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June 2, 2024The Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord
The Lord gives me the joy of being with you for my second pastoral visit to this cathedral parish which has Saint Joseph as its patron. I am very happy that we can celebrate the solemnity of the body and blood of the Lord which reminds us of the profound meaning of the Eucharist. In fact, the Church is always the Church out of the Eucharist. The form of the Church is always Eucharistic. In it we find the source and fulfillment of all the life of the people of God.
Since the purpose of the pastoral visit is to confirm us in the true faith and the unity among all the faithful, we find all this precisely in the body and blood of Christ. Our faith is always a faith rooted in the Eucharist. It is no coincidence that after the words of the consecration, as in the Gospel of Mark that we heard, the priest exclaims: the mystery of faith! It is the Eucharist that makes the Church. Without the Eucharist there is no church.
The solemnity of the body and blood of the Lord is intended first and foremost to remind us that Jesus Christ saved us with the gift of his life: he gave himself for us. Every time we gather in Church for a Holy Mass we celebrate the mystery of our salvation. As the first reading showed us, the Old Testament prefigured the covenant between God and humanity in the sacrifice of the lambs which marked the liberation from slavery and entry into the promised land. However, the people of God had experienced new slavery throughout their history, above all they had experienced the greatest slavery, that of sin. An external liberation was no longer enough. The people had experienced that the ancient sacrifices were not able to truly free the heart of man and open it to the true worship of God.
For this reason, God brings the ancient rites to completion through the gift of his Son, Jesus, who frees us with the gift of his body and blood. He took upon himself all the sins of humanity, all hatred, every division, and all selfishness that distances us from God and others.
As the letter to the Hebrews explained to us, the blood of Christ purifies us from all our sins and introduces us to communion with God and each other. The new and eternal covenant is therefore established in the blood of Christ. Sin divides, love unites. In Christ we too enter into the new and eternal covenant, the covenant of love that God wanted with all his faithful.
The solemnity of the body and blood of the Christ allows us to deepen the meaning of our being the Church. Dear faithful, let us return for a moment to the words of consecration that we heard from the Gospel of Mark. Jesus not only sacrifices himself out of love but institutes a sacrament that allows us to fully participate in the redeemed life. In fact, Jesus unites us deeply into his life in the Eucharist. He draws us into Easter. With the Eucharist we welcome the gift that saves us.
But at the same time Jesus unites us in his sacrifice for the salvation of the world. In fact, we don't just celebrate our personal salvation. All of us are called to expand the mystery of salvation in the world, uniting our life to that of Jesus: Jesus invites us to eat his body to become his body, to be a sign of his presence in the world. This was the experience of the apostles when Jesus asked them to eat his body and drink his blood. In front of the Eucharist, we are never spectators: Jesus attracts us, Jesus attracts us into himself. We are called to make our life, a bread broken for the life of the world.
Dear faithful, from the Eucharist we learn to be a living parish. Let us always put Jesus at the center of our lives. I invite you to be faithful to the Holy Mass. When you can, I invite you to participate in the Holy Mass regularly during the week or at least on weekend. I also invite you to give time for Eucharistic adoration. The frequent relationship with the Eucharist makes us grow in love. Day after day, the Eucharist transforms our whole life.
Benedict XVI said: “Christianity's new worship includes and transfigures every aspect of life: "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31). Christians, in all their actions, are called to offer true worship to God. Here, the intrinsically eucharistic nature of Christian life begins to take shape. The Eucharist, since it embraces the concrete, everyday existence of the believer, makes possible, day by day, the progressive transfiguration of all those called by grace to reflect the image of the Son of God (cf. Rom 8:29ff.). There is nothing authentically human – our thoughts and affections, our words and deeds – that does not find in the sacrament of the Eucharist the form it needs to be lived to the full”.
If we put the Eucharist at the center, we overcome every division and every partisan interest. The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity. If we are united with Christ, we cannot be divided among ourselves. By celebrating the body of Christ, we find ourselves united. Just as the body is made up of many different members but constitutes a single reality, so we who feed on Christ are called to a unity that is stronger than any other differences.
This parish sees the gift of brothers and sisters who come from many different nations, with different gifts. May the solemnity of the body and blood of Christ help us to truly form one body in Christ. When we are united, we give witness to the world of the risen Jesus, savior and redeemer of all humanity.
Finally, the solemnity of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus invites us to live the commandment of love to the full. The Eucharist is the sacrament of love. From this most holy sacrament we draw the strength to follow Jesus on the path of love, to welcome each other, overcoming all cultural and linguistic differences. Let us love each other because Christ loved us unconditionally. True love by nature is diffusive, it opens us to others. The love of Christ is never a love that isolates but opens up to encounter.
Dear faithful of the parish of Saint Joseph, be a Eucharistic community, be united in Christ, let Christ transform every day of your life. Let yourself be loved and love with a free love. In this, lies true joy. The joy of the gospel. The joy of having met Jesus and the joy of communicating him to others.
