Weekly THIS AND THAT for January 10, 2010: The Body of Christ

This and That
The Body of Christ


Later this month, we’ll begin our preparations for first Eucharist. What a tremendous honor and responsibility: to prepare to receive Christ Himself. Some of us remember the processions through the streets carrying the Blessed Sacrament. Such public reverence has fallen on hard times in our country. Maybe the decline of such public reverence is due to the fact that something has happened to our appreciation of “The Body of Christ” along the way.

The “Body of Christ” has a two – fold purpose, but only one focus has been emphasized over the centuries. The one that got emphasized , the one we remember, is solely the focus on the real presence of Jesus under the appearance of bread and wine. However, the “Body of Christ” also refers to the whole people of God, the gathering of the community of faith. The people are the “Body of Christ.” One exists for the sake of the other.

In other words, the only reason that Jesus is the Body of Christ in the Eucharist is that we might be the Body of Christ in our world. To put it another way: the Jesus’ Presence in the Eucharist is for the sake of the Jesus-presence in the world through us! They are interconnected.

As Jesus nourishes us with His Body and Blood in the Eucharist, we are to nourish the world with our body and blood. The Real Presence in the Eucharist exists only to make us the Real Presence in the world. If you break that connection, you wind up with empty piety, and the absence of Jesus’ mission in the world. The sacrament says to us : whoever takes the Real Presence into him/ herself automatically takes on the challenge to become the Real Presence to others, and to commit themselves to the works of Christ.

Let me give you one example.

A reporter was covering the conflict in Iraq, and he saw a small girl get hit by a sniper. The reporter threw down his pad and pen. He rushed to a man who had picked up the child, and helped them both into a car. As the reporter raced to the local hospital, the man holding the bleeding child said, “hurry, my child is still alive.” A moment later he said, “hurry, my child is still warm.”

Upon arrival at the hospital, the little girl was dead. The man turned to the reporter and said, “I have a terrible task in front of me. I must go and tell the girl’s father that she is dead.” The reporter was amazed. He looked and said, “I thought she was your child.” The man said, “No, but aren’t they all our children?”

Yes, they are all our children. They are also God’s children as well as He has entrusted us with their care in Baltimore, North and South America, Iraq, Sydney.

As members of the Body of Christ, we place ourselves at the service of Jesus that He might blend our lives and our talents into the service of the Kingdom of God with all those throughout the world that make up His Body.

The Body of Christ is as much a focus on those who eat and drink the sacred species as it is a focus on the Blessed Sacrament itself. It’s a focus on those people, and what they do WITH the Body of Christ. We are here to be broken as bread in service. So, when you get right down to it, the Real Presence is, whenever we, nourished by the Real Presence, do the works of Jesus.

We’ll better understand the Real Presence when we better know who we are: the Body of Christ.

With much Gratitude and Love,
Jack Buchner