Homily from Fr Paul Nicholson SJ for Corpus Christi

Readings for Year B: Exodus 24:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-26

There is a church-word that is to be found in each of three readings we’ve heard this morning. By a church-word, I mean one that, though common here, you probably won’t hear outside of this building this week; that you probably didn’t hear last week either. That word is “covenant”, and the reason that it’s to be found in all three of the readings this morning is because it is central to any understanding today’s feast. Yet because it’s a church-word, one not in everyday use, we may need first to consider more fully what it means. This is particularly important since even though it’s a word mainly used in church, its meaning needs to be lived in outside of this building, outside in the everyday world. 

 The word “covenant”, then, simply refers to a solemn agreement – it’s a word borrowed from legal settings. Think, for instance, of the agreement between a landlord and a tenant about the conditions for use of a property. You agree to let me live in a flat you own, and to maintain it, while I agree to pay a certain rent regularly, and not to wreck the premises. Lawyers then draw up a written covenant setting out the terms and conditions for each of us to agree to. We both add our signatures as a sign of the covenant, the agreement between us, which is then seen as binding. 

 The readings today speak of that same kind of agreement being made between God and ourselves. This is explained elsewhere in the Bible in its simplest terms as “I shall be their God, and they shall be my people”. Now it is important that a covenant is entered into freely – it doesn’t count in law if either party is coerced – and so we, too, are free to choose here. Every generation, every individual, is offered a chance to make this agreement their own. We can ask ourselves today whether we have in reality freely entered into this covenant with God, to be his people. 

 The sign of this covenant is not our signatures on paper, but the blood of sacrifice – of bulls and goats in the Old Testament, and of Christ himself in the New. That brings us to the heart of the feast we are celebrating today, Corpus Christi, the body and blood of Christ. Jeus speaks of this renewed covenant at the Last Supper, where he then leaves us his body and blood as its sign. This shows clearly what this free agreement, that he is to be our God, and we are to be his people, means in practice. He is not going to be some distant, uninvolved God, but Emmanuel, God with us, here in the transformed bread and wine. 

 This meaning is seen most clearly in the receiving of Holy Communion, in which you make the sign of this covenant your own. The Church’s action in not giving communion to those who don’t share our faith isn’t some arbitrary legal restriction. It’s done because this sign of the covenant only makes sense in the context of the community of those of us who freely accept this covenant. We freely choose to be God’s people, he freely chooses to be our Emmanuel, God for ever with us. As you receive communion this morning, whether bodily here in the church or spiritually in the livestream link, make sure that you take a moment to consider what your action says.

Fr Paul Nicholson SJ

Socius of the British Province of Jesuits