Readings of the day: Genesis 14:18-20; Psalm 110:1, 2, 3, 4; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 9:11b-17
The Body and Blood of Christ, the Eucharist, the Mass: This reality we celebrate now has many names and many dimensions. And the readings we hear proclaimed from the word of God today, and the prayers of today’s Mass, each highlight particular dimensions of this celebration more than others.
The beauty, variety, and complexity of Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi, reminds me of the many different celebrations of this day I have experienced. Maybe some of us have participated in outdoor processions through the streets with the Blessed Sacrament. I have experienced this less here than in Colombia, where Corpus Christi processions are often quite elaborate.
Of course, Corpus Christi reminds me of first communions at which I have presided as a priest—the first one being the first communion of my godparents’ grandson, during my very first Mass as a priest. But I am especially remembering lately my many conversations at table with a brother Basilian priest I lived with in Rochester, New York, when I was just ordained, whom I especially loved and who was especially beloved of the whole Basilian community and people with whom he ministered. Fr. Joseph Trovato went to be with our Lord a couple of years ago. Quite often, though, when conversations with Fr. Joe would turn toward the Mass, the Eucharist, he would say, with his characteristic gentle voice, that the dimension of the Eucharist he found most difficult to live was that of sacrifice.
I was always somewhat surprised to hear Fr. Joe say this. When I think of priesthood (and not only the ordained priesthood but our common priesthood as baptized Christians), I think of one of my favourite prayers, St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Suscipe: “Take, Lord (Suscipe, Domine), all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will; all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it. All is yours; dispose of it wholly according to your will. Give me your love and your grace, for this is enough for me.”
Another thing that would surprise me about Fr. Joe, when I would bring up Ignatius’ Suscipe, is how he would look me directly in the eye and, with all the sternness he could muster (which was not much), say to me, “I do not like that prayer.” When I would ask him why, he would say, “Because I find it such a difficult prayer to live out.” I think that, if Fr. Joe found Ignatius’ Suscipe difficult to live out, the rest of us are in big trouble! Instead of the Suscipe, Fr. Joe’s favourite prayer or saying was from St. Francis de Sales: “There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and nothing so gentle as real strength.”
There have been few people, let alone few priests, who have lived the sacrifice demanded of Ignatius’ Suscipe—the total surrender to God of liberty, memory, understanding, our “entire will” to our Lord who has “given all to” us—as well as Fr. Joe Trovato. He certainly lived the radical (and, dare I say, more than humble, but self-sacrificial) gentleness to which St. Francis de Sales’ saying invites us.
The self-sacrificial gentleness of Ignatius’ Suscipe, of St. Francis de Sales, or of Fr. Joe Trovato is a Eucharistic self-sacrificial gentleness. It is a gentleness and a self-sacrifice to which the Lord in his grace invites us. There are many moments in our Mass, every time we celebrate it, when we remember Jesus’ sacrifice of his entire being, his having “given all to” us, for our salvation.
Maybe the most important moment during our Eucharistic celebration when we remember Jesus’ self-sacrifice for us is when we pray the same words Jesus did at the Last Supper, on the night before he gave himself up to death for us: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you… Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood.”
The earliest disciples of Jesus remembered Jesus’ sacrifice, his giving of his body and blood for us, at the Last Supper and on the cross, in Jesus’ own words. “This is my Body that is for you… This cup is the new covenant in my Blood. Do this… in remembrance of me.” St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which we hear today, is an early witness to this way in which Jesus’ first disciples remembered his sacrifice for us and its meaning for our salvation.
The Eucharistic dimension of sacrifice is closely connected to its dimension of memorial: Of memory not of artifacts in museums, but memory that projects Jesus’ giving of self to us into our history, so that it becomes always and everywhere present. And it becomes a self-sacrifice we can and are called to imitate: “Do this in memory of me… You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it.”
But how, through remembrance of Jesus, our greatest act of self-sacrifice, or otherwise, could we ever return such a sublime gift as Jesus has given to us: His Body and Blood; his life, on the cross? At Mass, in our Eucharistic prayers, we use a lot of language of sacrifice and of returning to God some element of God’s sacrifice of himself in Jesus for us. During our table conversations, Fr. Joe often liked to point out this language of sacrifice in our Eucharistic prayers that, like Ignatius’ Suscipe (so he would say) he had difficulty living out, much less understanding. Sometimes our Eucharistic language of sacrifice can be bold. We pray, for instance: “May this sacrifice of our reconciliation… advance the peace and salvation of all the world.” We still await with Christian hope, sisters and brothers, the fulfillment of this “peace and salvation” for which we pray every time we celebrate our Eucharist.
Sometimes our language of sacrifice in our Eucharistic prayers can be difficult to understand: “Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church.” What is an oblation? It is another word for sacrifice; for offering back to God what God has given us in this very celebration: The sacramental yet very real presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, we pray, “We offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice… May [Christ] make of us an eternal offering to you, so that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect.”
But can we ever offer God back what he has offered us; what God continues to offer us through our Eucharist: His very self, for our salvation? Can we ever match the sacrifice of self that Jesus offered for us on the cross? Without God’s grace, the short answer to these questions would be no. I have no doubt that Fr. Joe Trovato was on to something when he would say he had difficulty living out the meaning of the Lord’s sacrifice for us; the meaning of St. Ignatius’ Suscipe: “You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it.”
I will go a step beyond Fr. Joe here: Without God’s grace, to remember and to live in imitation of Jesus’ sacrifice for us is impossible. Yet, should we ever despair of God’s grace, we need only to remember the abundance of that grace of which Jesus’ greatest miracles were a sign. We hear from Luke’s Gospel today how Jesus multiplied the “five loaves and two fish,” so that there was enough to feed “about five thousand men,” and women and children in addition to them, with food still left over.
In this way, God will multiply even our smallest efforts at imitating God’s self-gift to us in our lives. God will multiply even our smallest efforts at kindness; at the kind of hospitality and blessing Melchizedek, the priest-king, shows Abram, and Abram returns to Melchizedek, in our reading from Genesis today.
God’s abundant grace will multiply our “I find this difficult to live out” into more than enough to nourish the world. In God’s grace, all the dimensions of this great celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ come together: Sacrifice, memorial, hospitality. God’s grace enables us to celebrate here now, and then to bring God’s real, nourishing presence to our world by all we say and do. God’s grace “is enough for us,” so that all we have received, we now return; we now give to a world hungering and thirsting for peace and salvation.
