I didn’t intend to shock my RCIA class some years ago when I told them, during a discussion on the Eucharist, that we are a cultic people. I could see their eyes double in size, and read the movement of their tight lips—“We belong to a cult?” In an age that trivializes mystery and refuses sacrifice, we only consider cult to refer to religious or social groups with deviant beliefs and practices—like the KKK, Jim Jones’ Peoples’ Temple, David Koresh’s Branch Davidians, Marshall Applewhite’s Heaven’s Gate, and so forth. Though it may shock you to hear it, today’s feast of Corpus Christi celebrates our belonging to the “cult of Christ.” Cult is not a bad or dirty word; it means worship, from the Latin “cultus,” from which we derive the words culture, cultivate, care. I hope that quells our anxiety. Yes, we are a cultic people, a priestly people, a cultured and caring people, and a worshipping community.
The Solemnity of Corpus Christi or the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ—actually celebrated Thursday after Trinity Sunday (50 days after Maundy Thursday) but transferred to this Sunday—is the feast of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the feast of Communion, and the feast of the Church as the Body of Christ. It is the Holy Eucharist which unites and nourishes the whole Church, and the source and summit of our life as believers in Christ. In it the community of believers presents its Thanksgiving (Greek: eucharistia), receiving God’s blessing through the intermediary of the priest, who, like Melchizedek of old, offers bread and wine to the Most High God. The theme of eucharistia or thanksgiving is echoed in today’s second reading in which St. Paul recounts the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus on Holy Thursday and the command to “Do this in remembrance of me” (I Cor 11:25).
The Eucharist we receive every Sunday is our sharing in the body of Christ made possible through His redeeming death and resurrection. Hence, St. Paul says: “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes” (I Cor 11:26). In the Eucharist we experience Jesus’ presence in a unique way; what the early Church Fathers call the “Parousia,” meaning “presence, arrival, coming, or advent.” Many non-Catholics and, indeed, some Catholics use the Greek word, Parousia, to denote only the second coming of Christ at the end of time distinct from His daily coming in the Eucharist. But for the Church Fathers and in the earliest liturgies, “Eucharist” and “parousia” are one and the same thing. One of the Church Fathers wrote: “The Eucharistic liturgy was not a compensation for the postponement of the Parousia, but a way of celebrating the presence of the One who has promised to return.” This implies that whenever we celebrate Mass, Jesus walks into this Church. He, indeed, is the one who celebrates the Mass in the priest and His presence is retained substantially in the host, and efficaciously in the gathering of His people, and the communion they share.
There should be no confusing how Jesus is present in the Bread. Catholics profess that He is permanently and really present in the host consecrated by the priest in that act called transubstantiation. Methodists and Presbyterians offer a minimalist idea of Jesus’ presence as something figurative and symbolic, while some Lutheran groups prefer a middle way in which the presence is considered real but temporary. Others see the presence in the Bread, and still others in the community of believers. It is not we who make Christ present through our gathering (as if we can choose to make him present when we prefer and deny Him presence when we choose); rather, it is Christ who makes our gathering and communion a holy assembly, with Him as the head and we as the members of His Body—the Church. Without the Eucharist, our assembly would be no better than a social club meeting or a political rally.
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo