Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Year C)

Scripture Readings
First Gn 14:18-20
Second 1 Cor 11:23-26
Gospel Lk 9:11b-17

Prepared by: Fr. Lawrence J. Donohoo, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• First Reading: The mysterious priest Melchizedek is described as a fellow believer with Abraham of
the true God who recognizes the Lord as creator and as savior of Abraham.
• Second Reading: St. Paul testifies to the ancient and unbroken tradition of the Eucharist as instituted
by Christ at the Last Supper, whose blessing results in his body and blood offered to his disciples.
• Gospel: As physician of the ill and supplier of the hungry, Jesus’ blessing results in multiplication of
the bread and fish for satisfying the multitude and serves as prelude for the blessing of the Last
Supper.
2. Exegetical Notes
• “Paul presents himself as a link in the chain of tradition reaching back to Jesus, whose authority
remains present in the church. Paul’s version of the words of institution is closest to that of Luke
(22:15-20), but does not depend on it.” (NJBC)
• “The death of Jesus, which is an act of love (Gal 2:20), is proclaimed existentially (2 Cor 4:10-11) in
and through the shared eating and drinking (10:16). Authentic remembering is imitation of Christ
(11:1), whereby God’s saving love (Rom 8:39) is made present effectively in the world.” (NJBC)
• “Jesus gives his disciples, who have just returned from preaching and curing God’s people, a new
charge: they are to feed reconstituted Israel—with the eucharist.” (NJBC)
• “blessed, broke, gave: These words match almost verbatim those in the Lucan account of the
institution of the eucharist (22:19) and in the Emmaus story (24:30).” (NJBC)
• “Luke, of all the evangelists, immediately links this feeding account with Jesus’ prediction of his
passion and his instructions about bearing one’s cross daily (9:18-27). To celebrate the eucharist in
memory of Jesus (22:19) is to share not only his mission (9:1-6), but also his dedication and destiny,
symbolized by the cross (9:18-27).” (NJBC)
3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church 994, 1324-5, 2837, 1405, 1509
• 1323 At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice
of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages
 until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his
death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet “in
which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.”
• 1329 The Lord's Supper, because of its connection with the supper which the Lord took with his
disciples on the eve of his Passion and because it anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the
heavenly Jerusalem. Breaking of Bread, because Jesus used this rite, part of a Jewish meat when as
master of the table he blessed and distributed the bread, above all at the Last Supper. It is by this action
that his disciples will recognize him after his Resurrection, and it is this expression that the first
Christians will use to designate their Eucharistic assemblies; by doing so they signified that all who eat
the one broken bread, Christ, enter into communion with him and form but one body in him.
• 1334 In the Old Covenant bread and wine were offered in sacrifice among the first fruits of the earth
as a sign of grateful acknowledgment to the Creator. But they also received a new significance in the
context of the Exodus: the unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the
haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt; the remembrance of the manna in the desert will
always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God; their daily bread is the fruit of the
promised land, the pledge of God's faithfulness to his promises. The “cup of blessing” at the end of the
Jewish Passover meal adds to the festive joy of wine an eschatological dimension: the messianic
expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he gave a new and
definitive meaning to the blessing of the bread and the cup.
• 1335 The miracles of the multiplication of the loaves, when the Lord says the blessing, breaks and
distributes the loaves through his disciples to feed the multitude, prefigure the superabundance of this
unique bread of his Eucharist. The sign of water turned into wine at Cana already announces the Hour
of Jesus' glorification. It makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Father's kingdom,
where the faithful will drink the new wine that has become the Blood of Christ.
• 1336 Jesus' passing over to his father by his death and Resurrection, the new Passover, is anticipated
in the Supper and celebrated in the Eucharist, which fulfills the Jewish Passover and anticipates the
final Passover of the Church in the glory of the kingdom.
4. Patristic Commentary
• “But he as the powerful and merciful Savior by receiving the weary, by teaching the ignorant, curing
the sick, filling the hungry, implies how he was pleased with their devotion; as it follows, and he
received them, and spoke to them of the kingdom of God, etc.” (Theophilus)
• “Our Lord teaches us, that when we entertain any one, we ought to make him sit down at meat, and
partake of every comfort. Hence it follows, And he said to his disciples, etc.” (Theophilus)
• “He distributes to them by the hands of his disciples, so honoring them that they might not forget it
when the miracle was past. Now he did not create food for the multitude out of what did not exist, that
he might stop the mouth of the Manichaeans, who say that the creatures are independent of him. Thus
he showed that he himself is both the giver of food, and, the same who said, Let the earth bring forth,
etc. He makes also the fish to increase, to signify that He has dominion over the seas, as weld as the
dry land. But well did he perform a special miracle for the weak, at the same time that he gives also a
general blessing in feeding all the strong as well as the weak. And they did all eat, and were filled.”
(St. John Chrysostom)
• “Now our Savior does not create new food for the hungry multitudes, but He took those things which
the disciples had and blessed them, since coming in the flesh he preaches nothing else than what had
 been foretold, but demonstrates the words of prophecy to be pregnant with the mysteries of grace.”
(Theophilus)
5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars
• “The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta—constantly renewed their capacity
for love of neighbour from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter
acquired its real- ism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbour are thus
inseparable, they form a single commandment.” (Benedict XVI)
6. Quotations of Benedict XVI
• “The Feast of Corpus Christi is a call of the Lord to us, but also a cry from us to him. The whole Feast
is one big prayer: Give us yourself. Give us your true bread. The Feast of Corpus Christi helps us in
this way to understand the Lord’s Prayer better. . .The fourth petition, which asks for bread, is the
hinge between the three petitions that pertain to the kingdom of God and the three last petitions that
have to do with our needs.”
• The institution of the most holy Eucharist on the evening before the Passion. . .is the making of a
covenant and, as such, is the concrete foundation of the new people: the people comes into being
through its covenant relation to God. . .These disciples become a ‘people’ through communion with
the Body and Blood of Jesus which is simultaneously communion with God.”
• “The body is a man’s self, which does not coincide with the corporeal dimension but comprises it as
one element among others. Christ gives us himself—Christ, who in his Resurrection has continued to
exist in a new kind of bodiliness of that intimate penetration of two subjects. Communion means that
the seemingly uncrossable frontier of my ‘I’ is left wide open and can be so because Jesus has first
allowed himself to be opened completely, has taken us all into himself and has put himself totally into
our hands. Hence, Communion means the fusion of existences.”

• “Jesus gave this act of oblation an enduring presence through his institution of the Eucharist at the Last
Supper. He anticipated his death and resurrection by giving his disciples, in the bread and wine, his
very self, his body and blood as the new manna. . . The ancient world had dimly perceived that man's
real food—what truly nourishes him as man—is ultimately the Logos, eternal wisdom: this same
Logos now truly becomes food for us—as love. The Eucharist draws us into Jesus' act of self-oblation.
More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-
giving. The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously
inconceivable: it had meant standing in God's presence, but now it becomes union with God through
sharing in Jesus' self-gift, sharing in his body and blood.”

7. Other Considerations
• The elementary distinction between original and copy becomes complex in Hebrews’ commentary on
Melchizedek, where the author states that Melchizedek is “made to resemble the Son of God” (7:3) on
the one hand, but that Christ “is raised up after the likeness of Melchizedek” (7:15), on the other. This
means that each is created in the image of the other. More precisely, Melchizedek was foreordained to
be an image of Christ so that the Son of God could one day be imaged after him. In a word, the Letter
to the Hebrews has it both ways.
• There are at least eleven similarities between Melchizedek and Christ: (1) both are without beginning
of days (Hb 7:3); (2) both are without end of days (Hb 7:3); (3) both are priests; (4) both possess a
priesthood that finds its origin in a sacred, mysterious lineage traced back to God; (5) both offer bread
 and wine instead of animals; (6) both are priests forever; (7) both are priests who are also kings; (8)
Melchizedek is king of righteousness and king of Salem, which means peace, just as Christ is the
righteousness of God and Prince of Peace; (9) both are king of the Jews, Melchizedek by way of
anticipation (Salem=Jerusalem), Jesus by divine bestowal; (10) both are kings of the Gentiles,
Melchizedek by virtue of his pagan heritage and Christ by virtue of his salvific work; and (11) both are
greater than Abraham, our father in faith.
• “The apostles are put off by the desert, for they see it as threatening wilderness devoid of shelter,
sustenance, and security. . . .Yet, it was precisely in the desert that Jesus experienced Satan’s
temptations to reject the Father. And it was in the desert that the Father himself satisfied the hunger of
his Son. Now, in this desert, Jesus demonstrates the Father’s desire to feed all his children. The trick is
not letting hunger, fear, or anxiety get the better of us.” (Cameron)
• “Christ has come to supply ever need. In Jesus, nothing is lacking and no one suffers want. All the
Lord asks of the five thousand is what he asks of Christians each Sunday: To gather together as a
sacred assembly, to unite in offering worship with Jesus the High Priest, to receive Holy Communion,
and to go forth to share the remaining abundance with others yet unfed.” (Cameron)
• The three readings suggest three dimensions of the Eucharist: sacrifice, remembrance, and food.
• As sacrifice, Jesus exchanges His will for the Father's by putting himself in the Father's hands. He is
obedient unto death. Death is not the essence of sacrifice, but it is the test of obedience since the one
who is obedient unto death will be obedient unto anything. Further, the Eucharist is sacrifice insofar as
the bread and wine are exchanged for Christ's body and blood. Finally, the Eucharist allows us to
sacrifice our old selves for our new selves, our mere humanity for a taste of his divinity. He assumed
not only our nature, but the form of our food in order that by becoming man he might make us gods.
• As remembrance, the Eucharist commemorates this sacrifice and represents it for our benefit. The
Eucharist is the Eternal Passover: the lamb is sacrificed in order that the angel of destruction may pass
over us. The Eucharist replays this mystery in another place and time, passing over the constraints of
space and time. Here the bread and wine pass over into the blood and body of Christ.
• John 6 replays the theme of Numbers, where the people murmured in the desert against the Lord and
Moses. Here they are not murmuring for bread, but against the Bread of Life. The manna of old was a
response to disobedience; the New Manna, the Eucharist, is the response of the Friend who will not
leave his friends behind. In the Old Covenant, the gift and giver were different. Now they are one and
the same. The Bread is the One who gives the Bread. We eat this bread for sustenance along the new
journey--a spiritual journey to and back to the One from whom we have come, and whom we have
loved long since and lost awhile.
Recommended Resources
Benedict XVI. Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI. Edited by Peter John Cameron. Yonkers:
Magnificat, 2006.
Benedict XVI. Deus Caritas Est.
Brown, Raymond A., Joseph A. Fitzmyer and Roland E. Murphy, eds. The New Jerome Biblical
Commentary. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1990.
Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To Preach - Cycle C. Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 2000.
Thomas Aquinas, St. Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels. Works of the Fathers. Vol. 3.
London, 1843. Reprinted by The St. Austin Press, 1997.