CORPUS DOMINI

Life made you bread
and there we ate you.

Anonymous

The solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ takes us back to Holy Thursday, when the Church commemorates that Last Supper in which Christ instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist. The intimacy of the cenacle is found in the Last Supper by Pietro Vannucci (1450 ca.-1523), better known as Perugino, painted in the monumental refectory of the Franciscan tertiaries of S. Onofrio (Florence). Perugino, one of the major protagonists of the renewal of Italian art, with his trait made of transparencies, silences and light music still arouses a strong emotional impact on spectators today. The compositional centre of the fresco is determined by Jesus, with John reclining on his chest and Judas, who with the money of betrayal in his hand turns his gaze – questioning and malicious at the same time – towards the bystanders. The technical expedient creates a contemporaneity to the event of the Last Supper. Those who observe cannot be mere spectators. Before Christ you have to make up your mind and without pretence. Because that gaze – as Quasimodo already intuited – sees inside the heart:

[…] You looked inside me
in the darkness of the entrails:
no one has my despair
in his heart.

I am a lonely man,
a lonely hell.

It is shocking, but Jesus institutes the Eucharistic memorial on the night of the betrayal. Why? Betrayal is certainly a choice that can have many motivations, but it is possible only in the space of an intimate, fraternal, family relationship, where one entrusts oneself and trusts the other. In fact, one cannot be betrayed by a stranger. Judas was able to betray Jesus because Jesus loved him. Those who betray essentially steal, inverting the movement of life, which by its nature is diffusive; the thief strips others and keeps for himself, to the point of extreme theft: the life of the other. And this is the drama of Judas, not by chance defined as a “thief” by the evangelist John (cf. Jn 12:6).

Se la scelta di Giuda sconcerta, anche Gesù sorprende. Nella notte in cui la fiducia e l’amore vengono mortalmente feriti, egli opera il più grande ribaltamento della storia umana: sovverte la logica del tradimento (si ricordi il duplice significato del latino tradere, tradire e consegnarsi) ed immette, per sempre, quel dono di Sé che giunge all’autoconsegna persino al nemico, da lui sempre accolto come amico (cf. Mt 26,50).

In the absorbed and emotional air of that banquet, it is not only Judas’ betrayal that looms. There is the weakness of the twelve, who will soon abandon the Master; the drowsiness of the three disciples, who will not know how to keep watch in the garden, the triple denial of the impetuous Simon, the leader of the apostles. And there are also our betrayals, which must always make us fear ourselves and implore the Lord Jesus to turn His gaze toward us, that gaze that pierced and melted Peter’s heart. In a piece of bread and a few drops of wine is God and with Him the entire universe. In the most majestic of cathedrals, as in the palm of the hand. For the Vietnamese Cardinal van Thuan, for thirteen long years in prison or in isolation, three drops of wine and one of water in the palm of his hand were enough to nourish him and the other Christians with the Bread and Blood of life and to make Jesus the true “our companion in the Most Holy Sacrament”. “They were the most beautiful Masses of my life!”, he testified when in 2000 he was called by John Paul II to preach the Spiritual Exercises in the Vatican.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey