What You See Isn't Always What You Get

HOMILY FOR CORPUS CHRISTI SUNDAY, June 14, 2020. Gospel of St. John 6: 51-58. Theme: What You See Isn’t Always What You Get

Today’s feast of Corpus Christi Sunday calls our attention to one of the most startling yet marvelous of all the Bible-based beliefs of Catholicism: the miraculous changing of bread and wine into the actual Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ! If this sounds incredible and maybe even borderline ridiculous to some of you then you are not alone. Did you hear in today’s Gospel that many of those who first heard Jesus teach about it reacted with doubt and disgust saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

You see the problem wasn’t that they misunderstood Jesus. They heard clearly what he was saying. The problem was that they did not have faith in his word. They did not yet fully believe in who he was and what he could do. This was too much for many of them and the end of this story- which for some strange reason is not read at today’s liturgy – we find out that many of these disciples walked away from Jesus. But Peter and others remained with him.  Not that they totally got it, not that they understood the how or the why…but they knew Jesus and they trusted him. And here we are 2,000 years later doing the very same thing.

I have always been a bit flabbergasted by Christians who readily profess faith in Jesus as the Son of God become flesh, yet who find it so very difficult to have faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion.  I just don’t get their reasoning because I find that these two beliefs are so very similar. In both cases, that is, in both the Incarnation when the Word became flesh, and in the Eucharist where He becomes flesh yet again though in a different way, what we see is not what we get; external things hide the full reality of what is.

When people encountered Jesus of Nazareth what did they see? What did their senses perceive? That there before them stood a young strong man from the village of Nazareth, a man just like them. He dressed like them, he spoke like them, he ate like them, he smelled like them, and he worked like them. But their senses did not discern the full truth.  For standing right in front of them, hidden by the appearances of flesh and bone, was the eternal Son of God, the only begotten of the Father.  If someone was to have taken a biopsy from Jesus, not even the most state-of-the-art test we have today would have come up with the results of divinity because you cannot see, touch, taste or smell divinity on its own. It is a reality beyond our senses.

And it seems to me that the True Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is very much the same. What we see before us looks, tastes, feels and smells like bread and wine. If someone was to put a fraction of the consecrated host or a drop of the consecrated wine under a microscope, the only results they would get would be the physical characteristics of this food and drink. Yet the full truth, missed by the senses and undetectable by science, is that these Consecrated Gifts are indeed the flesh and blood, the glorified humanity and eternal divinity, of our Risen Lord, Brother and Savior, Jesus Christ.

You know, I think that contained within the theology and liturgy of Corpus Christi, there is life-lesson to be learned that readily applies the issues of interracial harmony and human dignity that are so fiercely present in our culture today.  And I see it this way: just as when the Nazarenes looked upon Jesus or when we ourselves look upon the small white consecrated host into our hands, in neither case is the inner reality seen. The truth of what is before us can only be comprehended by faith.  And in the same way, when we look upon another human being we may at first see someone who is “other”, whose inner reality is disguised from us by various shades and tones of skin but in every case, there stands before us a child of God, created by the Father and loved by the Father passionately and personally.  There stands before us a human being for whom the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us.

And when we encounter someone who is strangely different from us, we may be at first tempted to avoid them, ostracize them, or engage in gross generalizations about them.  Our eyes so often deceive us and so we do not perceive the truth of who it is who truly stands before us. But that hidden inner reality is this: that mystically present before us, hidden by human disguise, is the Risen Lord Jesus Christ who has explicitly said, “whatsoever you do to them, you do to me.”

To see these things clearly and perceive the inner reality around us accurately requires faith.  And it is only through such faith, through a personal encounter with Jesus, that hearts can be changed. And as Scripture tells us, society will never change, can never change, simply by means of enacting laws and mandating systemic reform.  Such things as these, even when socially necessary, can only coerce people into compliance but they do not go to the root of the problem.  They do not fix anything that is broken but only put a lid on the social pressure cooker, so to speak, and simply delay the next violent outbreak of injustice and unrest. 

It’s no coincidence that when St. Katherine Drexel, the American millionaire heiress of the 20^th century, became a nun and started new religious order to seek justice and equality for African Americans and Native Americans, she chose to name the community “Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament”. She knew that the key to seeing and reverencing God’s image in every human being, of respecting all lives, and of changing society by changing hearts is found in the sacred power of the Eucharist. The more we are nourished by this Heavenly Food the more our hearts are changed, the stronger our faith becomes, and the clearer will our vision be to see the inner reality of people according to the truth.

Pope Francis never tires of repeating that the Blessed Sacrament is powerful medicine for us who are spiritually sick and supernatural strength for us who are morally weak.  He says that through our receiving of the Eucharist, Jesus lives within us, changes us and walks with us though the ups and downs of our everyday lives.  With those words in mind, I would like to close with a personal prayer of mine that I always recite in my heart immediately after receiving Holy Communion.  It was inspired by Pope Francis’ words and deep faith in the Eucharist:

O Jesus now living in me,

be medicine in my sickness,

be strength in my weakness,

be healing balm in my woundedness,

be power in my powerlessness,

be fire in my coldness,

be light in my darkness,

be everything in my nothingness.

Amen.