Corpus Christi

Why two posts? Because, as someone kindly pointed out to me, there are two feasts today, depending on where and who you are. Can't ignore Corpus Christi......
The moment of fraction is to me the most emotionally charged of the Eucharist. That moment when the priest takes the consecrated bread and then, with word or without, breaks it.
I remember that the intensity of this moment first struck me as a child – that ordinary thing which had been made holy, which had been made Christ, was taken and reduced to pieces with a loud snap of the cardboard thin, but crisp, wafer. In that moment, even my younger self could see all that was in our faith, celebrated and held forth in this simple act – Christ broken for the world and for me.

The Eucharist is both act and re-enactment and as such we rely on both memory and current experience. The memory of that noise, the harsh break of a wafer, always makes my stomach knot – Jesus is broken, Jesus has to be broken to make it work.

Ordinary bread is knit into both very simple symbol and sacred mystery. Humanity also was knit into a divine mystery in the incarnation – consecration is not linked only to a post-resurrection existance but to an incarnational one – God made human – God living amongst us and God broken for us.

The feast of Corpus Christi celebrates all these things – the tragic remembrance, the offering, the sharing and bringing forth – but Corpus Christi takes us beyond the finite and remembered to the world of mystery, of God touching humanity, of God's kiss and God's breath.

The great Eucharistic hymn “Now my tongue the mystery telling......” encapsulates so many snippets of the theology which I am talking about “types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here........Word-made-flesh true bread he maketh by his word his Flesh to be.....then more precious food supplying, gives himself with his own hand.”

This is real and solid and reliable. Christ incarnate into human stuff, takes the stuff of human sustenance and transforms it into more than that. It is hard to catch words to describe this act and yet the words are very simple,“This is my body, this is my blood.”

So at the feast of Corpus Christi we are drawn into this action of Christ. Corpus Christ means simply the body of Christ but has tended to be used specifically for the adoration of Christ in the Eucharist and less for our corporate action as the body of Christ. There is a place for this – there is a place simply to understand who we are and where we are – not with the intellect of our minds but with the conviction of our hearts.

We are broken as the bread breaks – we are broken by sin and reluctance but in this meal we are broken by God, ready for filling with God's grace and presence. This breaking is everything – Christ, us, the Church, the bread. Sin out, Grace in and the presence of Christ.