Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - Corpus Christi 22 June 2014

We all need to look carefully at the readings chosen for this feast. None of them define the Eucharist in theological terms, it is true that Paul in I Cor 10 talks about the Lord’s body and blood, and John 6: 51-58 has Jesus teaching about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, but the context is, as the sequence tells us, in the sharing and partaking of that food. It is about the one thing we need in order to have life and it is food for our journey!

Maybe the desert context of Deuteronomy can help us move a little further into the mystery of what the Body and Blood of Christ really means for us in the Church, and the peoples of the world. There we see a starving, lost hungry people, basic existence does not allow them the luxury of dialogue, debate or research about God’s ways, they just are there as raw fragile existing people like so many in our world today, to them the words come clearly, ‘Do not forget God’. Why? Because God is there with them, because despite everything, this God loves them and is their very life, the manna in the desert, the water from the rock! That means the gift of the heavenly food of Christ is real, but is also about reaching out to feed the hungry!

The Gospel reminds us that through Christ’s resurrection, ascension and gift of the Holy Spirit the possibility of this heavenly food will come. For in the elements of bread and wine, Christ’s body is shared but not broken, Christ’s blood is given but never diminished. It is a hugely powerful example of the ultimate gift of nourishment. Just as ordinary food is about elements that die so we might live, so the death and resurrection of Christ is about food that enables us to become one with him and enter his risen life.

The Eucharist is above all about eating and drinking, participating in the blessing of bread and cup, bad and good alike. In early times communion was always given by someone to another, there was no separate self giving in the communion of bishop or priest, for all received from somebody else, because as one body, sharing in the one bread and cup, it is from the Lord that these holy gifts come!

 
Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.

To sign Fr Robin's petition to Prime Minister David Cameron calling for the creation of a Stephen Sutton award: see: www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/prime-minister-create-a-stephen-sutton-award-and-start-changing-the-honours-system?utm_campaign=new_signature&utm_medium=email&utm_source=signature_receipt#