This Sunday is a solemnity.  It is Corpus Christi, the celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ.  

The Church highlights this element of our faith because it is the greatest of gifts that Jesus has left us. 

Even as He has ascended to the right hand of the Father, His very presence, His body and blood sacramentally but truly present, means that Jesus is with us and among us.

Of course to accept this reality is to commit what I like to call a blatant act of faith.  At every Mass when we advance to receive the host and drink from the chalice, our senses detect only bread and wine.  The senses and our mind would like to stop there.  In that case the bread and wine would be simply symbolic reminders.  The act of faith is to go beyond our senses and take Jesus at His word.  It means that we accept that the bread has truly become His body and the wine His blood.  To receive holy Communion, then, is to receive Jesus both physically and spiritually.

The act of faith to believe in the Eucharist goes still further.  The Eucharist was instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper on Holy Thursday.  But He was already joining it to the next day, to Good Friday.  The offering of Jesus’ body and blood in the form of bread and wine is linked to His offering of His body and blood for our sins on the cross.  Our faith in the Eucharist means we accept that, in the mystery of God’s love, what happened 2,000 years ago at the Last Supper and on the cross, is made real and present again today.  It is not simply a memorial.

From the earliest days of the Church, the faithful have been aware that entry through faith into this mystery is not easy.  That is why those who sought to enter the Church were not only instructed but also given a time of testing, to see if they could truly live the faith.  The culmination of entry into the Church was to join into the existing communion of the faithful with Christ by the reception of the Eucharist.

Much has been made of late about the Catholic teaching in regard to receiving the Eucharist.  That is, the reception of holy Communion is reserved to those who are in union with the faith of the Catholic Church.  Of course the specific question that has recently been raised has been about those who are divorced and remarried outside of the Church and who cannot receive holy Communion.  That question is often further extended as to why non-Catholics who happen to be present at Mass cannot receive Communion. Are these simply matters of discrimination?  Exclusion?  Or just a plain unwelcoming attitude?

Our belief is that reception of the Eucharist is not just an emotional sign of welcome or fraternity.  It is a public and visible declaration by the recipient that they profess and live union with the faith.  Should one not be in union with the faith, for example because they have committed a mortal sin, they are, for the moment at least, not in communion.  It means that repentance, a change of life to live as Jesus taught along with the forgiveness of confession, is necessary first.

To live in an irregular marriage, then, can be a painful reality.  Any such persons should know of our prayers and our support.  They should not feel themselves cut off from, much less abandoned by the Catholic Church.  But objectively, they are in need of a change of life so that they can live as Jesus taught about marriage.  Until that happens the marriage is not in union with the words of Jesus.  The reception of holy Communion would not be a true declaration of unity with the Church, however well it might be intended.

Similarly, for non-Catholic Christians, their faith by choice is not in union with the Catholic faith.  Their reception of holy Communion would then, no matter how well intended, not be a statement of unity. 

Further, many non-Christians do not believe that the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ, but rather that it is a memorial only, a further step away from true unity.

The celebration of Corpus Christi recalls to us the depth of faith and mystery that is associated with the Eucharist.  How grateful we must be for this gift.  How attentive we must be to respect the sacredness of this divine reality.  How careful we must be to constantly prepare our own souls and those of others for the worthy reception of Christ’s body and blood, given for the life of the world.