“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood.”
Jesus’ final meal, celebrated today in the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ, replaces The Religion of Militarism’s blood sacrifice system. In place of Militarism’s sacrificed body and blood extracted from Jesus the next day, Jesus offers living sustenance of bread and wine at that evening’s meal. Jesus’ paradigm shift for a life-giving communion flows from a life-giving earth forever nourishing us into the future. Traditionalists who promote the Mass not as a meal but as a sacrifice assert its fidelity to the past. They make the Mass faithful to Old Testament sacrificial offerings done by rulers at the Temple and at war. The ruling class, usually a priest or a warrior, practiced murder and called it sacrifice. They claimed the person’s violent death is a saving action. Traditionalists seem not to realize they are perpetuating the Religion of Militarism’s human sacrifice system responsible for murdering Jesus, which Militarists have warped into a saving act. Traditionalists are thus hindering Jesus’ healing meal from replacing Militarism’s human sacrifice system. The Religion of Militarism is based on ruling supremacists, who devalue subordinates, and sacrifice those subordinates’ body and blood for the supremacists’ own gain. In order to achieve that gain, Militarists manipulate sacrifice as holy. For example, across history and the world women are subordinated, devalued as a possession, and coerced to sacrifice the fullness of who they are and can be to patriarchs who gain from women’s sacrifice of their body and blood. The sacrifice is evident in patriarchy coercing women to abort, join the military and police, be typically capitalist in their consumerism, finances, lifestyle, and more – all of which is a sacrifice of their full selves and souls to a U.S. patriarchal culture. Such sacrifice is the presumption the Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker recently made in his Benedictine College commencement speech. He talked about his gains from having a wife who sacrificed for him, “I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife… all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class… (decided to) become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.” So too, for example, 99% of all humanity is subordinated, devalued as a possession, and coerced to sacrifice the fullness of who they are to the 1% wealth class. The 1%, for their own gain, want workers to sacrifice their body and blood for what capitalists want. The sacrifice is evident in capitalist plunderers like the sociopath Donald Trump. He routinely cheats laborers of their wages yet currently is asserting he is their savior. Trump who has sacrificed other people all his life for his own gain, is presently claiming that he is sacrificing himself to the law, the media, and to jail – not for his crimes – but for the lie he is sacrificing himself for the people. It is the same people he is presently cheating out of their wages in his donation schemes. So too men are subjugated, devalued as a possession, made to sacrifice the fullness of who they are and can be to the military that wants soldiers to sacrifice their body and blood for what war plunderers can gain. Author Nancy B. Jay in Throughout Your Generations: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity, relayed the truth spoken by one ruler and known by all rulers, “If I were to abolish human sacrifice, I should deprive myself of one of the most effective means of keeping the people in subjection.”
Human sacrifice is an ideology, more truthfully, a theology invented by the ruling class. It is thus not rulers – priests, capitalists, the military – who sacrifice for the people. It is the people who are rendered as sacrifice by and for the ruler class.
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, we vow to be free.
Question: How does the Religion of Militarism coerce me to honor the human sacrifice of people to the ruler class?
June 02, 2024 Gospel Mark 14:12-16, 22-26 Feast of Corpus Christi