Corpus Christi, The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ: Year C

Peace be with you and greetings on this Feast of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ,,, Corpus Christi. You know I once heard a story about a man named George who had been shipwrecked on an unchartered island for almost 20 years. It was kind of a good news, bad news story though. The good news was it was a lush little island with all of the necessities for staying alive: drinking water, food, and shelter. The bad new was the island was not near any normal shipping routes so there George was, all by himself, for almost 20 years. When he finally was found and rescued it’s understandable his joy was completely indescribable. As he jumped around there on the beach hugging the captain of the ship that found him, he couldn’t stop talking. Can you imagine? In the excitement the captain noticed three well-built huts just off the beach and asked George about them. George said, “Well, the one on the left is my home and since I’m a man of faith, the one on the right is my church where I worship.” “So, what’s the one in the middle,” the captain asked? “Oh,” George said, “that’s where I used to go to church but I didn’t like it there anymore and left.”

So, as we come together today to celebrate “The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ” let me ask a simple question; have you ever heard anyone say, “the Mass is boring” or “I just don’t get anything out of the Mass?” Well, I happen to personally know the pastor up at that huge non-denominational church that recently out-grew their big building on the North Parkway and now use the whole Butler High School campus. He just loves to brag about how many “ex-Catholics” he has in his congregation. And when you ask those Catholics, who now chose to go there on Sunday instead of Mass, you’ll often hear something like; “I just get sooo much more out of the service,” or “It just makes me feel so good,” or even “I just feel closer to Jesus.” Of course the all-important words in their answers are “I” and “me.” My friends stated very simply; if you sincerely want to worship God exactly the way Jesus Christ teaches us to worship God in the Bible, you go to a Catholic Mass. If, on the other hand, worshiping God is not your priority and you’re willing to walk away from Jesus’ own body and blood, drive out there to the old Butler High School campus, sing along with the joyful songs, projected on their big jumbo TV screens, be happy, and have fun. As I think about it myself however, somehow I believe giving an hour or so worshiping the unlimited creator of the universe, exactly the same way Jesus instructed his Apostles to do, on the night before his Passion, may not be all about “me” and my personal entertainment.

OK, I can’t help myself; I’ve got to teach a short Bible Lesson right now. Before you go home today pickup a Missalette in your pew and write down the source of today’s second reading, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, then go home and mark it in your own personal Bibles. While you’re at it mark verses 27, 28, and 29 also. Why do I think this particular scriptural passage is so important that it should be marked in every single Catholic’s Bible? First of all please remember, just about every Biblical scholar agrees, the letters of Paul constitute the oldest written documents in the New Testament. Paul did not have the four Gospels as he wrote 1 ^st Corinthians in the mid 50’s, some 20 years before the first Gospel was written. Consequently, what we heard today in our second reading is the oldest Biblical instruction to celebrate Eucharist basically just like we celebrate it today.

And what does Paul emphasize first? “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” Paul’s first emphasis for this Eucharistic sacrifice is Jesus own sacrificial death on the Cross. Remember though I also told you to mark verses 27, 28, and 29. Those verses constitute Paul’s second emphasis with his instruction to the Corinthians. Listen to this; “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.” Gosh, sounds like Paul is telling his congregation in Corinth this “body and blood of the Lord” sacrificial rite is serious and vital for their spiritual lives don’t you think?

I think to a certain degree we’ve kind of lost the sacrificial dimension 2000 years later when we talk about the Mass, however. Perhaps it’s because the whole Biblical concept of a bloody animal sacrifice is just so alien to our modern “feel good” culture. Paul’s audience would have understood it completely however. And then when Paul put Jesus’ own Passion and bloody death on the Cross into that sacrificial narrative for all of humanity, those 1 ^st Century Christians embraced it with sincerity and enthusiasm.

There is one other Biblical nuance that brings the Mass into even clearer focus as we read 1 ^st Corinthians, when Paul tells us Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Paul’s audience would have understood these words in context of the Passover Meal. Jesus used the same words God used when he directed Moses to establish that night as a memorial remembrance for the night the angel of death passed over the Jews in Egypt. And for them this was not simply like remembering a birthday or the 4 ^th of July. They believed spiritually they were made present again with their ancestors on that fateful night. And this is the same night Jesus chose to give us the His body and blood literally in the Eucharist, a definitive unification of God and God’s people. Likewise, during the Consecration of Mass we are present again with Jesus when bread and wine become His body and blood. Obviously, with his vivid words, Paul wanted the Corinthians to understand what was happening.

So, thank you Father Phil for Sacramentally giving us the indescribable privilege of participating with you in this sacrificial worship service Jesus Christ himself gave us and thank you to the Holy Spirit for inspiring the Biblical writers who articulated it all so clearly in God’s own book of instructions – the Bible.

Now, welcome everyone to the Sacred Sacrifice of the Mass as we celebrate Corpus Cristi, the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. One scholar goes so far as to say this, “The words pronounced by the Priest at the Consecration are more essential for our salvation than God’s own words from Genesis when he said, ‘Let there be light.’” Wow, I sincerely hope no one is bored.

< Older Post

Newer Post >

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time August 30, 2026

By Teresa Stephens • September 2, 2026

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 30, 2026

12th Sunday in Ordinary time June 21, 2026

September 2, 2026

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time July 19, 2026

By Gail Johnson • September 2, 2026

Paul T. Keil, 18-19 July 2026 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Season A Peace be with you and welcome to our celebration of the Mass for the 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time. OK, some of you may remember I’ve said before, in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapters 5, 6, and 7 comprise the whole Sermon on the Mount, but did you know Chapter 13, where we are today, is often called the Sermon of the Parables. In this single chapter Matthew strings together seven separate parables from Jesus. Today we just heard numbers two, three, and four. Last weekend we heard the first one with the Parable of the Sower and what happens to the seeds scattered in different places. Next weekend you’ll hear the final three parables from Chapter 13 so, be sure to come back. So, what is Jesus saying in these readings. Last week we heard the parable about seeds as an allegory for Jesus’s words falling on a path and being eaten by birds, falling on rocky ground and withering with no roots, falling into thorns and being choked by life’s anxieties, and falling on fertile soil to bear fruit. Today we have Jesus giving us another parable about planting seeds and again, just like last week, Jesus’ disciples ask him to explain the parable. And since He stops to explain both parables about planting, he just might be trying to emphasize something important here for his disciples, and for us. One thing is clear in these parables however, God’s Kingdom will always coexist in this physical world with forces opposing it, like the wheat and the weeds growing together. Now many religious people struggle with this condition. Some see it as predestination. A weed in the wheat field or a seed in the rocks must represent people predestined to go to hell. That’s what it literally says, right? Still others ask in frustration; this is God we’re talking about, why does God’s Kingdom have to struggle with opposing forces at all? Why doesn’t God just get rid of the evil? Well, our old friend, St Thomas Aquinas wrote quite a bit about good and evil coexisting in our fallen world. He said sometimes the two are so tightly interwoven that you couldn’t have certain types of good without certain types of evil. For example, he said simply, “there would be no virtue of the martyr without the cruelty of the tyrant.” Friends, God delights in our freedom, our intelligence, and our cooperation when we freely make the decision to accept God’s love. Without free will we cannot choose to love. Jesus’ explanation of the wheat and weed parable certainly helps when he says; “The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels” and in the next verse he says; “The Son of Man will send his angels.” There is a very important take-away here every single Christian should remember. Eternal judgment belongs to God alone, not to anyone else – period. This is a consistent message Jesus gives us in all four Gospels but unfortunately, there are those who sometimes forget this simple divine fact about humanity’s relationship with the unlimited creator of the universe. We may perceive an individual as being bad or even intrinsically evil but judgment for their immortal souls belongs exclusively to God. I always like an old adage that goes like this, “if I ever get to heaven, I may be surprised by who I see there, and they may be even more surprised to see me.” I’ll admit, over the years for a long time, as I’ve meditated on this parable about weeds and wheat or last week’s parable about seeds, especially the ones falling into thorns choked by worldly anxiety, there was something always bothering me. You see, if we’re not careful both parables can make life, heaven, and hell sound kind of random or worse yet, they can make God’s love sound like it is exclusively reserved for preselected people. I know now however, there is nothing further from the truth. If you’ve lived life for a while and think back to times when you were say maybe,,, struggling in school, or first dating, or trying to make ends meet while raising a family, or competing for promotions at work, or trying to buy that first house, you realize there may have been times when your life wasn’t very spiritually fruitful. In fact, I now realize there were times in my own past when thoughts of God, salvation, or prayer were nowhere in my daily routine. I even wonder; was there a period in my life when I was one of those weeds or a seed in the thorns? Thankfully, with reflection on the whole of Scripture, guidance from the Church, and maybe some help from the Holy Spirit I realize now these parables are not “either / or” propositions. God doesn’t intentionally create some people as weeds and some people as wheat nor does God throw souls into the wind to randomly fall in the thorns, or on stony ground, or in fertile soil. If you’re not careful, you can come to those conclusions, however. You can read the Bible too narrowly and pick out verses here and there that help support your personal image of what you want God to be. Those tend to be the same people who like to do God’s judgment work for him. Here’s the thing; some of us here today may have actually spent some time as those ugly weeds but at some point, with God’s help, we decided to change and now we’re wheat growing in that good old fertile soil. My sisters and brothers, sin must never be viewed as a permanent state. Like we heard from the Book of Wisdom today, “you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.” This is the greatest gift of our Christian faith; God loves us all so much, even great sinners, God is always ready to forgive. So, here’s a challenge and homework for us all today. Most of us know people out there from all age groups, but especially some of our youth, who may be temporarily living life like the weeds in our parable today or maybe tangled in those thorns of life’s tribulations. First and foremost, we must be confident, sin is not a permanent state of life, second, we don’t judge, third, pray for them no matter how nasty they may seem. And finally, if we’re really, really brave, we offer them a hand to pull them up and out of the weeds, rocks, or thorns into God’s fertile soil.