Daily in our news feed we hear headlines of the violence rampant across the globe. Stories of bodiesbroken and blood spilled. We can barely comprehend the numbers that tally the destruction: more than 20,000 dead just from gun violence in the US in 2020, with 2021 on track to dramatically exceed thatnumber.  1.2 million violent crimes reported in the US in 2019. Around the world the numbers stagger us. Bodies ripped open, families shattered, communities torn apart--a seemingly endless stream of violenceand blood.

Many of us, feeling fearful and helpless to stem the tide of violence, persuade ourselves that this violencehas nothing to do with us. We imagine that the violence is out there, in those people, and we participatein fracturing the world — dividing it into camps of the righteous and the evildoers. We remain blind to theways that those very thoughts, and the words and actions that flow from them, fracture our own hearts, and perpetrate another violence that negates the humanity of some; and projects our own suffering or rage onto whole groups of others. I saw this pattern so vividly displayed as I observed the words and emotions offriends and co-workers reacting to the recent trial and verdict of Derek Chauvin for the murder of GeorgeFloyd.

Today’s solemnity of the Body and Blood of Jesus, can, if we will allow it, expose the divisions in ourhearts and the ways we so easily feed violence as we participate in fracturing relationships anddividing communities. Today’s celebration invites us to metabolize the violence in our hearts and inour world, as we take into ourselves the lifeblood that heals all that divides us, the body and blood that makes us one.

The blood of the covenant, in our reading from Exodus, marks the eternal relationship between Godand the people, who by their assent to this covenant, make their unity visible. The blood poured outon the people and the altar signifies the blood of their communion. They are one.

Jesus’ free gift of his body and blood, the night before his own unjust and violent death, forever tearsaway our illusion of separateness and the illusion that the violence in the world is not also in us

  This is my body, which is for you
  This my blood, poured out for you and for the multitudes.

In this act we see, we know, we receive that we are one body, with one river of blood flowing through theveins of all.

This is not simply a poetic or spiritualized notion. Our faith is incarnate, corporeal, lived out in our physicalbodies — and the blood that flows through the veins of every human person is one:

   The bodies broken daily by violence are our bodies; it is our blood spilled out.
   The enraged, or perhaps cold, blood that flows through the veins of the perpetrators ofviolence, is pumped by our hearts as well.

And together we receive, our common healing and transformation through our participation in thefree gift of Jesus:

   This is my body, This is my blood, which is for you.

St. Thomas, commenting on this feast writes: “No other sacrament has greater healing power, through itwhat divides us is purged away, virtues are increased, and we renew our memory of the surpassing love forus which Christ revealed.”

The ancient sequence composed for this solemnity names with joy the source of our healing:

Sing of love beyond your telling, love from Jesus’ heart upwelling, giving all that love can give. See him as hislife is ending, to his chosen friends attending, giving all that all might live.

Greet your Lord with acclamation, sing with joy in celebration of his gift of living bread. Let your mind withlove be dwelling on this gift, all gifts excelling, gift by which your heart is fed.

Two images — both responses to violence — one so familiar in our world and experience, which perpetuatesthe dehumanizing spiral;

the other offered in our scriptures and tradition, which liberates and transforms. So how might we moredeeply participate in Jesus’ gift, making his act our own? Perhaps, by involving our bodies more fully. Verysimply, as we pray the Eucharist, we might extend our own hands in offering:

   This is my body, which is given for you
   This is my blood poured out for you.

And what might be the result if we choose daily to practice this act of love. Could it be that through each ofus, in our small ways, God’s healing and transformation of violence may spread?

Let us pray every headline and every statistic with these words: This is my body, this is my blood.

As we see the faces in communities locked in opposition to one another. . . As the news bringsto our eyes the faces of the victims, and the faces of the perpetrators, Let us pray:

   This is my body, this is my blood. We are one.