The Meaning Of Communion In The Blood Of Christ – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; August 18, 2024

Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons, but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil.

Just looking around at our nation and the world today it is easy to believe that “the days are evil.” St. Paul is giving us guidance on how to live in the midst of such evil days, taking care less with the evils “out there” – it is not our job to “fix” the world – and rather taking more care about how we are living, making most of the opportunity or more literally “redeeming the time”. Time, the days of our lives, is a gift given us by God to be employed in his service.

The souls in purgatory have much to teach us in this regard. These are souls who, having departed from this world are no longer capable of performing works that will enable them to grow in charity, souls who are already sure of their salvation, souls whose sins have been forgiven, but who are not yet sufficiently purified of their sins as to be ready to behold the face of God, the beatific vision. While they can benefit from our prayers, sacrifices, and by the offering of the Mass, they no longer have any time and so cannot help themselves. They now understand that they did not make the best use of their time in this world, and they would teach the importance of making use of the time that has been given to us to love God and to grow in his love.

We can best make use of the time that has been given us by employing our time to prepare for participation in the holy sacrifice of the Mass and the reception of holy communion, or by striving to live from the gift of the Body and Blood of Christ received in holy communion.

In other words, our use of time should be structured by the Holy Eucharist, the source and summit of the Christian life; Mass on Sundays and Holy Days should be the first things to be entered on our weekly calendar.

The souls in purgatory deeply regret the time they wasted during their earthly life and they even more regret their failure to take advantage of the opportunities that were given them to participate in the holy sacrifice of the Mass and devoutly receive holy communion. They deeply regret all their routine and lukewarm communions. They deeply regret that they profited so little from so many communions.

Amen, amen, I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you do not have life in you.

By giving himself to us in the form of food, Jesus is telling us that he wishes to nourish in us a life that does not die, but also a life that must be sustained and grow with each communion.

We need to have a better understanding of what we are doing when we receive communion, which means that we need to have a better understanding of the sacrament.

First, we should know that Jesus Christ now reigns gloriously at the right hand of the Father. That means among other things that his entire humanity, the humanity of the eternal Son of God, his Body and Blood, animated by his soul, are to the highest degree completely transformed and penetrated by the divine glory. That means that he is inseparable Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Consequently, when we receive Christ’s Body, in the form of bread, or his Blood, in the form of wine, we always receive the whole Christ. That is why it is sufficient to receive communion in only one kind, though the priest-celebrant is obliged to receive under both kinds. If you “eat Christ’s Body” you necessarily “drink his Blood” at the same time. It always the living, glorious, life-giving Body and Blood of the Son of God.

Nevertheless, it is important also to understand why he gives himself to us beneath the two forms; it is necessary to understand the meaning of the sacramental separation of the Body and Blood. In a word, the separate consecration of the Body and Blood of Christ is an unbloody representation of Christ’s bloody sacrifice offered once for all on the Cross.

The celebration of the holy Eucharist is indeed a banquet, but we need to understand that it is not any old banquet, but a sacrificial banquet. That is for us now a rather foreign concept.

Now, a banquet is a meal but not any old meal. The regular family meal is not a “banquet” but maybe Easter or Thanksgiving Dinner could be called a “banquet”.  Certainly, the dinner at a wedding reception is a banquet. A banquet is a meal that takes place in honor of a special occasion, the greater the occasion, the greater the formality of the banquet, the more it goes beyond the immediate family, the more public it becomes.

Nevertheless, from an Easter dinner with extended family to the State dinner of a President or King, banquets these days, while they may or may not involve prayer, do not involve sacrifice. We do not, these days, sacrifice a bull, before it is served at a banquet. That was not the case in ancient Israel nor perhaps even in the whole ancient world. Certainly, the highest form of banquet was a sacrificial banquet. The Holy Eucharist is the most solemn, public, and universal sacrificial banquet; this sacrificial banquet is the royal wedding banquet of the Kingdom of God.

Last Sunday I spoke about the meaning of sacrifice through which we give to God, our Creator and Lord, the unique and supreme honor that is his due because he is God; now, in some kinds of sacrifice (holocausts) the whole animal was burnt upon the altar, but there were other kinds of sacrifice – and these were indeed joyous occasions – in which part of the animal, the sacrificial victim, was shared by the worshippers as a meal, a banquet.

When the prophet Samuel anointed Saul as the first king of Israel, he first offered sacrifice and had Saul share the sacrificial meal with him. (cf. 1 Sam 9:19-10:1) So also when Samuel anointed David, he first called the family of Jesse to the sacrifice, then followed the sacrificial banquet. (1 Sam 16:1-13) The sacrificial banquet is not just a matter of fellowship, but it is first of all a sort of communion with God, attained as the fruit of the sacrifice. It is the shared communion with God that brings about the fellowship. In the Old Testament, the communion was merely symbolic and prophetic, in the New Testament the communion is real, because we have Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, really, truly, and substantially offered and received in the Holy Eucharist.

Further, and we need to keep this always in mind, holy communion – even outside of the Mass – always means partaking of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; holy communion is the fruit of the sacrifice, a sacrifice that unlike the sacrifices of old is a life-giving sacrifice, the offering of a death that brings life, and the life-giving victim once dead now lives never more to die. We can see then both sorrow and joy blended in the Holy Eucharist, the sorrow of Christ’s death and the joy of his Resurrection.

Now, while we receive the whole Christ beneath the appearances either of bread or wine, we can ask if there is a difference, if there is perhaps a special grace attached to the sign of bread and a special grace attached to the sign of wine?

The Psalmist, alluding to the Eucharist, praises God saying, You bring forth bread from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man’s heart. (Ps 104[103]:14-15)

This could suggest that the Body of Christ gives strength to the heart and the Blood of Christ gives gladness.

But how does the Blood of Christ, the sign above all of his death, give gladness?

Let us consider the words of Jesus in answer to James and John, the sons of Zebedee, when they sought to sit one at his right and the other at his left in his kingdom. You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? (Mk 10:38) Now, think about the way Jesus puts the question. He is suggesting something that is difficult, but at the same time desirable, at least for someone who loves him, because it means sharing what belongs to him, his cup and his baptism.

Sharing what belongs to him, communion: Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.

What is his cup? The shedding of his Blood. What is his baptism? His death.

And St. Paul writes: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? (Rm 6:3) Having been baptized into his death, we have died and our life now belongs to him. St. Paul, understanding this cried out: I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20)

So also, communion in the Blood of Christ means recognizing the price of our salvation and desiring, out of love for the one who so loved us, to give our life in turn. To receive the Blood of Christ is to pledge the gift of our own blood. The gladness given by the Blood of Christ is the true joy of love, love that gives itself wholly and without reserve, even to the point of death; this indeed is the love that conquers death by the life of Christ.

Again, St. Paul writes, as he nears the time of his death, when he will indeed shed his blood for Christ, I am already on the point of being sacrificed [literally “poured out like a libation/ a drink offering]; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Tim 4:6-8)

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.

Or we could consider the next generation, St. Ignatius of Antioch, who, on his way to martyrdom in Rome, wrote: “In the midst of life I write to you desiring death. My lust has been crucified, and there is in me no fire of love for material things; but only water living and speaking to me from within, ‘Come to the Father.’ I have no pleasure in the food of corruption or in the delights of this life. I desire the ‘bread of God,’ which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was ‘of the seed of David,’ and for drink I desire his blood, which is incorruptible love.” (St. Ignatius, Letter to the Romans, VII:2-3)

That is the meaning of communion in the Blood of Christ. The priest, to whom the Bishop said at his ordination, “Receive the oblation of the holy people, to be offered to God. Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform your whole life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross”, is required to make a public profession of such love by drinking from the chalice at every Mass he celebrates. So also, anyone who drinks from the chalice is making a public profession of love for Jesus Christ, to the point even of shedding his blood. If there is a special grace in the chalice, it is the grace of martyrdom. There is bloody martyrdom and there is also “white martyrdom”;  this is the martyrdom of perseverance until the end, the martyrdom of death by 1,000 cuts, enduring suffering, hardship, and insult for the sake of Christ, and the unstinting giving of one self every single day, in all manner of simple actions, in enduring boredom, in repetitive but necessary tasks, in the unwearying labors of love.

Redeeming the time, which is the way of wisdom, means living so as to prepare for holy communion, living from holy communion, means striving, as much as possible, to spend each minute of the day, loving Jesus Christ in all that we think, do, or say, giving thanks through him to God the Father.

Jesus Christ, who is the true wisdom of God, calls us to the sacrificial banquet, the banquet of wisdom, the banquet of love: Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine that I have mixed! Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding.