This week I
have been meditating on this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ in the light of the death on June 3rd
,2007
of Fr.
Ragheed Aziz Gazzi and his companions in 
Fr.Ragheed
was a 35-year old Chaldean Catholic priest
who was
stopped by unknown gunmen when leaving the Mass, and shot to death with the three subdeacons
who were accompanying him.
The
subdeacon’s wife reported that Fr.Ragheed simply asked them, “How can I
close the house of God?” .
the day of support and help”.
On this
solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, I can’t help
but recall the heroic witness unto death of
Fr.Ragheed and his companions, because his
words and example are a vivid reminder to us that
without Sunday, without the eucharist, we cannot
survive as disciples of Jesus.
Every Sunday
gathered at this altar, we remember that the divine love, forgiveness
and reconciliation, made present
under the humble signs of bread and wine
are more
powerful than hatred and enmity. Every Sunday we remember in the sacrifice offered on this altar, how by his sacrificial death on the Cross and glorious resurrection, the Lord has overcome the power of sin and death forever.
In the first reading we recall how at the foot of Mt. Sinai
Moses spoke to the Israelites of all the words and ordinances of the Lord. The people replied, “We will do everything that the Lord has told us.”
Moses then sealed the eternal covenant between God and the Israel by sprinkling the altar and the people with the blood of a young bull sacrificed as a peace offering to the Lord.
Each Sunday we gather like the Israelites to hear “ the words and ordinances of the Lord”. Each time we respond “Thanks be to God” and “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ” at the conclusion of the readings and the gospel, we are saying, as God’s people: “We will do everything that the Lord has told us”,
and the Father ratifies the new covenant that he has made with his holy people, with each one of us, not with the blood of calves and goats but with the blood of his beloved Son,
poured out to make peace between God and sinful humanity.
We cannot survive as the Body of Christ without the Eucharist because each time we receive the gift of his Body and Blood, we receive the grace and the strength and the fortitude to “do everything that the Lord has told us.”
But as members of Christ’s Body, incorporated completely into the mystery of his death and resurrection, we are called not only “to do everything that the Lord tells us”, to turn away from sin and to act virtuously, we are called to go beyond that, to imitate the example of Jesus so as to become more and more like him.
In our gospel today, we heard again the words we hear each time we celebrate the Eucharist. On the night before Jesus was betrayed and put to death, the Lord gave his disciples
the bread which was his body broken for them, saying, “Take it; this is my body”. He took the cup of wine, his blood poured out for them, and said, “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many”.
Each time we
gather at this altar, we hear
those familiar yet mysterious words of Jesus, that
conclude with this command:
“Do this, in
memory of me.” With these words, Jesus not only commands us to gather in his memory to celebrate the Eucharist, he gently commands us, invites us, to ourselves become a living sacrifice, in imitation of his total self-giving.
The Eucharist is a reminder that a life
lived, not for ourselves alone but for others, is the
saving participation in the divine life of the Trinity, revealed to
us in Jesus, which is eternal life. In the gift of his Body and Blood, Jesus reveals to us his life freely given to the Father; given to his disciples; given to the poor and needy; a life given even to the enemies who took his life so cruelly.
As
Christians we cannot survive without the Eucharist because the Eucharist teaches us how to give
ourselves completely like Jesus.
At Sinai,
God’s people promised to
do “everything that the Lord has told us”.
At this
table, Jesus commands us to gather
around the altar of his Body and Blood and to
imitate his self-giving, to do what
Jesus did.
It is this
self-giving that Jesus commands us to do in
remembrance of him. Jesus commands us to remember him
as one who
was consumed by love. Jesus
commands us to remember his sacrifice by becoming ourselves
a living
sacrifice for the life of the world in the choices and decisions we make each day.
We cannot
survive as Christians without the Eucharist because each
time we eat his Body and drink his Blood
we see and
hear and touch and taste what it
means to live like Jesus, to be Jesus, in this world.
In this
world in which we
are constantly enjoined
to consume;
to acquire and accumulate; to take for
ourselves whatever we desire; the Eucharist
invites us to share everything we have been
given. Not to be consumers but tto be consumed.
We cannot survive as Christians without the Eucharist
because,
nourished by his Body and Blood, we become
the food and drink that the Lord offers for a world
which hungers and thirsts for righteousness,
mercy, purity of heart, forgiveness and love.
This world
cannot survive without Christians who each day
are willing to be the Lord’s Body and Blood broken and
poured out for the life of the world.
“Christians”,
St.Augustine said about the Lord’s Body and Blood,” say ‘Amen’
to what you are: be what you receive.”
Brothers and
sisters, on this
feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, let us say
‘Amen’ to the bread of life and the cup
of salvation together
with the angels and the saints who praise
God at the heavenly altar; let us say
‘Amen’ with Fr. Ragheed and his companions and all of
the martyrs who stand invisibly
beside us at the table of sacrifice; and let us
say ‘Amen’, with the whole Church gathered
this day
to worship
and adore Jesus in the
precious and lifegiving mysteries of his Body
and Blood. 
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