Homily for Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ 2009 - First Eucharist Weekend at St Joseph's.

Each week I usually visit an elderly parishioner who is in his 90s. He is mostly confined to home as he cannot travel too far. When I visit he is sitting in the same room in the same chair often dozing away. Often when I sit down with him I get the feeling that time has stood still. It could only be a moment ago that I last spoke to him yet it was a week ago. This is especially so as I give him Holy Communion. One definition of time I read about is that it is a measure of change. So, if nothing changes, there is no time! Psychologically for me, at least, when I visit the man, time seems to have stood still. When there is no sense of time moving forward then you are very much in the present. Then you really are present to one another. It could be called contemplation.

We speak about God in a similar way. God is unchanging, we say. God is beyond time. God just is. God's changeableness is not like ours. There is no thing in God that can change. God's love, we say, is everlasting. God is always present for us. When we are truly present to God then we do call it contemplation. It is a way of being rather than doing something.

We speak of Christ being truly present in the broken bread and shared cup of the Eucharist. We believe that Christ is present to us with the greatest intimacy and uniqueness in Holy Communion. We are saying that God's everlasting love for us is present and at work for us no matter what we are doing or thinking. But the question is, are we present to Christ?

The Mass readings for today's feast focus on the Covenant. First the Covenant established by God through Moses. Then the new Covenant established by Jesus on the cross. Moses, as we heard in the reading from Exodus, sprinkled the blood of bullocks half on an altar and half on the people. In this way there was made a blood relationship between God and the Hebrew people. Blood for the Hebrews means life. Blood is treated in a special way as sacred.

This is the idea behind our word "consanguinity", from the Latin, "with blood". It means we are related by blood. Blood brothers and sisters have the same blood flowing in their veins. That is how close God wants to be with us. This is what holiness means. Referring to this earlier Covenant the letter to Hebrews we read says of Jesus:

"The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer are sprinkled on those who have incurred defilement and they restore the holiness of their outward lives; how much more effectively the blood of Christ, who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit, can purify our inner self from dead actions so that we can do our service to the living God" (Hebrews 9:13).

This ritual act of sprinkling blood and eating the meat of the animals completed the initiation of the Hebrew slaves as God's own people. Their initiation began when God led them through the waters of the Red Sea to freedom. That initiation was confirmed by God's constant presence throughout their journey in the wilderness, a column of cloud by day and a column of fire by night (cf Exodus 13:21).

Our rituals, our sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist parallel those ancient rites. We use the language and ideas of ancient Israel to understand what Jesus did. But our Sacraments are radically different as the letter to Hebrews points out. We don't have to kill anything like Moses or the priest in the Temple. We don't have to go looking for something to sacrifice. We don't need a scape goat. Jesus' life was given freely by himself. It happened because he loved us in obedience to the Father's will. Love is always God's initiative. It is grace. Our response in love is our sacrifice.

So we begin to see how all these rituals and metaphors are trying both to describe God's hopes for us, as well as make that relationship happen. Our freedom is not just physical freedom but spiritual freedom. Freedom from sin and death. We are free because we are no longer slaves but brothers and sisters of Christ. That is our holiness. That relationship is established by an everlasting new covenant. It is one that does not have to be repeated daily as they did in the Jerusalem Temple with all its animals and blood. Jesus is the eternal now. His real presence means our friendship with God is a real possibility now. It is as though time stands still. But, again, are we present to Christ?

Our most important Eucharistic procession is the one to the Altar to receive Communion. There we say Yes, Amen, to God's offer of love. It is possible for all from the youngest child making their First Eucharist to the eldest parishioner confined to bed at home. It is to that Table we invite these young people today.

A poem by French poet Didier Rimaud SJ, in which he reflects on the Exodus of old and our own journey in Christ:

In remembrance of you,

We take the bread of Easter in our hands,

This Bread do we consume:

It does no longer taste of bitter herbs, nor of unleavened bread.

It is the bread of a land promised us where we shall be set free.

In remembrance of you,

We take the wine of Easter at our feast,

This wine do hold dear.

It does no longer taste of bitter springs, nor of dark salty pools.

It is the wine of land promised us where we shall be made whole.

In remembrance of you,

From exile we return.

In remembrance of you,

We walk across the sea!

(Translated and set to music by Christopher Willcock, SJ)

Eucharist then is food for the journey. A journey we are on together.

Fr Graham