During his time of teaching in the flesh, Christ often expressed his love for, and his desire to be one with people, especially for those who were rejected and unloved. One quite obvious way He did this was to share meals with them. We only need to think of the familiar feeding of the five thousand where he miraculously provided a great meal for a huge crowd of people who came to listen to him and be healed by him. Shared meals were, for the Jews, signs of acceptance and friendship. Like many people, the Jews were rather selective about those with whom they shared meals. In seeking out public sinners and tax collectors, Jesus was going against their traditions. Most Jews invited their friends or powerful people to their meals, the usual ‘Death by Dinner Party’ that we are all familiar with. In eating with sinners, Jesus was making friends with those who had no friends. He was showing them respect and love, he was inviting them to His table because they are the ones he yearned to be with, rather than the highest and greatest that most people seem to lust after. He was letting them see themselves in a new light and become a new people. Instead of being nobodies, people with no hope, no future, they were God’s beloved children and citizens of his Kingdom. Something they had never even dreamed of had become a reality The Kingdom of God was not meant just for the religious elite. It was also for them. T was for them first!

It should come as no surprise to us that Jesus’ last act before his death on the Cross was to share a meal with his disciples – his Last Supper. The Eucharist is the retelling in the flesh of the Last Supper. In the course of this meal, ‘the Lord Jesus took some bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup after supper, and said, “This Cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me”’ Such familiar words, such a familiar table, but so unfamiliar with the reason we are invited have we become! He gathers the lowly, and scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts. 

Jesus’ last meal with his disciples is inseparable from the sacrifice of his life on the Cross, his supreme act of love. Love is manifested supremely in self-sacrifice. ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (Jn 15:13). In celebrating the Eucharist, we celebrate the memory of Jesus’ passion and death. As St Paul reminds us, ‘Therefore, every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming his death’ (1 Cor 11:26). We also recall the events which led to his death, the values by which he lived, and for which he died, and we commit ourselves to live by those same values: his passion for a world re-fashioned in the image of a loving God; his compassion for the poor and outcast; his mercy for, and forgiveness of, sinners; his hatred of hypocrisy; his abhorrence of violence and his commitment to peace. His love for us. 

In receiving the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we become one, not only with Jesus, but with one another. When St Augustine preached to his assembled congregation on the meaning of the Eucharist, he told them: ‘See what you are and become what you see: the Body of Christ… You are saying “Amen” to what you are: your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith. … Be a member of Christ’s body, then, so that your “Amen” may ring true!’

So today we once again open our doors and hearts to all people, not our doors in fact, we have no more place here than anyone who has never been here before, we are just passing through, part of the ever changing Body of Christ, looking for our true home, which is prefigured here this day. It is for that reason that we know our sinfulness, that we know our need of God, and we know our need for each other, for we are called to be one body. For sure, if part of the body is harming another part, we try and stop it, but if we cannot, we cut it off, and hope that act of being cut off will heal the wounds. Our celebration of this great feast of Corpus Christi reminds us of our constant challenge: to keep alive the body of Christ by becoming, in the context of our time, his flesh and blood given for the life of the world.

And we are not isolated individuals, but one body.  As the people in the desert gathered the manna that fell from heaven and shared it in their families, so Jesus, the Bread come down from Heaven, calls us together to receive him and to share him with one another.  The Eucharist is not a sacrament “for me”; it is the sacrament of the many, who form one body, God’s holy and faithful people, so we must build unity and love and faith, and the time to focus on that which is yet to come is here, now and forever.