Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - Corpus Christi

Christ administering the Eucharist

Thoughts on Corpus Christi 29th May 2016

One of the interesting things about being a member of an Eastern Catholic community is that some of the theological and doctrinal nuances of my childhood and growing up in the faith of the Latin Rite have had to expand and shift. Corpus Christi is one of these occasions! I remember well, as many of you do, the day I made my first communion and all the preparation that went with it. Thinking back I recognise that emotionally and spiritually I caught that scholastic theology of Real Presence, for me as a child, Jesus was present in the holy Eucharist, somehow he was there and that mattered to me!

I also remember vividly one of the first Masses I celebrated as a priest. After the consecration my mind went into a dialogue, was this before me the Lord, present in bread and wine? If so, how could I have helped this transformation?

This was the moment my Eucharistic theology began to grow up, for I began to understand that whatever was taking place at the celebration something far greater was at work than myself as priest and surely and strongly, a deep theology of the Holy Spirit, as the one who changed and transformed the gifts of bread and wine offered, emerged in my thought and prayer.

This of course came to fruition when I transferred to the Eastern Rite, which holds fast to the Trinitarian basis of the Eucharist and stresses the epiclesis of the Spirit, but wonderfully for me as a Catholic it enriched and enlarged the rather dry theology of transubstantiation. I began to understand the Eucharist is part of the activity of God, the consecrated gifts are not static but dynamic, they are offered, transformed and given back for us to eat and drink.

In Paul's fantastic explanation of the great tradition ( I Cor 11;23-26) we have a key explanation of how the tradition handed down from the Lord himself matters to us. We do as Jesus did in remembrance of Him, bread and wine are offered and prayed over in Thanksgiving (Eucharist) , the bread is broken and shared, His body, to join us in communion with him . The cup is shared, in Paul's words the blood of the new covenant, which joins us forever to a solemn pact with Christ, we are His and he is ours. This is cosmic event, not a doctrine, for by this communion we become His Body on Earth, transformed by the Spirit.

Let our prayer this day be Paul's: 'For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes'. Amen, Come Lord Jesus!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain