The Body and Blood of Christ

"Behold what you are; become what you eat"--St. Augustine

Today's scriptures make an arc between the understanding of the Jewish people's use of blood in Moses' covenant with God on Mount Sinai and Jesus' using this imagery to position himself in a new covenant between God and his people. Of all that distinguishes Christianity from other religions, the body and blood of Christ is the greatest.

Blood sacrifices have a finality that no other kind of sacrifice can offer.  The sprinkling of blood over the people in Exodus united them with the finality of the sacrificed bull, and the use of blood on the altar gave back to God the life that animates us all.  In a sense, blood was the life-essence that was uniquely God's.  Jewish law prohibited the eating of animal flesh unless all of the blood was drained so as not to appropriate that essence.

In Hebrews, Jesus becomes the new lamb of sacrifice.  This isn't Jesus sacrificing himself to an angry God for appeasement, but rather God's complete and final offering of himself in an act of mind-boggling love for his creation.  As Jesus declares in today's gospel reading "This is my blood of the covenant".  This new covenant ushers in the new and eternal relationship between humanity and God.  It is an agreement that can never be topped or superseded by something more profound or lasting.  God opens the most sacred of places in the Temple at Christ's death on the cross by tearing the curtain that separated this holiest space from the rest of the Temple.  God's submission to Christ as the Lamb of God now embraces all of humanity in the story of Exodus.  We are all now inheritors of the liberation the Jewish people have made real in the celebration of Passover.  The New Passover is the passing over of our unworthiness and the invitation to the liberation Christ offers.

Eucharista is Greek for Thanksgiving and where we get the name of the part of Mass where we unite ourselves to Christ's one, perfect sacrifice.  Our "thanksgiving" is both a response to Christ's perfect offering and participation in the ratification of the covenant God made eternal at Calvary.  Saint Augustine declared "So you are beginning to receive what you have also begun to be."  The body and blood of Christ are transformative, not only in the once-and-for-all historical act two thousand years ago, but continue to transform the faithful at each Mass; the sacrament makes that single act real again every time you receive the body and blood of Christ.  It isn't a "spiritual" communion in which the elements are simply reminders of God's act, they are a participation in Christ's sacrifice the way the Jewish people at Sinai participated in the covenant of Moses and relive that experience at Passover each year. Christ's blood as the Lamb of the New Covenant does more than redefine our relationship with God, we become God's bloodline children (God has no grandchildren).  It is more than checking off the sins we've committed (and continue to commit). We might fail miserably as God's children, but as God's children, we are never outside the home looking in.  Our bloodline is divine, our redemption eternal.