My friends, each year when this wonderful feast of Corpus Christi, or, the Body of Christ comes round, it really calls me and you to go deeper as we always say here.  I think the frustration with this feast, if there is any, and there is for me, comes when the “official party line,” so to speak, the hierarchy of our beloved Church focuses solely on the “elements,” the bread and wine, and their “magical” transformation into Jesus’ “flesh and blood” – real flesh and real blood on an altar, they believe.  We are called in our faith to believe that this transformation, labeled, “transubstantiation” has indeed happened.  Now to be clear, I do believe that when we say the words of consecration, Jesus is present in a special way to us, but just not as “real flesh and real blood.”

   To me, our faith could be so better used than in this instance.  I would like to see “so-called” believers have faith in the fact that our good God loves us far above and beyond anything that we can imagine, and always wants us to ask for the help we need to be our best selves, for ourselves, but for others too, thus assuring that our sojourn here, as spiritual beings, having “a human experience,” as someone once said, might be the best that it can be. 

   One of the commencement speakers this past week, to a group of college graduates basically told them that while it will be important to go out there and work hard, securing a job, so as to do well in the world, from his experience, he was telling this new group of graduates to stick to their values along the way, over and above that which they necessarily are seeking – such values as honesty, integrity and being kind. 

   Going back then to that issue of transubstantiation, I would suggest that we ask why we should believe this concept – for what purpose?  And truly, my hope is that I don’t come off here as “sacrilegious,” only that we try and understand the real greatness of this feast.  For us to believe that somehow, bread and wine have been miraculously changed into Jesus’ flesh and blood, and that idea solely, causing us “to worship” this supposed fact, does what? 

   If we follow the Church’s teaching here, our table of blessing and sharing, becomes not a table anymore, but an “altar of sacrifice,” where elements of “flesh and blood” are perhaps appropriate.  But if we focus on the concept of a “table,” set for all, welcoming all, to bless and share in the very life of our brother Jesus – his words, his actions, during his life, which really, are more fully, “his body, his blood,” and which, ironically, caused his death, (his actions, that is) then to allow what we do here at our Masses to become nothing more than a ritual of remembering a one-time action for us, “to make us once again worthy in the sight of a vengeful God” seems to miss the point of why Jesus came.

   Additionally, looking at today’s Scriptures as well as current exegesis on the concept of “transubstantiation,” does really tell a different story than the Church hierarchy gives us on this feast.  In the 1^st reading from Deuteronomy we hear, “Not by bread alone do [we] live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  In John’s gospel as Jesus is teaching about “eating his flesh, and drinking his blood,” wherein his hearers, “the Temple authorities” stay stuck on the surface, thinking he literally means, “real flesh and real blood, Jesus clearly tells them, “this bread is not the same that your ancestors at in the desert” – in other words, food that fills your body, but your spirit.

   In order for us to better understand Jesus’ meaning in today’s gospel, we must look to what sharing a meal with others meant in his time.  Breaking bread with someone was looked at in the time of Jesus as a sign of forming community with them.  We might say the same is true in our every day, and sometimes, special meals within our homes – in the best sense – we strengthen our ties with others when we share a meal with them.  Jesus raised that to a new level in saying that sharing Eucharistic bread forms us into the body of Christ.  In other words, when we eat regular food, we incorporate that food into our very selves.  The opposite is true with the Eucharist, theologian, Diane Bergant says.  When we partake of Eucharistic bread; we are transformed into Eucharistic bread, meaning—we become Jesus’ body for the world –this friends, is the bigger idea of what we do here at Mass.  

   It is important for us to remember that Jesus never asked us “to worship him in the elements of bread and wine, but to care for his “body” in the world. Bergant continues, “blood symbolized life itself,” and for us, that means going deeper, the life of Jesus, his words and actions, all that he taught us about living, loving, and dying, taking all of that into ourselves, in effect, becoming “his full body” in our world, with all, each one that we meet in every day. 

   Understanding the Eucharist in this way, St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians today gives us a wider, fuller meaning than just the simple words on the page.  He asks the Corinthians, “the cup…we bless – is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ?  The bread we break – is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?”  Paul speaks about “sharing,” which in my mind, calls for action.  In other words, the Eucharist is meant to be an action word, us taking the substances into ourselves, and again, all of Jesus, all that he proclaimed and did, which then allows us to “transform” ourselves into Jesus’ body and blood, sharing his words, his actions, his life, with others. 

   In conclusion then, I think you all would agree with me that the notion of the Eucharist being an “action” word, and each of us, becoming “Jesus,” to the best of our abilities in our world, doing for others what he did in his lifetime, is much better than thinking of the Eucharist as a static noun which causes us to, “bend the knee,” but ends the action there. 

   Being “eucharist” in our world, acting out Jesus’ lifeblood in our life’s journey will always call forth the best in us my friends – many times having to stand alone.  A very poignant story came to me this past week which demonstrates this idea. 

   During the Viet Nam war, a decorated for valor member of the military came out as “gay” thinking such an honest statement about who he was in his entirety would be accepted.  He did this to challenge the then military’s policy against having gay men serve in the armed forces.  As we might guess, his honesty, regardless of all the previous good he had done in his military career, was not accepted.  He did receive an “honored” grave sight in Arlington upon his death, but his name was omitted from the gravestone.  His family perhaps at his request added the following words to the stone:  “I received medals of honor, the bronze star and purple heart for killing two men, but was discharged for loving one man.”

   Being a Christian, acting as Eucharistic people, will call us to be our best my friends, and that is what I would encourage us to remember on this beautiful feast, and as the commencement speaker that I referenced earlier seemed to be saying, living your values will always mean more than material gain.  Amen? Amen!