Robert Barron - Join Your Life to Christ's Sacrifice
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Peace be with you. Friends, we come now to this wonderful feast of Corpus Christi. Every year we have the Feast of Trinity Sunday followed by Corpus Christi, two of the highest theological mysteries, the Trinity and the Eucharist back-to-back. And I think the Church is right in sort of compelling us every year to come back to these great truths, because in some ways the heart of the spiritual life is here.
Last week, we looked at the mystery of the Trinity, now at the Body and Blood of Jesus. And the readings, of course are marvelous. I want to start, though, with reading number two. It’s from First Corinthians and it’s a very brief passage, but wow, is it packed with theological importance. It’s now the apostle Paul, so we’re talking very early on. He’s writing this sometime in the fifties of the first century. We’re within twenty years or so of the dying and rising of Jesus. And Paul, who met the risen Lord, is communicating something of great significance. Here’s what he says, first of all: «I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you».
That’s interesting, because Paul will talk about receiving something from the other apostles, and so on. No, no, this he received, he said, from the Lord. What, «that Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he’d given thanks, broke it and said, 'This is my body that is for you.' In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.'»
Familiar words from the Eucharist, of course. But now keep in mind who’s speaking and how primitive this is in the tradition, how early in the tradition. Paul is communicating something that he thinks is of central importance. Also, keep in mind who’s speaking here, Paul the apostle, who had been Rabbi Saul from Tarsus, who came to Jerusalem to study at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the greatest rabbis of the time. Saul was immersed in the traditions of his people. He would’ve lived and worked somewhere in the vicinity of the Jerusalem temple, where sacrifice took place year-round. Paul knew that whole world, the scriptures, the liturgy and practice of Judaism. This is the one who says, remembers, from the Lord, «This is my body that is for you».
Now, you’re a Jew who is acquainted with the temple liturgy, and language now is being used about a body offered. What does he have in mind? He has in mind temple sacrifice, when someone would bring the body of an animal to the temple as an offering. It could be an offering of thanksgiving; it could be a sin offering, an offering of reparation. You’d bring the animal to the temple, present it to the priest, the throat would be slashed, and the blood would pour out into bowls. Then the animal, depending on the type of sacrifice, was either burnt whole in a holocaust, or was partially burnt and the rest given for a meal.
That’s the world that Paul, Rabbi Saul, lived in, where this took place all the time. They say you could smell the temple before you saw it as you were approaching, because it smelled like a slaughterhouse and a barbecue put together, I suppose. The animal sacrifice was the stuff. It was the lifeblood of the temple. Well, let’s go on now. He’s remembering what Jesus did the night before he died. «In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood.'» The blood of the animal poured out.
What was happening there but the great covenant with Israel was being renewed. Think of when the covenant was cut with Abraham, the covenant with Noah, the covenant with Moses, the covenant with David. They’re all accompanied by blood sacrifice. And the idea was very clear that the blood represented the outpouring of a person’s life. «My lifeblood, Lord, I’m offering to you». And I’m saying, «What’s happening to this animal by right should be happening to me». I’m seeing in this animal a representation of my own sinful nature. And as the animal is being put to death, it’s as though I’m being punished for my sins. My lifeblood poured out. In that great act, the covenants with Israel are being ratified and renewed. That’s what was in the mind of an Israelite coming to the temple.
Now, I want to take one more step here with all this imagery in mind, see, which Rabbi Saul knew very well as he’s recalling what Jesus did. On the highest of the holy days, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies of the temple, and he would sacrifice an animal. He would sprinkle the blood of the animal around the Holy of Holies. That’s that old idea of the lifeblood of the people being poured out, of their sins being acknowledged. But then, see, he would catch some of that blood in a bowl. He would then exit the Holy of Holies through the veil, the one that we know as Christians was torn at the death of Jesus, very important, isn’t it? He’d come out through that veil, and then he would sprinkle the blood on the people.
That’s an echo too. Remember in the book of Exodus when Moses does that, they sprinkle the blood on the altar and then on the people. The idea there was, yes, the people are pouring out their lifeblood, but so is God. God is offering his life in love and forgiveness for his people. See, all of this, the scene of the trouble is (and even for us Catholics) that we use the language of temple and sacrifice and altar and priesthood. But this is the world it’s coming out of, this vividly experienced sacrificing of animals, offering of a body, pouring out of blood, the animal representing sin, the blood of God being poured out on the people. All of that is in the back and front of Paul’s mind as he recalls what Jesus did.
Okay, now let’s focus in on Jesus. «This is my body offered for you. This is my blood poured out for you». This happens, everybody, on the altar of the cross. What’s happening on that cross? You say, «Well, it’s a Roman execution». Yeah, it is that, on and on. But they saw, see, with much deeper vision. What’s happening on that cross? Jesus, like the sacrificed lamb, is taking upon himself the sin of the world. The lamb is innocent that’s brought it to the altar, but the lamb becomes a symbolic bearer of the sins of the one who offers it.
So Jesus willingly becomes the Lamb of sacrifice, who bears the sins, not just of one sacrificer but the sins of the whole world. He becomes their representative before God. Now, please don’t misunderstand something here. Don’t read this as God is this kind of like alcoholic, dysfunctional father that’s so offended he requires the bloody sacrifice of his son before his anger is quelled. That’s emotionalizing all this. Rather, see Jesus on the cross offering his body, pouring out his blood, as the one who willingly became (what did John the Baptist call him?) The Lamb of God. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We are meant to see, in the suffering of Jesus, what by right should be happening to us.
That’s the point. That’s the point. That’s why at every Mass when this sacrifice is re-presented, we join our lives to that sacrifice. We’re saying, «Lord, in your blood poured out I see what by right should be happening to me. I see my sin poured out, punished, acknowledged». Take a further step. Yes, Jesus on the cross is the Lamb offered for our sins, but now that blood poured out is also the blood that was offered on Yom Kippur. When the high priest comes out through the veil and sprinkles the people with blood, that’s God’s lifeblood of forgiveness and compassion being poured out on the sinful world.
Now, again, go back to that wonderful puzzling reference. That as Jesus dies the curtain in the temple is torn in two from top to bottom. That’s the veil. The idea is not the high priest, the human figure, the high priest; now, it’s Jesus, the true high priest coming out from the Holy of Holies, sprinkling all of us sinners with the blood of his life and his compassion, his forgiveness. That’s what’s happening on the cross. What Jesus did the night before he died, Paul is saying, was a great anticipation of this moment. The Body and Blood of Jesus, therefore, that we celebrate today, the Body and Blood of Jesus that become present to us at every Mass is our participation anew in this magnificent moment of acknowledging our sin and receiving the forgiveness of God.
Okay, one last step, and I’m just going to make a brief reference to the Gospel. It’s wonderful, though, what the Church does. It gives us all this Pauline, wonderful sacrificial language, but then, for the Gospel reading, we get Luke’s version of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. So we know the story well; this giant crowd’s just down, they want to be fed. And what do we have? And Jesus says, «Well, tell me, what do you have»? «Oh, just these little provisions». «Well, give them to me,» and he multiplies them into the feeding of the whole crowd. I mentioned this a few minutes ago. Some sacrifices in the temple were holocaust, so you’d kill the animal, the blood’s poured out, and then the animal would be wholly consumed by flame. But there were other sacrifices where the animal was killed, blood poured out, part of the animal was offered as a holocaust, and the rest of the animal was shared as a meal.
Ah. What do we say about the Body and Blood of Jesus? It is all of the sacrificial reality. Yes, the sacrifice of the Mass, yes, indeed. But we also speak of the Mass as a great meal, where now we’re invited to the table (it’s an altar, yes, but it’s also a table to which we’re invited) not just so that the blood of Jesus might be sprinkled on us as in the Old Covenant, but that we might eat the Body and drink the Blood of the sacrificed Christ, that we’re given the privilege now of imbibing and consuming this great sacrificial offering.
The Mass is a sacrifice. The Mass is also a meal. I don’t just witness the sacrifice of Jesus. I don’t just take it in and acknowledge it, I consume it. I consume it so it becomes bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I become one with Jesus. I don’t know, friends, how you can say this without falling into kind of a mystical reverie of what’s happening at the Mass, what’s happening as we commune with the Body and Blood of Jesus. We take his sacrifice into our own lives. We become conformed to it. And we begin to live (now, remember what I said last week about the Trinity) now we begin to live the very inner life of God. That’s what’s at stake as we celebrate the Body and the Blood of Jesus. And God bless you.