Corpus Christi (B)
This Sunday, we celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi – the Body and Blood of Christ. As Catholics, our attention this day naturally focuses on the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which makes present to us – sacramentally – the very Body and Blood of Christ. Yet, the Scripture readings we have for this day speak to us of covenant and sacrifice as well as blood. The first two readings mention the rites of animal sacrifice that were prevalent in ancient Israel.
This talk of animal sacrifice immediately causes a problem for us in the contemporary world. To get a feel for this problem, imagine (if you can) setting up a makeshift altar in your backyard and offering your firstborn puppy or kitten on it. Or, imagine a priest in a rural parish setting up an altar on the front lawn of the church and offering someone’s lamb or calf on it. At least one neighbor would call the police! Such animal sacrifice seems to people today weird at best, and cruel and abusive to animals at worst. And yet, since we are given these readings on this feast, we are meant to see that by understanding what animal sacrifice meant to ancient Israel, we will understand better what we mean when we speak of the Sacrifice of the Mass, and what kind of gift we have been given in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
Each one of us has people in our lives whom we value and love deeply. It is never enough to simply tell ourselves what these people mean to us. We feel the need to tell them as well. But telling them in words isn’t enough for us, either. We want to do something for them. We want to give them some concrete sign of our love. Very often, we do so on special occasions, such as birthdays or anniversaries. We may do so after someone has done something very thoughtful or caring for us. This desire to do something for this person we love is an expression of our gratitude for who this person is and what this person has given us.
This desire to do something for a loved one doesn’t happen only when we want to express love or gratitude. It also happens when we have hurt this other person in some way, by something wrong we have said or done, or by our failure to do for that person something we promised to do. But it is never enough to simply acknowledged within ourselves that we have failed this other person, though this is a necessary first step. We also feel the need to apologize in words, and to do something to symbolize our regret and our desire to heal the wounded relationship. We feel the need to act out our atonement.
Now, let’s shift the focus from someone we know to God. We know that God has given us everything we have – our very being, our world, our families and friends, and many other gifts. We want to express gratitude to God for all these gifts. Words, however, are not enough. We feel the need to do something, to give something. But what?
Imagine, now, how we feel when we have failed God in some way: when we have sinned in the wrongs we have done or the good things we chose not to do. We want to confess our sins to God. We want to do something to express our remorse and our desire for forgiveness. But what?
In ancient Israel (as well as many other ancient cultures), the answer to both was animal sacrifice. Why? Although money existed in ancient Israel, wealth was primarily measured in terms of the fruitfulness and size of one’s flocks of animals – sheep, goats, cattle. As such, one’s animals became one of the primary expressions of God’s blessing (the other being the number of children a person had). It was a natural move, then, to take an animal from one’s flocks and offer it to God as an expression of gratitude for all of God’s blessings. It was just as natural a move to offer an animal in sacrifice as an expression of atonement and as a way to ask God to forgive one’s sins. In both cases, the animal represented – “sacramentally”, so to speak – the Israelite who wanted to express either thanksgiving or atonement.
Animal sacrifice in ancient Israel, then, was used to express gratefulness to God or as a means of atoning for sin and beseeching God’s mercy. But animal sacrifice in Israelite tradition had a third use, as we see in the first reading. It was a means of establishing and renewing the covenant between God and His people. God’s covenants with Noah and Abraham, for example, both involved animal sacrifice.
Our first reading provides us with a good example of this. It’s helpful to recall the context. God has already freed Israel from slavery in Egypt so that they might become God’s own people. Through Moses, God has led them from Egypt to Mount Sinai. Now, we see, expressed in ritual form, the meaning of what has already happened. Moses gives Israel God’s commandments. The people respond – twice – that they will do everything that the Lord has told them. Then, Moses sacrifices a number of animals. He takes some of their blood and splashes it on the altar. The rest of the blood is then sprinkled on the people.
Blood, for ancient Israel, was seen as the seat of life. It represented the very life of a person or animal. By using the blood of animals in this way, Moses is showing the people that they have now entered into a kind of “blood brotherhood” with God. This blood symbolizes the depth and intensity of this commitment, this covenant. It symbolized the people’s total commitment of their lives to God, and of God’s steadfast love for his people.
The blood of sacrificed animals was also used for the renewal of the covenant between God and his people. One example of this is in the celebration of the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, which our reading from Hebrews refers to. This was the one day of the year when the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies in the Temple – the symbolic location of God’s dwelling among His people. The high priest brought a goat and a lamb. He laid his hands on the goat, symbolically placing all the sins of the people on it (it now was the scapegoat). Then, the goat was driven into the wilderness, as a sign of the people’s desire that God remove their sins from them. The lamb was offered in sacrifice. Some of its blood was sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, and the rest was brought out by the high priest and sprinkled on the people – a sign of their desire to be cleansed of their sins and renewed by the very life of God, and their desire to be, once again, God;s holy people.
What all of these rituals represented and promised would be taken up by Jesus and raised to a whole new level. What the people of Israel sought from God, symbolized in the blood of animals, Jesus would offer through His own body and blood. He would be the true Lamb of God who would reconcile God and humanity, not with the blood of animals, but with His own. For God, it would not be enough to let an animal “stand in” for him, so to speak. God wanted to offer Himself – His blood – His life – literally – for us. He wanted to offer His body for us.
Jesus expresses this in a number of ways in the Gospels. At the Last Supper, however, He gives us a new ritual. This ritual expressed what Jesus was about to do at Calvary: “this is my body, given for you… this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, shed for you… do this in memory of me”. Jesus would be not only the Lamb of God, but also the Scapegoat for our sins. If you read the description of the scapegoat in the Old Testament, you will see that a number of things that the people did to the scapegoat were also done to Jesus before he was crucified. Jesus Himself would be the sacrifice that would take away sins and establish us as His own people. After this, there would be no need for animal sacrifice. It pointed forward to Jesus, who then actually achieved what it promised.
So, then, whenever we receive the Body and Blood of the Lord at Mass, we are sharing in the very life of God. We are renewing our covenant with Him. Our sins are being cleansed, our wounds healed. It is the Lord Himself who comes to us in this Sacrament.
Recall the first reading – how when Moses sprinkled the blood of the animals on the people, the responded by declaring that they would do all that the Lord commanded them to do. We do the same every time we hear the words “the Body of Christ” or “the Blood of Christ” and say “Amen”. Our “Amen” not only signifies our faith that what we are receiving truly is the Body and Blood of the Lord. It also symbolizes the renewal of the covenant from our end: in our “Amen”, we are saying that, now graced by the Lord’s very life, we, too, will do everything that the Lord has taught us. We will obey His words and follow His example. We can make this promise because the Lord is in us, sacramentally, enabling us to fulfill this commitment. He has pledged His very life to us in the Eucharist, the great Sacrament of thanksgiving (gratitude) and atonement. By our Amen, we gratefully pledge ourselves to Him and to one another as fellow disciples of Christ.
May the presence of Christ in this Sacrament of His Body and Blood be our hope and our strength. May our commitment to the Lord, made possible by His love for us, help others find what they are seeking in the Lord and among all those who have faith in Him.