Corpus Christi Sunday
Koinonia, a term with many meanings but they all express a communion, a participation, an inheritance of the other. Maybe the term, intercourse, graphically defines Koinonia. We enter into an intimate relationship with the other becoming one. In union, our characteristics and personalities blend making us indistinguishable with the other. This is Koinonia.
As lovers share everything, so too Koinonia involves the complete sharing, the totality of two sharing, participating, and becoming one. Such is the case with heirs. They receive everything of their beloved, the totality of all their possessions. In receiving the total inheritance, they become bonded, joined to their beloved receiving all that he or she has or had.
Complete and total participation in the life of another satisfies our deepest need. Love, the complete and total self-giving of one person to another as demonstrated by Agape Love, mutually exchanges—sacrifices—for the other freely, faithfully, totally, and completely. Such is the depth of Koinonia. A complete unveiling of oneself to another without shame, embarrassment, or guilt, but with dignity, honor, and delight.
On the night of the Last Supper, at the institution of the New Passover, Jesus prays that all maybe one. In his prayer, Jesus also bequeaths everything He has, inviting us to inherit what is his so it becomes ours. He states:
All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you (Jn 16:15).
What does Jesus possess? He possesses the fulness of Divine Love. He has the inestimable glory of the Father. He has the incalculable love of the Spirit. He has the Spirit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. He has everything. Yet, having everything, He has one desire. He wants to share all that He has with us so that we too may have the fulness of his life, that our “joy may be full” (John 16:24).
To receive fully and completely all that the Father has, Jesus commands us to ask, in his name, and “you will receive” (John 16:24). Asking is not begging. Begging we doubt and hesitate. Asking knows that whatever we ask for we will receive according to God’s good measure, not ours. Listen to Jesus commanding us to ask:
Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it (Jn 14:13–14).
This is the incredible promise Jesus offers. If we understand correctly what we are asking for, we not only receive the identity of Jesus but we become as Christ. Or as we famously know, we become another Christ: Alter Christus. Everything that the Father has is ours because in asking, we receive; and we ask for nothing other than Koinonia. To participate, share, and commune not just with, or for Jesus, but as Jesus Himself.
“As Jesus” defines Koinonia perfectly. St. Paul, preaching to the Athenians who did not know the true God, but worshipped many idols declares
He is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your poets have said, For we are indeed his offspring.’ (Acts 17:27–28).
To be the offspring of another means we have their total and complete identity. We are not with someone, nor for someone, but we are as the other. We commune with the other as we came from the other.
Koinonia defines our identity. Identity means we participate completely and fully in the life and love of the other, not as a separate individual, but as united—bonded—one to the other. This bonding binds us in mind, body, heart, and soul. The two become one.
Eating, that delightful sharing with another the very sustenance of life, becomes the setting by which Jesus invites us not just to share a meal with Him, but realize He becomes the meal He shares. Inviting us, He reveals,
I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn 6:51).
Nothing more graphic: “my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed” (John 6:55), explains the height, the depth, and breadth of Koinonia, the total and complete sharing of Himself so we, invited, can participate fully and fruitfully in his love. Or as many comment: We become what we eat.
Odd does not come close to explaining this definition of Koinonia. It is absolutely offensive. To share one’s body with another is understandable, actually ecstatic. But to share one’s blood with another, to drink the blood of the other, to offer your body as the meal? This is grotesque, verging on cannibalism. Yet, this is exactly what Jesus declares as we see the reaction of the listeners as they “disputed among themselves, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52).
Yet, when we look back at the history of the Israelites, in the desert, God gave them bread from heaven, called manna: literally meaning “What is this?” Nothing was ever seen like this before, yet God provides miraculously bread from heaven. He also gave water from the rock. A rock that produces water in a desert and bread that comes from the dew becomes the setting for Jesus’ teaching telling his listener that Moses gave bread and the people died. They died because they did not want God in their lives. They did not want to change their hearts—their hearts were hardened, harder than Pharoah. Jesus now in a desert place, just after He feeds the 5000 declares God will give them bread from heaven that leads to eternal life just as Moses gave them bread from heaven that would sustain them for 40 years until they reached the Promised Land. Yet, their hearts are hardened. They reject Jesus’ invitation to Koinonia. However, if God gives food and drink miraculously in the desert, cannot God give us food and drink not from rocks and dew, but from his very self?
Pope Benedict XVI in his Apostolic Exhortation on the Sacrament of Charity, The Eucharist, offers insights into this radical and miraculous mystery. Jesus dynamically gives Himself—agape love—drawing us into his presence, so that
The substantial conversion of bread and wine into his body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of "nuclear fission," to use an image familiar to us today, which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28) (Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, # 11).
As in the desert, so now reality changes, a miracle takes place. Declared food and drink, Jesus’ body and blood becomes something totally other. What looks like bread and wine, food and drink, becomes not only the body and blood of Jesus, his Real Physical Presence, but also the soul and divinity of Jesus, the Divine and Spiritual Presence.
This commingling of humanity with divinity: Jesus at the incarnation where the two natures become one person, now becomes the communion in which we participate. He invites us into his divinity as He took upon Himself our humanity. The liturgy reveals this Koinonia when the priest pours water into the chalice filled with wine. This comingling of water an wine conceptualizes Koinonia. St. Paul VI, in his Pastoral Constitution on the Church, Gaudium et Spes, also proposes this:
Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear (Paul VI Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World December 7, 1965, # 22).
St. Paul tells the Corinthians who failed to understand the Koinonia; that Jesus shares his real self in the total self-giving act of the Passover Meal. Inviting and commanding us to participate fully in his sharing tells us too:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Co 10:16).
Koinonia, the participation in the body and blood of Christ, imbues us with Divine Life. We become one with the Divine receiving the identity of the Father through the gift of the Son Who sends us his Spirit. This three-fold penetration breaks the hardness of our heart inviting us into the eternal life of the Divine. For us to receive such a gift, we receive it worthily. Worthiness does not mean I am worthy to receive it but our worthiness reverences the reality. Jesus, transubstantiated, is truly and totally present in the Breaking of the Bread to which I have been invited to participate.