A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy

 

 

BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 7, n. 29)

Corpus Christi, Year B – June 14, 2009

 

“With His Own Blood”

 

BIBLE READINGS

Ex 24:3-8 // Heb 9:11-15 // Mk 14:12-16

 

 

 

(N.B. Series 7 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year B from the perspective of the Second Reading. For other reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year B, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US and open Series 1 & 4.)

 

 

 

I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS

 

We celebrate with joy the solemn feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, sacramental sign of God’s ineffable love and his tremendous saving will for all. The Body of Christ broken for the world’s liberation from sin and his Blood poured out to make of us his covenant people are made present to us in the sacrament of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, we give thanks and praise to God the Father for the “real presence” of the Body and Blood of Christ, the gifts that brought the Old Covenant to fulfillment.

 

In this Sunday’s liturgy and especially through the Second Reading (Heb 9:11-15), we are invited to contemplate the sacrificial outpouring of Christ’s blood to bring about the ultimate and unsurpassable New Covenant. The mediator of the New Covenant, Jesus Christ, the ultimate High Priest who entered the Holy of Holies, atoned for our sins, cleansed our consciences from dead works, and sealed a New Covenant in his blood to make of us God’s privileged chosen people.

 

In order to appreciate the meaning and uniqueness of the New Covenant, we need to see it against the backdrop of the Old Covenant (cf. First Reading, Ex 24:3-8). The biblical scholar Eugene Maly comments: “The Israelites had just seen Moses splash half of the blood of the young sacrificed bulls on an altar that symbolized God. The rest of the blood he sprinkled on them. That strikes us as a strange rite, indeed. But it had a powerful meaning for those people. The blood, as always in the Scriptures, symbolized life. Sprinkled on the altar and on the people, it symbolized a community of life shared by God and Israel. God, moved only by love, was making a covenant with them. He shared his life; they responded by keeping his law. This religious experience was what constituted Israel as a unique people, God’s special people. Though they did not realize it at the time, that covenant was an anticipation of another and new covenant, whereby a new people of God would be constituted, this time with no restrictions as to race and nationality. Blood was to be a symbol of the new covenant, too. The new covenant is, of course, the one made by God through Jesus Christ with all people. And the blood of Christ, shed on Calvary, symbolizes the new life God shared with us.”

 

The letter to the Hebrews underlines the incomparable efficacy and superiority of the sacrificial act of Jesus, the High Priest. Eugene Maly explicates: “The second reading describes the superiority of Jesus’ sacrifice over that of the bulls’ and of the new covenant over the old. The author says that Christ passed through a more perfect tabernacle and entered the sanctuary of heaven. He is referring to his passing from earthly life through suffering and death to a new life with the Father, a new life that would be shared with the new people of God. In doing this, Jesus did something that was foreshadowed by what the high priest did in the Old Testament. The priest entered into the sanctuary in Jerusalem and sprinkled the blood of animals on the altar and the Ark of the Covenant. This symbolized the new life effected by the remission of sins. The author of our reading asks how much more efficacious is the blood of Jesus in cleansing our consciences. Jesus did this once for all as our reading puts it. The sacrifice of Jesus was so radically effective that the Father accepted it as valid for all ages. Jesus does not have to shed his blood anew every time the eternal covenant is renewed.”

 

Through the sacred rite of the Eucharist, the people of God through time and space have the opportunity to share and deepen their covenant relationship with God the Father, in Jesus Christ his Son and by the power of the Holy Spirit. At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread and wine and constituted them as the sacred and efficacious sign of his own saving body and life-giving blood. Through the Eucharist, the members of the Body of Christ, who share in the one loaf of bread and in the one cup of salvation, join their lives and prayers, their sufferings and joys, their deeds and aspirations to those of Christ in his utmost surrender to the Father’s will and in his total self-giving for the life of the world.

 

Indeed, in this beautiful feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, we delve into the profound depths of our Eucharistic faith and are impelled by the tremendous demands of charity and service it imposes upon us. Moreover, we are challenged to surrender ourselves completely to Jesus Christ, the eternal High Priest, who renews each day, and especially in the Eucharistic mystery, his everlasting covenant of love with us – his chosen people.

 

June 19, 2009 is the beginning of the special “Year for Priests”. To give us a glimpse of the intimate connection between priestly ministry and the Eucharist, I would like to cite some episodes in the life of Blessed Damien De Veuster, who offered himself as a “living sacrifice” for the exiled lepers in Molokai. Like Jesus, the Eucharistic victim and ultimate High Priest, his self-giving was complete. Blessed Damien risked contagion and indeed became a leper as he endeavored to bring solace and comfort to the afflicted flock of a Hawaiian leper colony in the nineteenth century. The following passages are from Hilde Eynikel’s excellent book, MOLOKAI: The Story of Father Damien (New York: Alba House, 1999), p. 169-170, 196, 294.

 

CORPUS CHRISTI 1882: One of the ways in which social practice in the leper settlement differed from the world beyond was in the degree of co-operation and harmony among the different religious groups. The Corpus Christi procession of 1882 was an example of this. (…) Members of all the different creeds took part in preparing the festival and the feasting, and likewise participated in the processions and religious ceremonies. The procession was somewhat chaotic, with the various religious groups that participated joining in one another’s hymns and music, not always successfully. Damien and Montiton took it in turns to carry the holy sacrament, and they were careful to adjust the pace of the procession to take account of the invalids who found it difficult to walk. The whole event was a festival of respect for one another and Montiton expressed this when he said, in Hawaiian, “This celebration is unique. We Christians who are present here wish to demonstrate our belief in God, who is three in one. Today we worship Jesus Christ, our Eucharistic king, the Lord and Savior who is present in the Holy Sacrament. We worship his love for mankind and the Holy Sacrament that he instituted on the day before his death.”

 

***

 

Damien had pain in his left leg. Sometimes a warm footbath helped. He put a kettle on the fire and poured water into a basin. He put his foot in and waited for the pain to ease. He looked into the basin and saw pieces of skin floating on the water. He drew his foot out of the basin, looked at it, and found it was badly scalded. Damien had not felt the scalding, so he must have leprosy. He screamed. Priests came running to him and asked what was the matter. Damien could say nothing, except, “I’ve scalded my foot” and “I’m a leper”.

 

***

 

Damien was willing to pose for the photographer on this occasion and Bingham caught in his lens a frail man with a swollen face and a broad coat. He sat bolt upright, with his arm in a sling. He was surrounded by his boys. The next day, 20 February 1889, Damien visited Kalaupapa for the last time. Mother Marianne wanted him to come into the parlor, but he refused, because he was unclean. That evening, he did not have the strength to climb into the buggy. He did not dare to knock on any of the parishioners’ doors to warm himself, although he was very cold. He thought for a moment of asking Mollers for shelter, but the German priest was already so depressed and was not allowed to take in lepers. Evening came on. Lamps were lit in the windows and suddenly the wandering priest had an idea. He would just take a rest on the Sisters’ verandah and then he would have the strength to return to Kalawao. He lay down and dozed off. Sr. Leopoldina found him there the next morning. He awoke, looked astonished and then frightened and ashamed. “He is dying”, said a weeping Leopoldina over breakfast. “Death is in his look.” (…) Damien wrote, “I am trying slowly to complete my way of the cross and hope to reach Golgotha.”

 

 

 

II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART

 

  1. What is the meaning of “the blood of the covenant” that the Lord has made with the people of Israel? What is its importance for us as Christian believers?

 

  1. Why is Christ the “mediator of the new covenant”? Why is Jesus Christ the ultimate High Priest and his sacrifice incomparably efficacious?

 

  1. How do we unite ourselves with the saving event of Christ’s ultimate saving sacrifice? What is our response to the tremendous gift of his Body and Blood? How do we translate into our daily lives the meaning of Christ’s sacrificial and covenant love?

 

 

 

III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD

 

Leader: Loving Father,

we thank you for the life-giving Body and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ,

the eternal High Priest and the mediator of the New Covenant.

Through his Eucharistic sacrifice on the cross,

he cleansed us of our sins

and brought us back to you as a reconciled people.

His body was “bread broken” for our healing and redemption.

His blood was shed as a “cup of sacrifice”.

By the blood he had outpoured in his passion and death on the cross,

he sealed the New Covenant

and we became your covenant people.

By your grace, we are privileged to share in your divine life.

In the sacrament of the Eucharist,

we proclaim this mystery of faith and come in deep contact with it.

Help us to translate into our daily life

the covenant love that our communion in the Eucharistic meal signifies.

Give us the grace to incarnate

the self-giving of Jesus, our Eucharistic Master,

and his priestly ministry on the cross.

In celebrating the ultimate gift of the Body and Blood of Christ,

may we be “bread broken” and “wine poured out” for the life of the world.

We praise and thank you,

we adore you and serve you,

now and forever.

 

Assembly: Amen.

 

 

 

IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD

 

The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.

 

“He entered once for all into the sanctuary … with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.” (Heb 9:12)

 

 

 

V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION

 

  1. ACTION PLAN: Pray for a salutary celebration of today’s feast of the Body and Blood of Christ and for the special “Year for Priests” (June 19, 2009 – June 19, 2010) promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI. Pray that our priests may be deeply animated by the spirit of the Eucharist and be strengthened for their ministry on behalf of the poor and suffering. By your own acts of service and charity, endeavor to bring God’s covenant love to the people around you, especially the poor and the needy.

  2. ACTION PLAN: To help us contemplate deeply the mystery of God’s covenant love and its demands in our personal lives, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR: A Weekly Pastoral Tool (Year B, vol. 5, n. 29).

 

 

 

Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang  PDDM

 

 

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