Sacrament and sacrifice

By Father Vincent Hawkswell

Body and Blood of Christ, Year B
June 18
1st Reading: Ex. 24:3-8
2nd Reading: Heb. 9:11-15
Gospel: Mk. 14:12-16, 22-26

This Sunday we celebrate the solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. The Gospel Reading describes the institution of the Holy Eucharist, while the other two Readings emphasize sacrifice.

At His last supper with His apostles, the night before He died, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them to eat, saying, "This is My Body." Then He took a cup of wine and, after giving thanks, gave it to them to drink, saying, "This is My Blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many."

The Eucharist is Christ's Body, our spiritual food. However, it is not only the Body Christ fed to His apostles at the Last Supper, but also the Body He sacrificed to His Father on the cross the next day, Which rose from the dead, Which ascended into heaven, and Which now sits "at the right hand of the Father."

The First Reading clearly foreshadows what Christ did. Moses had the Israelites sacrifice oxen; half of the blood he dashed against the altar and the rest he dashed over the people, saying, "See the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you."

In the Second Reading, St. Paul relates the sacrifices of animals, which initiated the Old Covenants, to Christ's sacrifice of His own Body, which initiated the New Covenant. If the blood of goats and bulls could sanctify the Israelites, he says, how much more will the Blood of Christ purify us!

This Sunday, therefore, we celebrate not only a sacrament (the Real Presence of Christ: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, under the appearances of bread and wine), but also a sacrifice.

Paschal Lamb

It is significant that the meal at which Jesus instituted the Eucharist was the Jewish memorial of the Passover. The first Pasch took place in Egypt, where the Jews were slaves, about 1300 BC.

Through Moses, God commanded each Jewish household to sacrifice an unblemished lamb or kid, eat it, and sprinkle its blood on the doorpost. Then He commanded an angel to go through Egypt and kill the oldest male in each family, human or animal, but to "pass over" the Jewish homes without doing any harm. As a result, the Egyptians let the Jews go.

To this day, the Jews' annual commemoration of the Pasch centres around a meal which ends with the eating of the paschal lamb.

Christians have always seen the first Passover as a foreshadowing of what happened to Christ, Whom John the Baptist called the "Lamb of God." Christ was sacrificed for us like the paschal lamb, and His Blood frees us from slavery to sin and death as the blood of the paschal lamb saved the Israelites.

However, Christ was not only the Lamb Who was sacrificed, but also the Priest Who performed the sacrifice. "Christ came as the High Priest of the good things that have come," St. Paul said; and a priest is essentially one who offers sacrifice.

In his book The Eucharist, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa explains that in biblical language, the word "body" does not mean a component or part of a human being, but the whole human being insofar as it lives its life in a body. Similarly, the word "blood" means not a part of the body, but a happening: namely death.

In giving us His Body to eat, therefore, Jesus left us the gift of His whole life: "silence, sweat, hardship, prayer, struggle, joy, and humiliation." By giving us His Blood to drink, He left us the gift of His death.

Life and death

Therefore, the Eucharist is not just the mystery of Christ's Body and Blood; it is also the mystery of His life and death. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that it is "the memorial of Christ's Passover;" it makes not only Christ's Body and Blood, but also His sacrifice of His Body and Blood, present to us sacramentally.

All this happens in the Mass. In fact, the Mass is, precisely, the sacrifice of Christ's Body and Blood, made present to us sacramentally. Accordingly, after the consecration, the priest says a prayer called the anamnesis or memorial. In the First Eucharistic Prayer he says, "Father, we celebrate the memory of Christ, Your Son. We, Your people and your ministers, recall His passion, His resurrection from the dead, and His ascension into glory."

"This memorial is not merely the recollection of past events," the Catechism says: in the Mass, these events "become in a certain way present and real." In order to ransom us from Satan, Christ sacrificed Himself to God the Father, once and for all, by His death on the cross. The Mass is a visible sacrifice, "as the nature of man demands," which continually re-presents this one sacrifice, perpetuates its memory, and applies its saving power to the forgiveness of our daily sins.

The sacrifice of Christ on the cross and all the Masses offered everywhere in the world are one single sacrifice. In all of them, Christ is the Priest as well as the Victim. The only difference is the manner of the sacrifice: on the cross it was bloody, while in the Mass it is sacramental.

This Sunday, and every Sunday thereafter, when we go to Communion and the priest holds up the host before our eyes, saying, "The Body of Christ," let our "Amen!" ring out as a true act of faith and thanksgiving.