reminds us of Jesus’ passion and death. The Eucharist shows us Jesus’ love for us. Jesus is the center of time. Is he also the center of your day?
Copyright © Fr. Tommy Lane 2007
This homily was delivered in a parish in Maryland.
More homilies on the Eucharist
The Eucharist—the Greatest Gift 2023
Faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and Eucharistic Miracles
Year A: Meet Jesus in his Real Presence in the Eucharist 2008
Year B: Jesus’ Continuing Presence with us in the Eucharist 2021
Related Homilies: Jesus' Body and Blood given for us 2021
Little Nellie of Holy God longing for the Eucharist
Keep me company in the Blessed Sacrament
The Eucharist and the Priesthood were born during the Last Supper