CORPUS CHRISTI
GENESIS 14:18-20
Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying:
“Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”
And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
This text presents a very ancient tradition. Melchizedek, the King-Priest of Salem (the early Jerusalem, still a Canaanite city), recognizes God’s action in Abram, and Abram recognizes God’s action in this Canaanite priest.
The sign of the priest is the presentation of bread and wine. Abram, for his part, offers him a tenth.
These are “very distant antecedents” that the Church likes to use in its “setting” of the Eucharist, although for us they seem too distant.
1 CORINTHIANS 11:23-26
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said,
“This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
This letter from Paul was written between 54 and 57 AD. This makes it clear that we are facing the oldest account of the celebration of the Eucharist.
The occasion is given by the difficulties of the church in Corinth and their deficient celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The celebration took place in private homes, after the normal dinner.
Each one brought their own food, and strong differences arose between the rich and the poor, those who had much and those who had little. Paul, first of all, restores the meaning of the celebration:
·A tradition of the Church that comes from the Lord himself.
·”On the night he was betrayed”: The bread and wine are signs of the delivery unto death, already imminent.
·The “memorial”. It is not just a remembrance. It is the presence of Jesus, in the very signs that He wanted.
·”Until he comes”. It is the food for the journey, and the announcement of the definitive Freedom, in the Banquet of the Kingdom.
Afterwards, Paul draws the consequences of how the Eucharist should be celebrated, and takes the opportunity to speak of the unity of the whole Body of Christ, which is the Church, and of the charisms of each one, to end with the Supreme Charism, love.
The text thus introduces us to the essence of the Eucharist, as it has been handed down to us from the first generation of Christians, as it was celebrated when the witnesses of the Last Supper were still alive.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.