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“The Institution of the Eucharist”
by Nicolas Poussin,1640 |
Readings for Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ [2]
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible [3]
Readings and Commentary: [4]
Reading 1: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a
Moses said to the people:
"Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God,
has directed all your journeying in the desert,
so as to test you by affliction
and find out whether or not it was your intention
to keep his commandments.
He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger,
and then fed you with manna,
a food unknown to you and your fathers,
in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live,
but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.
"Do not forget the Lord, your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
that place of slavery;
who guided you through the vast and terrible desert
with its saraph serpents and scorpions,
its parched and waterless ground;
who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock
and fed you in the desert with manna,
a food unknown to your fathers."
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Commentary on Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16a
This reading is taken from the second address of Moses to the Hebrews. This section of the address can be called “an appeal to remembrance” since Moses is recounting all that God had done for them since they were led out of Egypt. The focus of these verses is on the feeding of the people with manna (see Exodus 16; 4-16). Jesus also quoted this passage “not by bread alone does one live” (see Matthew 4:4). Beyond manna, Moses also recalls the saraph staff (see Numbers 21; 5-9), and water drawn from the rock at Horeb (see Exodus 17; 2-6).
CCC: Dt 8:3 1334, 2835
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Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20
R. (12) Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Glorify the Lord, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion.
For he has strengthened the bars of your gates;
he has blessed your children within you.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He has granted peace in your borders;
with the best of wheat he fills you.
He sends forth his command to the earth;
swiftly runs his word!
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He has proclaimed his word to Jacob,
his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.
He has not done thus for any other nation;
his ordinances he has not made known to them. Alleluia.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
or:
R. Alleluia.
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Commentary on Ps 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20
Psalm 147 is a hymn of praise. In these strophes, the singer celebrates God’s gifts to his people: the gift of faith to the patriarch Jacob, and the gift of his presence in the Holy City Jerusalem. These strophes are from the third section (each section offering praise for a different gift from God to his special people). This section focuses on the gift of the Promised Land with Jerusalem as its spiritual center. We see the call to praise Jerusalem, the Holy City, because in it was revealed the Word of God, and a call to holiness. The Lord is praised for sending food that sustains the people. The final strophe also rejoices that the law was handed on to them through Jacob.
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Reading II: 1 Corinthians 10:16-17
Brothers and sisters:
The cup of blessing that we bless,
is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we break,
is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
Because the loaf of bread is one,
we, though many, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf.
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Commentary on 1 Cor 10:16-17
Although this is part of a comparison being brought between Christ’s sacrifice and idolatry, what is given here expresses the unity forged through the Eucharist, the only true sacrifice. The Blood of Christ and the Body of Christ shared in communion unites us spiritually and physically and we become that living Body of Christ on earth, the Church, through Jesus.
“The principal effect of the Blessed Eucharist is intimate union with Jesus. The very name "communion’--taken from this passage of St Paul (cf. "St Pius V Catechism’, II, 4, 4)--points to becoming one with our Lord by receiving his body and blood. ‘What in fact is the bread? The body of Christ. What do they become who receive Communion? The body of Christ’ (Chrysostom, ‘Hom. on 1 Cor, 24, ad loc.’).” [5]
CCC: 1 Cor 10:16-17 1329, 1331, 1396; 1 Cor 10:16 1334; 1 Cor 10:17 1621
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Gospel: John 6:51-58
Jesus said to the Jewish crowds:
"I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world."
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Jesus said to them,
"Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me
will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever."
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Commentary on Jn 6:51-58
The “Bread of Life” discourse continues, and the Lord escalates his language. The people who had come to him because they had been fed with the five barley loaves just cannot make the leap from bread made from wheat or barley to the Bread of Life offered as true food and drink for the spirit. Even when he uses manna as an example of real food, they still do not see that the Son of God offers them his resurrected body as their meal and they are repulsed – especially because of the language he uses (Jesus uses the word gnaw, not just eat, in the original texts.).
CCC: Jn 6 1338; Jn 6:51 728, 1355, 1406, 2837; Jn 6:53-56 2837; Jn 6:53 1384; Jn 6:54 994, 1001, 1406, 1509, 1524; Jn 6:56 787, 1391, 1406; Jn 6:57 1391; Jn 6:58 1509
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Reflection:
Jesus' gift of himself in the Eucharist was
announced most clearly and straightforwardly in St. John’s Gospel. But Matthew, Mark, and Luke forewarn us of
this mystery with the feeding of the multitudes and Luke, specifically as the
resurrected Jesus dines with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Christ feeds us with has spiritual gifts and
expresses his own love for us in doing so.
“1323 At
the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the
Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate
the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and
so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and
resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a
Paschal banquet ‘in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace,
and a pledge of future glory is given to us.[6]”
This definition from the Catechism of the
Catholic Church describes the “why” of our celebration of the
Eucharist. St. John’s Gospel describes what that meal truly
was. Rather than trying to express this in our own words we once again
rely on the Catechism to do that;
1374 The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species
is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the
perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments
tend."201 In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist
"the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord
Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and
substantially contained."202 "This presence is called
'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if
they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense:
that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man,
makes himself wholly and entirely present. 203"[7]
These doctrinally supported statements of our faith
and belief in the divinity of the “corpus Christi,” the Body and Blood of
Christ are the teaching of Holy Mother Church a principal tenet of our faith.
Yet of all that the magisterium teaches, our belief in the “real presence” in
the Eucharist is not held by a majority of our brother and sister Christians in
other denominations. Even in the face of St. John’s Gospel’s when Jesus says:
"I am the living bread that came down from
heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world."
And follows that statement with:
"Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink.”
How can anyone mistake those words for metaphor
or symbolism?
Perhaps sharing my own story of how I came
finally to faith in these words, for I was raised in a Protestant family by
wonderful parents who lived exemplary Christian lives. My father was raised in the Lutheran faith,
my mother in the Methodist tradition. As
a couple the practiced in the Presbyterian denomination.
It was not until 1970, when I married my wife
that I converted to Catholicism even though I did not fully grasp what I was
committing my life to at that time. You
see, I have a problem. That problem is I
took my college education in the field of biochemistry. As a result, and without the early training
in the tenets of the Catholic Church, I was taught almost exclusively by
non-religious or openly atheistic faculty in the rigorous logic of how organic
life came to be and operated at the most fundamental levels.
I had always struggled with the concept that
Jesus was the Son of God, but my whole family had taught me from the day I
could understand language that Jesus was indeed divine and while my logical
mind still had doubts, I accepted the essence of God in man as fact (if not
faith). But when speaking to Fr. Joe Emile, the priest who gave me brief
instruction before bringing me into the church the morning I got married (it’s
a long story and I will not get into it here), and we got to the part about the
real presence, I was not only doubtful but inwardly skeptical. You see we had communion in the Presbyterian
church. It was tiny glasses of concord
grape juice and squares of white bread passed around in trays. I would often go into the kitchen after
communion and see if I could drink the juice not used during the service. And I
know the leftover squares of bread were given to ladies in the church to use
for making croutons or stuffing. That
communion wafers and wine could become the Body and Blood of Jesus sounded to
the biochemist in me and something beyond the realm of possibility.
It was some years later that during the Easter
celebration here at St. Thomas the Gospel from John 20:24ff was proclaimed when
our patron saint Thomas was not with the other disciples when Jesus came into
the locked room. It suddenly (and very
belatedly) came to me that all this time I have not realized that there was
something science could not understand about this. It was not magic, it was metaphysical. Jesus did not enter that room in the physical
body he wore in life! He wore a glorified body transubstantiated at his
resurrection. I was this glorified body
he wore in that locked room bearing the marks of his sacrifice. It was this Body and Blood he gave as an
everlasting promise to us. This was the
real presence my logic could not find because it required faith in something my
logic could not understand.
So, my brothers and sisters in faith, this
promise, made at the last supper, and carried out countless times on this altar
is where we find our faith and where we are fed. Let us find and remember the awe of St. Thomas
who upon seeing the Lord confessed: “My Lord and my God.”
Amen
