Corpus Christi (Observed)

Today is the celebration of the Body of Christ. (Or rather, Thursday was the celebration of the Body of Christ, but it's more convenient to do the celebrating today.) The term has two senses, both of which are absurd. The first is that from the Gospel, where Jesus institutes Holy Communion with a piece of bread and the words "this is my body". I'll let Miss O'Connor speak for that:

"Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. [Mary McCarthy] said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the 'most portable' person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, 'Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.' That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable."

The second sense is from Paul's letters: here it is the mystical union of all believers under the headship of Christ. Like Christ's earthly body, it is broken and wounded: it gives every impression of being done for. Christians have failed, and continue to fail, at that whole "unity" business, just as we have failed at that "charity" thing. I'm not exactly sure how we're supposed to remedy our shortcomings in embodying the second meaning of "Body of Christ". Perhaps it has something to do with the first meaning.