June 25, 2000

Copps Coliseum

Your Excellency Bishop Ustrzycki, Reverend Fathers, dear Sisters, dear People of Hamilton Diocese and People of God:

Sixteen hundred years ago, St.  Cyril, a bishop of Jerusalem, addressed newly received members of the faith during the Easter week ceremony.  These people who for the first time had received the Body and Blood of Christ at the Easter Vigil and he wished to instruct them about Corpus Christi, the body of Christ.  These were his words: 

Sixteen centuries later we gather here on this feast of Corpus Christi to do what the Christians of Jerusalem did, what the apostles did in Jerusalem three centuries before that.  We shall do what the lord commanded:  “take and eat ... take and drink.” today in this gathering, the first century and the fourth century and the twenty-first century all come together.  The details differ – from the supper room of the last supper through the church of the resurrection to Copps coliseum – but the reality is the same. 

The basic reality was expressed, simply and profoundly, by Jesus himself:“this is my body ... this is my blood.” Incredible words, aren’t they? Incredible from the first moment our Lord spoke them.  Do you remember that jolting sentence of Jesus when he said: “I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you?” for many of his followers, this was too much: “this is a hard saying; who can hear it?” and so they “drew back and no longer followed him.”

That question which troubled Christ on that occasion has troubled much of the world ever since: “how can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  How?  And despite the best efforts of theologians through the centuries, in the end we simply fall on our knees and worship humbly in the hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas:

Ultimately we take the advice of St. Cyril to the newly baptized and we judge reality not by what we see and touch and taste, but we judge with “unwavering faith.”  This faith, this real presence of Christ is the truth which St.  Paul “received from the Lord”; and this is the faith that we express each time we extend our tongue or our hand: “this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

We call it the real presence.  Christ is present in this Eucharist.  Not that he is not present in our hearts as we gather two or three present in his name.  Not because he is not in the proclaimed word which we have just heard, the gospel read to us, but rather because of all the ways in which Jesus is present, the Eucharist is the most excellent.  “My flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed.”

What does this real presence of Christ in the Eucharist do to us?  In a word, it gives us life.  We read in St. John’s gospel the Lord’s words, “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you.”  This does not mean that without the Eucharist our heart stops or our brain ceases to function, but rather that the life of Jesus will not course and flow through us in the way he intended it should.

The point is - that in our eucharistic food we have a potential for receiving Christ which is unparalleled.

When the Eucharistic Christ gives himself to us as food, we are transformed into him.  We can cry out with St. Paul: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”  In our ceaseless effort to build up Christ in ourselves, the Eucharist is incomparable food, for the food indeed is our Saviour, body and blood, soul and divinity.

As Catholics, we must realize the oneness, the unity which comes in the reception of the Eucharist.  A unity not only with Christ, but a unity with every other person who has received Christ and this unity with Christ must work itself out in a love that is limitless.  Within Catholicism the Bread of Life is not primarily an individualistic thing, my private party, something between Jesus and me.  Its function is rather to form a community.  St. Paul phrased it beautifully when he said:  “because the bread is one, we, though many, are one body for we all partake of the one bread.”  The Lord who locks himself in the tabernacle of my being also feeds the faraway pope, the same Christ who feeds his followers here feeds them also in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in America.  Christ is not divided.  Christ is not multiplied.  There is one and the same body, one and the same Christ, for all.  In his flesh we are one.  This eucharistic truth not only inspires us to serve others in whom we see Christ, but it enables us to follow that inspiration.

We are called during this jubilee year to open wide the doors to Christ, to let the face of Christ be seen, to proclaim the love and goodness of Christ in our work and in our devotion.  We strive to do this always in our devotion to God, in our service to our neighbours, in our willingness to sacrifice in the quest of eternal life. 

The readings today speak of the sacrifice that Christ made, giving his blood for the salvation of the world, creating a new covenant between himself and humanity.  And we too are sometimes called to sacrifice.  Our sacrifice is not that of the Christians who were brought into the coliseum, not in Hamilton but in Rome.  The early Christians who were fed to the lions in Rome truly sacrificed.  We who live in a free country will not be called upon to make that type of sacrifice.  And yet, we must be prepared also to sacrifice because we must proclaim Jesus Christ to a world that at times is unreceptive, to a world that at times is openly hostile.  We must proclaim the truth of Christ, the truth for example, of the value of human life, from conception to natural death.  The truth that Christ fed the poor and sheltered the homeless and lifted the oppressed.  The truth that Jesus said, “if you love me, keep my commandments.”   In this jubilee year we are called, invited, urged to open wide the doors to Christ.  Opening this door wide is two-fold.  First, to let Christ into our hearts, to welcome Christ into our hearts, and second, to open wide the doors of our being so that Christ in us may go out to others, to assist them, to bless them by his loving presence.  We are the face of Christ in this world.  The Eucharist strengthens us and enables us to meet this challenge and to live this life in our world.  It is this Christ whom we celebrate today, on the feast of Corpus Christi, in this great sacrament – unchanged, loving, the Lord of the covenant.  

Jesus Christ yesterday, today, forever!

God bless you.

Bishop of Hamilton