GOSPEL

June 3, 2018 (Sunday) Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Psalter: Ps 116:12-13, 15-16, 17-18 I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord. 1st Reading: Ex 24:3-8 2nd Reading: Heb 9:11-15

Gospel: Mk 14:12-16, 22-26

On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the day when the Passover Lamb was killed, the disciples asked him, “Where would you have us go to prepare the Passover meal for you?”

So Jesus sent two of his disciples with these instructions, “Go into the city, and there, a man will come to you carrying a jar of water. Follow him to the house he enters and say to the owner, ‘The Master says, Where is the roomwhere I may eat the Passover meal with my disciples?’ Then he will show you a large room upstairs, already arranged and furnished. There, you will prepare for us.”

The disciples went off. When they reached the city, they found everything just as Jesus had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to them. And he said, “Take this. It is my body.” Then he took a cup; and after he had given thanks, he passed it to them and they all drank from it. And he said, “This is my blood, the blood of the Covenant, poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not taste the fruit of the vine again, until that day when I drink the newwine in the kingdom of God.”

After singing psalms of praise, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Lectio Divina

Read: Moses sprinkles the blood of the Covenant on the people who declare obedience to God. Christ, as the mediator of the new Covenant, offers his own blood for the cleansing of the people. At the Last Supper, Jesus institutes the Eucharist offering his own body and blood as the spiritual food for his people.

Reflect: Hunger is the greatest drive of human beings, and eating-drinking is the primordial and primal act. Without food, we die. Hence, food is the least common denominator of human edifice. The same dynamics works in the spiritual realm as well: Just as our body needs bodily food, our soul needs spiritual food. In his visions on the evolution of soul, German mystic Jakob Böhme saw soul eating of God and becoming God. Indeed, the food our souls need is the very essence of God—his own body and blood so that we consume them and become like God. This is what Jesus offers us—his own life so that we grow into him. It is our Christian calling, too—to be the food for the world.

Pray: Lord, give me the generosity to become eucharistic for the good of the world.