Lectio the Liturgy: Sunday, June 22, 2025

Julie Storr shares a reflection on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

This week we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. This celebration honors Christ, who is truly present under the appearances of bread and wine. It is also an opportunity for us to focus on what, or rather, Who we receive.

Grant, O Lord, we pray, that we may delight for all eternity in that share in your divine life, which is foreshadowed in the present age by our reception of your precious Body and Blood. Who live and reign for ever and ever.

We pray this prayer after Communion, however, the heart of the prayer is important to know before Mass begins because what we receive leads us to eternity. More specifically, the prayer tells us that we will delight for all eternity by sharing in the divine life of Jesus. The divine life foreshadowed in the present age is our reception of the precious Body and Blood.

Precious means of great price. The precious Body and Blood of Jesus were the means by which God would save the world. The precious Body and Blood of Jesus are what we receive in Holy Communion. However, the word that stood out to me in this prayer was the word receive.

Receive Well

Some time ago, I came across St. Augustine’s Homily number 227. This homily, delivered on Easter Sunday, is directed to the new Christians who came into the Church the night before. In it, St. Augustine tells them that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ and, “If you receive them well, you are yourselves what you receive.”

Augustine is not telling them that they will become Jesus; He is telling them that when they receive the Body and Blood of Jesus, they become united and they become what they receive, they become the Body of Christ.

Just think, you go up to receive Communion and you hear, “The Body of Christ.” You receive the host and respond, “Amen.” When you say “amen” you are accepting this bread with the intent to become what you receive.

Augustine is so passionate about his hearers “getting it” that he even warns them about receiving unworthily.

Becoming the Body of Christ

St. Augustine tells his new parishioners that Paul warns about the dangers of receiving unworthily in 1 Corinthians 11:27 when the Apostle writes that whoever eats the Body of Christ or drinks the Blood of the Lord unworthily is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

Augustine explains that this means “receiving with contempt, receiving with derision. Don't let yourselves think that what you can see is of no account. What you can see passes away, but the invisible reality signified does not pass away, but remains.”

What we see and what we consume, will pass away; however, what the Most Holy Body and Blood bring to us is eternal and when it comes to the divine life, eternity has already begun.

How blessed we are to share so deeply in the divine life of Jesus. Are you ready to become what you receive? All you have to do is say, “Amen.”

Lectio the Liturgy Sunday June 1, 2025-1