One
day, someone observed Mother Teresa as she took a woman off the streets of
Calcutta. This poor woman’s body was
covered with open sores infested with bugs.
Mother Teresa very patiently and lovingly bathed this lady. She cleaned her wounds and dressed them. The woman was screaming at Mother Teresa the
entire time, hurling threats and insults at her. Mother Teresa only lovingly and
compassionately smiled. Later, Mother
Teresa was asked how she can do this work day in and day out without getting
frustrated or impatient. Mother Teresa
responded: The Mass – the Eucharist - is the spiritual food that sustains me -
without this I could not get through one single day or one single hour in my
life.
Today we celebrate the Body and Blood
of Christ that we receive in the Eucharist.
The Second Vatican Council called the Eucharist the source and summit of
our lives as Catholics – all that we are as Catholics should flow out of the
Eucharist. It is interesting that we
don’t hear the Gospel reading today about Jesus instituting the Eucharist at
the Last Supper, but rather how Jesus fed the hungry crowds in the miracle of
the loaves and the fish. This is the
only miracle story that is recorded in all four Gospels – it shows how
important this story was to Christ’s followers in the Early Church.
The crowds were physically hungry at
the end of the day as they were gathered to hear Jesus teach them about the
Kingdom of God. While the disciples wanted
the crowd to go out to the surrounding countryside in order to find provisions
for themselves, Jesus wanted them to feed the crowd. Physical hunger is an important longing we
have in our lives – without food to sustain, we are not able to live. In fact, it is hard to believe how many
people in our state of Mississippi, here in modern America, need food
assistance in order to survive. Here in
Lee County where our parish of St James in Tupelo is located, 19% of the
population receives food stamp assistance to help them get food. In Humphreys County, where my former parish
of All Saints in Belzoni is located, 48% of the population receives such
assistance, a statistic that I have a hard time comprehending. While physical hunger remains a problem today,
we have hunger on other levels as well, and the feeding of the crowd and the
Body and Blood of Christ we receive in the Eucharist satisfy those different
levels of hunger that we have in life.
We hunger for meaning in life – we
hunger to transcend the day-to-day existence we have here on earth – to raise
it to a meaning beyond which we have on the surface of our earthly
existence. We hunger to connect with God
in our life – we hunger to have a glimpse of the Kingdom of God as we journey
in faith here on earth. We hunger for
healing and wholeness in our lives, to mend the brokenness that we feel in our
hearts. I can imagine that the members
of that crowd were feeling those different types of hunger in their lives as
they came to Jesus that day, to hear his teachings and his proclamations of
God’s kingdom. Jesus satisfied their
hunger in so many ways.
As a missionary in Ecuador in the
province of Esmeraldas in the middle of a vast rainforest jungle, I traveled by
canoe about 4 hours every Friday afternoon from our mission site to one of the
villages located deep in the jungle.
After traveling in that small canoe in the hot sun right on the Equator,
I was exhausted and very hungry. Right
after my arrival, one of the ladies from our church in that village would send
over a plate of food for me, usually some rice, some boiled plantains, and a bit
of meat. Not only did that food satisfy
my physical hunger, but it touches my heart just being able to share this story
with you today. Many of the people in the
jungle had little to eat themselves, and they would go out of their way to send
me that food out of their hospitality and love for me as their missionary. Sometimes I would arrive in that village on a
Friday afternoon sick with a tropical fever or a little bit lonesome or homesick – the way they reached out to me always seemed to help.
We should feel that about the Eucharist
– and even more. It should touch our hearts and feed our souls on so many
different levels. Like the strength and
sustenance Mother Teresa of Calcutta found in the Eucharist, so the Body and
Blood of Christ should be a very cherished presence in our own lives.
We must remember that receiving the
Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist is only the beginning. The life and nourishment that we receive from
Christ in this special way is meant to inform our conscience and motivate our
actions. To me, that is what this
solemnity is all about. Traditionally,
on this day, there are often processions in the neighborhoods and in the
streets. That is where we are to take
the Eucharist – wherever we go on our journey.
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