The Body And Blood Of Christ; Corpus Christi; The Lord's Supper

St. Thomas Aquinas says we often remember unusual things better than familiar things because things with a weird twist make a greater impression on the mind, which is also validated by the modern neuroscience of memory.

So, here are some unusual truths about the Eucharist:

The customary or valid matter for the Eucharist before consecration is wheat bread and wine (or 100 percent grape juice which has some fermentation, which is used for prison services). Yet, to live Eucharistically is to share our own daily bread.

So John Buchanan shares that an old pastor told him that he was an infantryman in the British army in World War II and ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland. The conditions were dreadful. There was no heat, and prisoners were given a single bowl of thin soup and a small crust of bread daily. Men were starving, sick, filthy and desperate. Suicide was a very real option. All one had to do was run toward the perimeter of the camp and leap against the barbed wire fence. Guards would immediately shoot and kill anyone trying to escape.

In the middle of the night he walked to the perimeter and sat down beside the fence to think about going through with it. He heard movement in the darkness from the other side of the fence. It was a Polish farmer. The man thrust his hand through the barbed wire and handed my friend half of a potato. In heavily accented English he said, “The Body of Christ.”1

The moral of the story is “All bread shared is God shared.”

2. Another not so well known truth about the Eucharist comes from the Catholic tradition at the concluding part of the Eucharistic Prayer, called the Per Ipsum [as in the later verses of John, Chapter 6], “Through Him," then with him, and in him." However you interpret the Bible and/or according to your church’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper try to not let Jesus answer you, “Do you take offense at this?” (John 6:61).

The earliest written account of the Eucharist in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, the word for tradition happens two times: “For I received from the Lord what I also “passed on to you” [the word to pass-on a teaching is tradition (tradidi) that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was “betrayed” which also means tradition: in the sense of to hand-over (tradebatur).

In one and the same act, Judas hands Christ over to be sent to death, and Christ hands himself over in his self-giving in the Eucharist to us.

This is Jesus primal ‘handing over’ of himself. Jesus’ self-traditioning or handing-over of himself in the Eucharist and Paul handing over the Eucharistic tradition to us shows that Christian tradition is used by Paul to describe the Eucharist.2

3. One last interesting fact is about the Corpus Christi procession. Karl Rahner says such a procession "threatens no one, excludes no one, and whose blessing even falls on those who stand astonished at its edge." It is a procession which testifies that "as long as he (Christ) goes with us we have with us the one who can make every way straight and purposeful."3

We have begun a three-year National and local Eucharistic Revival. Revival was the term chosen by the U.S. bishops which means reviving back to life. Revival is not an organized conference on the Eucharist where you pay money and get a lanyard and hear talks and have a nice lunch. Revival is people, including non-Christians, who subjectively experience the living presence of Jesus in the Church and the Mass [or Lord’s Supper] and in Eucharistic Adoration to the point where we can’t lock the church at night because it’s packed and people are weeping, singing, praising God, and Christians are ministering to each other in the pews.

It is what Joshua Whitfield, a Catholic scholar, calls uncontrollably charismatic. He notes that all revivals can get messy and will suffer even from some stupidities and extremes: he cites the Protestant James Davenport in the 1740s, who decided to do some book burning (his followers sang “Hallelujahs and Gloria Patri over the whole pile”), burning not just books but also clothes he considered vain and ungodly—which stopped only when he shocked the crowd by taking off his own pants and throwing them onto the fire.”4

1. All revival has these elements- God grips His people with deep conviction, repentance, forgiveness, and deliverance from personal sins.

2. God fills His people with the Holy Spirit and manifest through them the fruit and graces of the Holy Spirit.

3. God fills the church and community with His presence and power.

4. God causes non-Christians to earnestly seek Him.

5. God ignites in His people, young and old, a passion to bring the lost to Christ at home and around the world.”4