Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Ps 147:12-15, 19-20; 1 Cor. 10:16-17; Jn. 6:51-58
The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist is the celebration of the summit of our Catholic faith. We believe the Body and Blood of Christ remains with us in the Eucharist “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” to be received on the day of the Lord. Believe it or miss the greatest gift from God we can receive in this world, Jesus himself the source of life. Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross needed to be in order that we would continue to receive him in his body and blood, soul and divinity.
The word of God already existed before the incarnation in the person of Jesus. Jesus offers himself up that we may receive divine life “or you do not have life within you”. Jesus says, “the one who feeds on me will have life”. Was this to simply feed on his word or something greater beyond our understanding? The summit of the Catholic faith is to receive the one true God in his body and blood in the Eucharist as the greatest act of worship.
Moses said, “not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord”. God provided Moses and his people the word of God and manna to eat yet they still died in their sin. Jesus affirms it “Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will life forever”. This is a much bigger contrast that Jesus brings us for our salvation. Jesus comes to perfect what was imperfect among the people of God. The Church of God cannot remain in Old Testament times as our separated believers from Jewish and Protestant faith teach. The Church of God is a Eucharistic body of believers to eat and drink of the one body, the body of Christ.
The word of God provides us a historical account of the history of salvation. It provides us the truth, goodness, beauty and unity that comes from God. It also provides us a teaching working through the prophets, apostles and Jesus himself. The word however remains only a word until it becomes incarnated into our very being. In Jesus we have the incarnation of the Word and he gives us his body and blood that we may become incarnated in him and the word in us. This is the mystery of faith that the Word became flesh and by receiving his body and blood the word becomes our identity in Christ, our very being of who we were created to be.
“The Jews quarreled among themselves, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat’”. Jesus did not respond with “I misspoke” or “I only meant it in a figurative way”. He defended his statement by reinforcing it “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” as if to say “Am I clear!” For this many abandoned him as many have left him today unable to recognize Jesus truly present in the Eucharist and in the Catholic church. Why? In the word of God, we can come to a conviction to choose God by way of reason but in the Eucharist, we must come to him by way of faith. It is the greatest miracle on earth that Jesus has left us and yet we look for other miracles in order to believe. There is none greater than Jesus truly present body and blood in the Eucharist.
Jesus is the living bread that came down from heaven which we are to eat. Old Testament sacrifice of animals for atonement of sin, sprinkling of blood on the people, and the eating of the meat were all part of the act of worship of the Lord, be it an imperfect act as it was it prefigured the one true act of sacrifice of the Lord Jesus to come. Here we see the continuity of what was begun in the Old Testament being finalized in the New. Jesus proclaimed he came to make all things new not by doing away with the old but by perfecting it in himself.
Moses speaks to the Jewish people after forty years of wandering in the desert before he was to die unable to enter into the promise land. What does her remind them to never forget as most important in his final discourse, how they were fed “with manna, a food unknown to your fathers.” Then he adds “in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes for the from the mouth of the Lord.” The Word was to become incarnate in Jesus, one leads to the other and Jesus in turn becomes the bread of life to be our food for the journey.
When we come to Mass, we hear the word of God and receive a brief interpretation called biblical hermeneutics to grasp the meaning of scripture as it applies to our salvation. It is the doorway to the soul of our humanity to open ourselves up to God in preparation to receive him in the fullness of knowledge and understanding of the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Scripture lifts our souls up so God can come and carry higher into the divine life. It is a life within the Church to be church to others. To be church is to belong to the body and blood of Christ and to be a sign of Christ to the world.
When we come to Mass, we come to enter into the divine life of Jesus not for him to return to our humanity. We come to offer our sacrifice of the day or week in thanksgiving for all that God is in our life. We come to worship and praise God for the forgiveness of our sins and the salvation of our souls. We come to hear and listen to his word seeking so we may enter into his word in spirit and in truth. We come to receive his body and blood as food for the journey in this life to get us to eternal life. This is our liturgy, this is our divine worship, this is the proclamation of work of Christ in our lives and this is our act of charity to come together to pray, give alms, and to go forth to do the will of the Father. This promise comes to us as we humbly come forth to receive him body, blood, soul, and divinity in fulfillment of his command, “eat and drink, this is my body, this is my blood.”
Amen.
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