“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 in Old Testament sacrificial offerings done by rulers at the Temple and at war. The ruling class, usually a priest or a warrior, practice murder as sacrifice asserting 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 they 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 subordinates’ body and blood for supremacists’ gain. Across history and the world women are devalued as a possession, coerced to sacrifice the fullness of who they are and can be to men, who still, for their own gain want women to sacrifice their body and blood over what men believe they are and can be. The sacrifice is evident in coercing women to abort, join the military and police, and regulate their consumerism, finances, lifestyle, and more, as sacrifice to a U.S. patriarchal culture. Sacrifice is the presumption the Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker made in his Benedictine College commencement speech when talking about his gains in having a wife, “I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife.” So too 99% of all humanity is devalued as a possession, coerced to sacrifice the fullness of who they are and can be to the 1% wealth class who still, for their own gain want workers to sacrifice their body and blood over what capitalists believe they should and should not value. The sacrifice is evident in capitalist plunderers like Donald Trump routinely cheating laborers of their wages yet currently asserting he is their savior, sacrificing himself to the law, the media, and to jail – not for his crimes – but for the lie he sacrifices for the people whom he still cheats of their wages by coercing them to value sacrificing their wages as donations to him and to value sacrificing their lives to the law, the media, and to jail committing crimes for him. So too men are devalued as a possession, made to sacrifice the fullness of who they are and can be to the military who still, for their own gain want soldiers to sacrifice their body and blood over what does and does not make them heroes. The control is evident in the military’s image of the warrior hero that sacrifices men to the masculine stereotype, school recruitment, selective service, and bootcamp systems so it can violate our world with weaponry and wars. 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 it is 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 midwives helping to bring life to birth.
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