Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood

Written by BPNews Team | 28 January 2010

Solemnity  of the body and blood of Christ
(White) Cycle A/ Year II (May 25, 2008)
Dt 8:2-16/ 1 Cor 10:16-17/ Jn 6:51-58

Food is one of the most basic necessities and in fact the first basic necessity of man in order to live. Man can live without clothing like an animal in a jungle or in other place for many days and even months. He can survive without a shelter like the poor who usually live and sleep on the city streets. But without food or at least water, man will not survive for a longer period of time. The human person, being flesh and blood like animals, needs to constantly feed himself with food and water. Since it is composed of both body and spirit, in the same way as the body has its own necessities, the spirit has also necessities of its own. The human spirit needs to constantly feed itself with spiritual foods so as to revitalize itself. 

In this Feast of Corpus Christi, the Sunday’s gospel shows to us Christ preaching at the synagogue as a rabbi. His teaching, on the other hand, does not focus on the Law like what the Jewish rabbis do. His preaching is centered on the Kingdom of God that He identifies with His very person. In His preaching, Christ says: “In all truth I tell you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (Jn 6:53). These words of Jesus are taken by those who hear Him with much unbelief. They find it hard to believe that Jesus is offering His body and blood as food for those who follow Him. For the Jews, it is a sort of cannibalism. No wonder, the first Christians are considered by the Roman pagans as cannibals due to the Holy Eucharist in which the Christians claim to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ.

“Eat my flesh and drink my blood.” With these words, Jesus Christ solemnly warns us that unless we share in His humanity, we will not have part with Him in His divinity. His flesh and blood are real food and drink which we partake whenever we take the Holy Communion of the consecrated host and wine. Only in the Holy Eucharist can we encounter Jesus Christ in His humanity and only through His humanity can we encounter His divinity. In his magnificent hymn to the Blessed Eucharist, St. Thomas Aquinas says: “Adoro te, devote, latens Deitas, quae sub his figures vere latitas (I adore you with devotion, hidden God, concealed under these symbols, yet completely true).” Indeed, in the Holy Eucharist we unite ourselves with Jesus Christ not only in His humanity but also in His divinity.

As Christians then, we are bound by our conscience to unite ourselves with Jesus Christ in order to have true life. But we can only unite ourselves to Him if we partake in His body and blood at the Holy Communion. The fullness of our union with Christ in the Holy Eucharist lies in the eating of Christ body and drinking of His blood at the Holy Communion. We must not doubt to take the communion especially when our conscience is clear and we know that we have not committed grave sins. Otherwise, let us ask the forgiveness of God through the Sacrament of Penance for us to receive worthily Jesus Christ in His body and blood at the Holy Eucharist. Let us ask the help of the Blessed Mother to bring us closer to Jesus Christ her Son. Only she who has shared her body and blood with her Son Jesus can bring us closer to Him in the Holy Eucharist and help us partake of His body and blood and through them of His divine life.