B: Corpus Christi Sunday (3 June 2018) - CORPUS ET SANGUIS CHRISTI - Mk 14:12-16, 22-26

We are celebrating today the Solemnity of the Corpus Christi, Latin for “Body of Christ”. Yet, included in this event is not only a commemoration of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharistic bread, but also in the Eucharistic wine as his true blood. There was a time in the Church liturgical calendar that there was a separate feast of the Most Precious Blood of Christ (1849-1969), but it was abolished “because the Most Precious Blood of Christ the Redeemer is already venerated in the solemnities of the Passion, of Corpus Christi, of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and in the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross” (cf. Calendarium Romanum).

Thus, today’s liturgy on the Corpus Christi includes both a remembrance of Jesus’ body and blood in the species of the bread and wine, respectively. This is corroborated in our gospel where the double formula this-is-my-body (Mk 14:22) and this-is-my-blood (v. 24) are cohesively joint together. For this reason, when a Catholic faithful receives the host in Holy Communion, he/she partakes of both the body and blood of Jesus, since they are inseparable. This union is liturgically performed when the priest in the Mass puts a little portion of the bread into the wine while inaudibly saying, “May this mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.”

Indeed, the body and blood are indissoluble. Yet, our common way of thinking shows otherwise. We see them as detachable. What matters for us is a living body, and we care less that inside it are more or less 5 liters of blood (or 7% of one’s total body weight). As a matter of fact, blood is very vital for human existence since it transports oxygen, nutrients, hormones and chemicals all around the body. A massive spillage of it leads to the immediate death of a person.

Filipinos nowadays tend to think only of the body, both in the literal and metaphorical senses. What matters is that our human bodies are sound, well-kept, safe and out-of-harm from drug-intoxicated-killers. Furthermore, the Philippine societal body is reported by the government as economically progressing. It takes pride that our economic growth is very robust: economists are expecting a 6.8% GDP growth by the end of 2018 (highest among the Philippine presidencies at this rate). Yet, we ask: How about the blood spilled which is inseparable with the political body?

After a short hiatus, the renewed Drug War tallies dozens of daily deaths once again. Just last May 29-30, eight died in Bulacan, nine in Cotabato City, and eleven in Quezon City: all dying in a shoot-out with the police/army as they conducted a buy-bust anti-drugs operations. For the past two years, this has become a staple in our daily news. We do not know the exact number, some putting it to 13,000, while the government conservatively trimming it down to more than 3,000.

No matter what the number is 3,000 deaths are too much! Consider the 2003 Drug War of Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from whom Rodrigo Duterte adapted his own Drug War. 2,819 died out of these police operations---most of them adjudged as a product of extra-judicial killing, and half of those are unrelated to drugs in any way (only 1,370 are related to drug dealing based on the investigative committee report in August 2007). The only good news to this is that Thailand stopped the operations before it reaches 3,000. I wonder when will ours stop. I would certainly not trade 3,000+ deaths (be they legitimate or not) for the sake of progress.

Pange Lingua, the hymn written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the Corpus Christi, reminds us all: “Sanguinísque pretiósi, quem in mundi prétium, fructus ventris generósi, Rex effúdit gentium” (“and of the precious Blood, which, for the price of the world, the fruit of a noble Womb, the King of the Nations poured forth”). The blood of Christ has already been poured for our salvation… let no more blood be poured for the sake of societal development.

- Rex Fortes, CM