“…the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world” (Jerusalem Bible, John 6:51)
The centre of the Christian religion is not Our Lord’s teaching, but his Person; not what he said so much as who he is, the Eternal God himself who for us and for our salvation came down from Heaven and was made Man. And the first step in that amazing act of condescension was when the Archangel Gabriel was sent to Our Lady to tell her that she was to be the Mother of God, for of her body she was to form Our Lord’s Body and give him to us and to the world.
And so Jesus Christ, God made Man, was born and in Mary’s warm arms his infant form was cradled. His body, which was truly part of himself, was also truly human and with it he took to himself our human nature in its fullness. Thus by becoming Man he formed a kinship with us whereby he became one with us so that we might become one with him. He united himself to us on our level in order to lift us up to his.
So he grew up. As his mind increased in wisdom, so his Body grew in stature. And in that Body he suffered. The Devil, the Spirit of Evil and Lord of Darkness, knew that the only way that he could prevent our union with God was to break Our Lord’s, and in order to do that, he confronted him with the Crucifixion. Our Lord loved his Father and us enough to be born in the stable at Bethlehem. But would he pay the price of dying for us on the Cross of Calvary? Would his love for us then fade into indifference, or his love for his Father turn into mistrust and resentment?
Such was the challenge in the Garden of Gethsemane on Maundy Thursday night and Our Lord accepted it; and the next day, in our own flesh and blood he defeated that attempt to bring about his spiritual downfall. At three o’clock on Good Friday, when there was no more that the power of evil could do, that bond of faith and love which united him to his Father, remained unbroken and unbreakable.
But his Body – that was not the same: it was not only that it was spattered with blood, nor that there were great tears in the hands and feet – it was dead. And for three days it was dead, as still and as cold as the stone slab on which it was stretched.
But God did not allow his Holy One to see corruption, and on Easter Day the Body of Christ was changed and raised to a supernatural level of existence, and once again became part of himself, this time for all eternity. And on Ascension Day he returned with it, now glorified, to that heavenly life which he had left all those years before when he became Man.
His Body in Heaven now is the same as was laid in the manger and nailed upon the Cross, but now transformed and raised to a state of supernatural glory above the physical conditions of distance and of space. So Our Lord is close at hand because he shares with his Father that spiritual life of God which is the ever-present background of our earthly life. That is why he could assure his Apostles, “…I am with you always; yes, to the end of time”, so that, as he put it, “…where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them” (Jerusalem Bible, Matthew 28:20; 18:20).
But there is one focal point all over the world where he is present in his ascended and glorified Body and that focal point is the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. For at the Consecration in the Eucharist, the forms of bread and wine on the altar and Our Lord’s Ascended Body become one as he himself emphatically assured us.
For at the Last Supper, when he said – looking ahead to his Resurrection and Ascension – “This is my Body”, he forecast the literal truth, the same truth as he had declared in Capernaum, “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven….and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world….He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him” (Jerusalem Bible, John 6: 51,56).
This truth, tremendous both in its sublime significance and in its utter simplicity, means that when devout communicants take and receive the Lord’s Body in the Blessed Sacrament, they become truly part of Our Ascended Lord in his fullness because then Our Ascended Lord in his fullness becomes truly part of them. That is why to communicate when in a state of serious sin is to commit an act of sacrilege and is, in St Paul’s words of warning, to eat and drink judgement upon oneself (1 Corinthians 11:29).
There is, therefore, no difference between Our Lord’s Ascended Body in Heaven and his Ascended Body in the Blessed Sacrament. The two are not two but one and the same. When we genuflect to the Sacrament we are giving our loving adoration to him in Person; when we pray at the place of reservation we pray to him.
For in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, as upon his Throne of glory, is his own Body, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, dead and buried; risen, ascended and for ever glorified.
A prayer of thanksgiving for the gift of Holy Communion
Dearest Jesus, we thank you for the most precious gift of Holy Communion – your risen, ascended and glorified Body. May we never take this gift for granted. Help us always to prepare as well as we can, and to receive you with reverence and love. Change us into your likeness and bring us unworthy sinners to share in the never-ending joys of Heaven.
“O Christ, whom now beneath a veil we see,
may what we thirst for soon our portion be,
to gaze on thee unveiled, and see thy face,
the vision of thy glory and thy grace”. (1)
Reference
1. St Thomas Aquinas (13th century, trans. Woodford, J.R. 1852) Thee we adore. Available from:
http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/t/t419.html (Accessed 10 March 2012) (Internet).