Corpus Christie and Corpus Priestlie

Happy Feast of Corpus Christie

How wide, how deep, is the love of Christ.

Today is a day that Presbyterians can't make heads nor tails of- it is a feast that celebrates the fact that the actual presence of Christ's body and blood is in his transubstantiated eucharist such that Jesus body and blood itself really exists under the mere appearance of bread and wine. Scripture states something that the Jewish listeners of the day found unfathomable: "Unless you eat this flesh and drink this blood you will have no life within you. "

I went to several masses to see what this holiday meant to different priests in effort to get the best explanation that I could offer to my protestant family.

Saint Patrick's church in downtown DC featured a cherubic priest who gave a brilliant explanation: we don't have a problem believing that frogs can turn into princes and children believe that superheros inhabit people's bodies. We know conversely demons can inhabit other people's bodies and even affect matter. God has appeared before as a burning bush, and when he sends a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night to guide a path. We have other examples where we don't flinch at believing things take on different material forms or their original material forms are hijacked at God's command. The manna in the desert was provided as food for the journey. Where did that come from in the desert?

This priest noted that the fact that God tells us that we must take of his body and blood means that the physical is not immaterial to God. The act of our taking within our bodies his body in the form of ingestion is deemed central to our salvation. He didn't ask us to apply him on our skin or rub him in our hair or wash him in our hands. He didn't tell us to pour him over anything while chanting anything. He told us to eat his flesh and drink his blood. This has some
supernatural mystical connection with the destiny of our resurrected bodies.
We must ingest this in order to affect himself within our physical forms. The body, is thus, important. We are not disembodied souls. Our souls are attached to bodies and Christ nourishes the bodies. How we use the bodies, to what end and for whom will have some inextricable part toward determining our destinies.

Now, that's food for thought.


Another priest noted that several thousand priests were put by the Nazis in concentration camps in WWII- and so badly mistreated that they were worked by being forced to pull carts like horses or mules. When they went to town they would tell people that they were priests and so were given bread and wine that they took back to the concentration camps which they could then share and those that survived tell that this sustained their hopes. The imputation of Jesus himself in to the death camps brought life. That is one central way that the living Christ sustains and saves people-through his physically showing up and being ingested. Sort of spiritual cannibalism. Hard to swallow-which is why it is an act of faith and a grace to understand and believe it and not run away.

Another priest noted that a priest in the middle ages was skeptical about whether he was actually doing anything when consecrating the eucharist so he prayed to God to help his unbelief. He went on pilgrimmage from Prague to Rome hoping that God would answer his prayer. While celebrating Mass in Italy outside a town called Orvieto he noticed that the wafer physically turned into something that felt like flesh and actually bled onto the altar cloth. The Pope, it so happened, was at the time in Orvieto so he went to tell him and this started an inquiry and it was believed to be authenticated. I have been to Orvieto and the blood doted cloth has remained there preserved behind class for about 7 centuries.

When a Priest consecrates the eucharist at the Mass what he says is something like "This is my body which will be broken for you, for the forgiveness of sins" and is according to scripture to lead to eternal life (unless you eat and drink....you shall have no life within you.)

The biggest witness of the church against the authenticity of the transubstantiation is of course the fact that no Priest ever follows suit. The "do this in rememberance of me" is a shallow understanding which is taken to mean merely eat and drink in rememberance of me, when Jesus meant something much deeper.

What he meant was - do this transubstantiation like me-you do it- just like me- in rememberance of me. In other words, if his body was offered for the forgiveness of sins, for eternal life, then the priest ought to consider how his body should be offered to create life-and actually do it- create new life. The first principle of God's character is that he is the Creater-the author of all Life.
The greatest witness against the transubstantiation of the eucharist is the church, in that no priest can ever offer his body, or any DNA spec of it to create new life through it. God's blessing on Abraham was that Abraham would have progeny through his and Sara's own body.
It was significant and central to the Promise that progeny would issue THROUGH Abraham and Sarah- and the Hagar stunt was cheating. Jesus created and creates life through his given body and asks everyone to do likewise. The blessing comes through the physical offering.


No Catholic priest can follow this or inherit this blessing because it's against Cannon Law that has only existed since the 12th Century. Jewish priests inherited this blessing and had children. Which is why the Protestant reformation was destined to happen within a few hundred years of that 12th century perversion. I joke, but it's not really a joke that the Priest when he says "this is my body which will be broken for you" should follow up with "because I like to live vicariously" because no priest, if he likes to eat and stay out of Court, will ever offer his body to another to create new life. And in this they are less Christ-like than the Protestant Ministers who understand the fullness of what Life in Christ-through him, with him and in him is supposed to mean and propogate. Catholic priests generally view women who have this view as intrinsically impure. Protestants view the Catholic view as just sexist heresy and off the rails from the dignity Christ gave women and particularly the central devotion he encouraged of his Mother.

Both the Protestant world and the Catholic world are thus incomplete in the meaning of the Last Supper and see in a glass mirror dimly. The Protestant world (that part that believes the whole dog and pony show is merely symbolic) has thrown the Baby Jesus out with the bathwater, while the Catholic world has in imprisoning their priests in the false piety of mandatory forced celibacy to serve institutional interests defeated in part it's own purposes by attracting only men who are disinclined to create families, and thus are disinclined to offer their bodies as living sacrifices to create actual new life. Their words can sometimes ring shallow.

And this is a good starting point for an eucumenical conference on the depth of what exactly Jesus did at the Last Supper. Because neither camp fully understands the depth of Christ's love in offering his body on the Cross.

Only one parish bulletin I saw today oddly took the occasion to not too subtly chastize people who departed from church doctrine to being 'worthy' enough to partake of the eucharist. (When Jesus NEVER refused himself to anyone who came to him) - Samaritans, even Samaritan women and Centurions were all welcome if they had faith enough to venture toward him.

When Church doctrine departs from Jesus how worthy is the priest doling it out? With regard to forced mandatory celibacy as a condition of priesthood, Seventy percent of all Americans believe it is a crock that fosters an overly gay priesthood and leads to all kinds of sins of emotionally adulaterous manipulations for profit to mandate forced celibacy (meaning no marriage) for the entire group of men they deem worthy enough to dish out the eucharist and call themselves priests.

This gives old Dominicans justification to condemn all women who are inclined to childbearing as being somehow definitionally impure or unholy and lesser than the priesthood- which is of course the opposite of how Jesus viewed women and children. Jesus said for the little children to come to him- and priests cross themselves and lie prostrate on concrete vowing to never have them.

There is something plainly very sinister and twisted about that. Evil. The fact that this evil is called holier than thou is just not biblical. The fact that only men who prefer living with men are qualifiable as priests is something that is not in keeping with the model of people whom Jesus sought and chose as disciples. He didn't choose as the 12 disciples the Ethiopian eunich or any collection of eunichs, or single men like John the Baptist. Eunich-hood, while permitted for the kingdom was rare. He chose family men. In Jewish culture children are blessings and women were "saved" through childbearing. A collection of males swearing off children as a right of passage would have had about as much evangelical appeal as throwing a pig roast in a PETA conference.

The First Testament reading on Corpus Christie was the verse indicating that God would bless the children within you. God would bless the children within you.
And no priest is permitted by Cannon Law to offer his body or any DNA part of it to create life- as Jesus did in offering his flesh for the salvation of the world. This is more than ridiculous incongruity.
This is why the Pope is flatly in profound biblical error. Thank God Jesus manifests himself in spite of the sins of the Priest- dogmatic or otherwise, codified in cannon law or otherwise.