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OMELIE / Omelie EN

03 giu 2018
03/06/2018   The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ - B 

03/06/2018   The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ - B 

Reading 1, Exodus 24,3-8 * Psalm 115 * Reading 2, Hebrews 9,11-15 * Gospel, Mark 14,12-16.22-26

 

Every Sunday, indeed every day, we can take the Bread of the Benediction, the Body of Christ! Every Sunday our assemblies gather to be fed by the heavenly Bread! Every Sunday each one of us, Christian Catholics, is invited to open the heart and the mouth to welcome the broken Bread on which have been uttered the words Jesus pronounced during the Last Supper and on which the Holy Spirit is invoked.

This mystery is the mystery par excellence of our faith, the mystery that makes us strong in order to love, and joyful in hoping and in waiting for the second coming of the Son of God!

It is the mystery that is at the center of our desires, at the beginning of our plans, at the end of our races! It is the doing of the Holy Spirit that is called on the bread and the wine: the secret and public work of God’s omnipotence, which makes us one thing among ourselves after uniting us to His Son in a concrete and lively way.

Unfortunately it may happen that we, very sensitive to what has to be “done” in order to improve the world, forget the greatest wealth that we own, and we neglect the true food, or the most proper medicine for our and other’s poverty, for our physical health and spiritual one.

Here we are then, an entire day to be aware of what is indispensable and necessary, of what supports our life and that of the poor and the sufferer we love. Today we pay attention to the Gift that Jesus offered us in order to help us live in communion with Him and find the right proportions of the communion among us.

The first reading brings us into the desert, in a moment of the most important, the moment in which God entered into the covenant with His people. This was closed through the blood of animals spread on the stone altar and sprinkled on the people. This event is a big help in order to understand the reading of the Gospel. Jesus, in taking the cup, during His Last Easter Supper, says to His disciples “This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for many”! The blood shed by Jesus on the cross is the blood of a covenant, a covenant closed not with the blood of animals any more, but with His own, and then of a significance unbelievably superior to that. On the same topic lingers the author of the letter to the Hebrews to help us to value the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice. He took the bread and wine of the Supper, gifts already very significant, and with the gesture and the word gave them new meaning and content: this is my body, this is my blood. In every Eucharistic celebration we welcome these gifts again from Jesus’ hands, positive that through them we eat His Body and drink His Blood, becoming part of the covenant with Him and with the Father, and creating between us a new bond.

Helped by His Spirit, we understand the beauty and greatness of the gift, we understand that we are really sanctified, because we are really physically united to the person of the Son of God. This is why we try to welcome as well the gift of the sacramental purification from all our sins, not to eat the body of Christ in a not dignified and sacrilegious way. In testifying that that bread is the body of Christ, we eat it because we want to obey Him. We cannot make of Jesus Christ a liar, becoming united to Him while we openly live disobeying his commandments or despising in fact the Sacraments of His love. Of this the pope Johannes Paul II made us aware in the encyclical letter «Ecclesia de Eucaristia». In particular, he reminded us that who does not ask for forgiveness and sacramental reconciliation for serious sins and “whoever keeps a behavior clearly and permanently contrary to the moral norm” cannot have access to the Sacrament. But the Pope, above all, is trying to make us understand and deepen the different meanings of the celebration of the Mass and of the Eucharistic presence even after the celebration, in order for us to love and value this mystery of the love of God the Father’s and of Jesus’.

The Eucharistic mystery is the most beautiful, the deepest, the most concrete and vivifying that the Church “has”: continuously it gives it to us and offers it to the Father. The Church itself is coming from it and lives thanks to it. This is why we adore it in a very special way in this day. The procession, that will take place in the streets of the town or city, with the Eucharistic bread at the center and well visible, is a declaration of faith and a declaration that Jesus and His real and concrete Presence are necessary for every man and the entire society.

We adore you, our Lord Jesus Christ, for Your Body and Your Blood: from them we receive life, joy and interior strength! Thanks be to you!