Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, June 15, 2003 Exodus 24:3-8 Hebrews 9:11-15 Mark 14:12-16, 22-26	Listen to Audio

The word "covenant" is central to God's revelation as contained in both the Old and the New Testaments, as well as the ancient Christian writers and theologians of the first millennium of the Church. Yet, that word is hard to find in the Catholic teaching that I and many of my generation and older grew up with. The word did not play a big part in either the Baltimore Catechism or in the theology textbooks that I studied in 1960's. Part of the reason is that both Latin and older English translations used the word "testament," a word that means "covenant" in Latin, but has come to have a very different meaning in English.

Today, however, the teaching of the Church - as found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the liturgy, and the writings of Pope John Paul II - has brought the word "covenant" back into our vocabulary. In fact, one of the phrases the Holy Father consistently uses to identify us, the Church, is "the People of the New Covenant."

The word "covenant" means a binding agreement made between two parties. But, unlike a legal contract, which is held together by external laws and sanctions, a covenant has an inner binding force. The pledge between the two parties creates a new relationship that changes the whole life of each of them. That's why we rightly call marriage a covenant. A husband and a wife who take their marriage relationship seriously are deeply and irrevocably changed as individuals in living out that covenant.

It's the same way with God and us. The Old Covenant, which was established in the event at Mount Sinai in the first reading, involved not only the shedding but also the sharing of blood. The blood of the slaughtered animals, signifying life itself, was divided in two - one half poured on the altar to connect with God, the other half sprinkled on the people to connect with them. God and his people united in one blood, united in one life. Blood, as the life-force, is the seal of the covenant, the bond between God and his people.

Now the fulfillment of the Old Testament Covenant depended in part on the repetition of this act ritually year after year. It also depended on the people continuing to say "yes" to the covenant, continuing to say, as we heard in the first reading, "All that the Lord has said, we will heed and do."

However, the significance of the blood of Jesus, as the sign and seal of the perfect sacrifice of the New Covenant, is that the "yes" to God, the condition for the Covenant, has been permanently and irrevocably made by Jesus, both as God and as one of us. Jesus is God's commitment to us, embodied in human flesh; and he is also the embodiment of our commitment, the perfect yes of humanity to God. Notice, in the words of Jesus at the last supper, he uses the same words that Moses did, "the blood of the Covenant." Jesus' sacrifice fulfills the Old Covenant and establishes the New Covenant relationship between God and humanity, which is forever enduring, which no sin or human weakness on our part can break.

Although there can be no new sacrifice - Jesus did it once and for all, as the Letter to the Hebrews, our second reading, makes clear - it is evident from Jesus' words that he wants us to continue to share in communion with that sacrifice through the Eucharist. If we look closely at his words, we can gain a deep and rich understanding of the many dimensions of what "communion" means.

Now, the words of Jesus that I'm going refer to are the way that we read them in the Eucharistic Prayer the Mass, which is not quite the way they are found in Mark's Gospel, which we just heard. Actually, the words of Jesus are quoted four times in the New Testament - in the First Letter to the Corinthians, as well as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke - and each time they are a little bit different. In the Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass, the tradition of the Church has taken those four versions, and put them together. So, I am switching a bit from what we just heard in St. Mark's Gospel to what we hear in a few minutes when we pray the Eucharistic Prayer.

Notice, first that, at the Last Supper, Jesus did not just say, "This is my body," and "This is my blood." What he said was, "This is my body, which will be given up for you." It's his sacrificed body that is made present, and our communion means not just receiving him, but joining with him intimately in his sacrifice, joining our will with his will in his one eternal yes to the Father. So the covenant no longer depends on our yes, sinful and imperfect as it will always be; the binding force of the New Covenant now is Jesus' yes, and we participate in it by our joining our will to his.

When we receive communion, therefore, we are not just receiving Jesus; we are also making and renewing our own commitment to live in the New Covenant, our commitment to live in union with him, and to unite our own will with the Father's will, just as he did.

And then he said, "This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, which will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven." The importance of receiving the blood of Christ in communion is that, by this act, we are explicitly and concretely saying yes to our union with the blood of Christ in the New Covenant. Just as the people of the Old Covenant said yes to their relationship with God by allowing the blood of the sacrificed animal to be sprinkled on them, so too we, the people of the New Covenant, express our yes to the fullness of our relationship with God in Christ by our sharing the cup of his blood in communion as well.

It's important for us to realize that Jesus had a very clear and definite intention when he gave us his body and blood under the form of bread and wine. And he asks us to take his words seriously in their fullness, when we hear at every Mass: "Take this, all of you, and eat it. . . . Take this, all of you, and drink from it . . . Do this in memory of me."

Thomas Welbers, 2003