All Catholics reading this blog will surely get a kick out of my ignorance. For years when I approached the priest for Eucharist, after he placed the wafer in my hand and spoke the words “The body of Christ, given for you,” I always looked him square in the eyes and said, “Thank you.” Then I moved on, consumed the host, and felt very close to the Lord and filled with the Holy Spirit.
One day at mass with my wife Miran, who is a “cradle Catholic” having been born into the faith as a child, she overheard me say, “Thank you” to the priest. She quickly informed me that the proper response to the priest’s words “The body of Christ given for you” was to simply say Amen!
I thought my “Thank you” had been polite and appropriate. But instead, it had caused a ripple of discomfort in the ears of any who heard.
Got me to thinking about the word Amen! Did you know that every time you conclude a prayer with the word Amen! you are speaking both Hebrew and Greek! The Greek word Amen! is a transliteration (letter for letter) of the Hebrew word Amen! which literally means, “Verily so, this is the truth, so it is, without a doubt” and other words/phrases connoting the assuredness and veracity of what went before the Amen!
All of which led me to chew on (pardon the pun) the phrase “This is my body given for you.” Some priests/pastors change the words Jesus used and instead say, “This is my body broken for you.” If you ever hear those words spoken at a Eucharist Service, I encourage you to speak privately with that person and point them to Psalm 22, the Messianic Psalm of King David, which is referred to very often by Jesus.
Was Jesus’ body “broken” on the cross? His side was pierced, his hands and feet were pierced, a crown of thorns cut into his scalp; but when the soldiers came to fracture his femurs as they had just done to the criminals on either side of Jesus to hasten their death, they stopped and did not fracture his femurs, since Jesus had already died.
Psalm 22 has so many amazing references to the life of Jesus as the promised Messiah (“anointed one”) I encourage you to read it very slowly. Verse 14 says “all my bones are out of joint” – not fractured or broken, just out of joint! And then the most amazing fact is in verse 17 which says, “I can count all my bones!” We can assume that since God created human beings, He knew perfectly well what modern medical science has since discovered and confirmed – there are 206 bones in the human body; not 208 which would have happened if Jesus’ femurs had each been broken in half!
When the Psalmist says, in speaking of the Messiah, “I can count all my bones”) we can read into these words “I still have only 206 bones, none of my bones were broken like the two guys on either side of me!” So, when I am told, “this is the body of Christ which was given for you” I rejoice and say Amen!
Verily, it is so, this is the truth! Not a single bone in my Savior’s body was broken and His entire body was given for me. Amen! indeed!
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