The Solemnity celebrates, highlights and acknowledges Christ’s promise and presence. First, the promise was made right after He had multiplied bread and fish to feed to the hungry horde. The empty stomachs occasioned for Him a teaching moment on the necessity of eating His Body and drinking His Blood in order to secure eternal life. We know what happened from that incident. Everyone left Him: None of the 5000-strong crowd of men, not counting women and children, could fathom eating flesh and drinking blood—an act suggestive of cannibalism. Jesus did nothing to disabuse them of this idea.
Second, He told the Apostles before the Ascension that He would be with them until the end of time. Through both the establishment of the priesthood and the institution of the Holy Eucharist, Jesus has kept His promise to be present to us from then until the moment the Church on earth crosses into eternity.
Most interestingly, with regard to the charge of cannibalism, for 1500 years, Catholics or Christians had no problem understanding what they consume. The beauty of the accusation is that it actually lends historical weight to what the ancient Church believed in. They understood Jesus’ literal reference and without any reservation, they ate His Body and drank His Blood. They were unfazed by the accusation of cannibalism because they were not eating body parts as cannibals do. We consume Jesus in His entirety—His Body, His Blood, His Divinity and His Humanity. We eat Jesus, full stop. Not parts of Him. It matters not how big a piece of the sacred Host that we consume or how much from the consecrated chalice we have drunk, we would have eaten and drunk of Jesus fully.
To appreciate why we need to eat Jesus, we start with what happens in the process of consumption. The food we eat has a way of becoming us. Try a two-regimen of “Char Koay Teow” and witness your girth expanding. But there is another way of looking at how food changes us. A good example would be garlic or “petai”. If we consume nothing but just garlic or “petai”, soon enough our entire body will reek of garlic or “petai”. This analogy can help us grasp how slowly through the regular reception of the Holy Eucharist, we undergo a transformation which mirrors what the bread and wine undergo when they are consecrated at Mass.
Both the bread and wine retain their accidental appearances meaning that they will taste like bread and wine but through both the Spirit and the Word, both the substances of the bread and wine are changed completely into the substance of the Person of Christ. In other words, the process we term as “Transubstantiation” is achieve at an essential level thereby allowing the accidents to remain. Whatever renders bread as bread and wine as wine has been changed into the full divinity and humanity of Jesus.
The process of Transubstantiation is guaranteed by Christ Himself through the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Through the priest who celebrates the Eucharist, Jesus fulfils His promise of giving us His Body and Blood. We eat and drink of Him in order that we may become like Him. In other words, just like the body beginning to exude the smell of garlic or “petai”, worthily consuming Christ’s body and drinking His blood will make us resemble Him more and more.
The Solemnity is truly a call for us to be the Body of Christ. This privileged vocation is a timely reminder especially when we are caught in the throes of a culture war that is centred on gender politics. That may not strike a chord for those in this country who are more familiar with racial politics. Here, our identity is not tied to qualification but “kulification” (skin colour) which simply calls to attention that identity is important. When we look at man’s attempts to secure a better world, nothing much has changed no matter how much we have advanced technologically. In the past, people cheated people and now they just have better ways of scamming electronically. It merely proves that we do not change the world by the dint of our might and effort. Instead, lasting transformation takes places through the conversion of heart. The more the human heart is shaped like Christ, the better will the shape of the world be.
The procession of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ is an expression of this desire to be moulded into His image and likeness and it provides a solid foundation for our Catholic Christian identity. It does not solve the problem of posed by gender ideology or racial politics but it does give us a firm foundation to stand on. We are the Body of Christ and in carrying the Body of Christ, we signal our intention to be shaped more and more into His Body. As we continue to eat His Body and drink His Blood at the Eucharist, we beseech Him to mould and form us to be more like Him so that the change that humanity longs for can truly take shape.
