“I
am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will
live forever.” The
strong statements we hear in today’s Gospel are from the 6th chapter
of John’s Gospel – known as the Bread of Life discourse. If
you want to know what we Catholics believe regarding the Eucharist that we
receive at mass – read this chapter again and again. Jesus does not mince words. And
these words are not be taken symbolically.
They are to be believed. They are
to be lived. For
us, the Eucharist is much more than a memorial service using wine and bread. The
Eucharist is a sacrifice and a meal. The
sacrifice comes to us in 2 forms: (1) We
as disciples of Christ give ourselves over to him as a sacrifice (2)
and we continue the sacrifice made by Christ in his flesh and his blood. In
the Eucharistic meal, we accept the gift of holy food in the form or Christ’s body
and blood. And
so we celebrate our joyful solemnity today as believers in the Body and Blood
of Christ.
But
what difference does the Body and Blood of Christ make in our lives? Mother Teresa gives us a good example of the difference the Body and Blood of
Christ can make in our lives. She
was a sister with the Sisters of Loretto, dedicating her life to serving the
Lord and to providing a Catholic education to children. While on a train in 1946, she heard a voice
calling out to her, telling to leave her post as a principle at the Catholic
school, telling her to start a new order that worked with the poor. God
working in her at that moment inspired her to found the Missionaries of Charity
in India. She
continued to hear that voice calling out to her in the weeks that followed that
train ride. The voice always had the
same message for her. She also heard
that voice during mass or while she was on her knees after having received the
Eucharist. After she got the go ahead to start her new order in 1948, she wrote the
following to the Archbishop: “If we have our Lord in the midst of us—with daily
Mass and Holy Communion, I fear nothing for the sisters or myself. He will look after us. But without him I
cannot be—I am helpless.”
We
Catholics can take the mass for granted, can’t we? We can take the Eucharist for granted as well. We
are very lucky here at St James to have 4 different masses to choose from in
order to meet our Sunday mass obligation.
We have mass here almost every day of the week as well, unless I am
called to travel to a different part of our diocese. Yet, with all those opportunities, sometimes it is hard to make mass a priority
in our lives, isn’t it? We have so many
other things in our lives that are wanting our attention. I remember the rector of our seminary telling
us new seminarians: Unless you develop a true love and devotion of the
Eucharist that you celebrate in the mass as a priest, and unless you say the
liturgy of the hours that you are required to pray each day as a priest, that
you will not make it when you hit a crisis moment in your ministry.
When Benedict was pope, he emphasized not only
the deep mystical spirituality we should derive from the Eucharist, but he saw
the Eucharist as have a profound affect on our daily lives. Benedict wrote: “The Lord gives himself to us in bodily form. That is why we
must respond to him bodily. That means above all that the Eucharist must reach
out beyond the limits of the church itself in the manifold forms of service to
men and women and to the world. But it also means that our religion, our
prayer, demands bodily expression. Because the Lord, the Risen One, gives us
himself in the Body, we have to respond in soul and body.” Benedict expands upon what Paul tells the Church at Corinth: that in the cup we
receive and in the bread we break together as a community of faith, we
participate in the Body and Blood of Christ. Indeed
- We receive the Body and Blood of Christ.
We become the Body and Blood of Christ to the world. Our
youth have tried to embody the Body and Blood of Christ in different ways. They just got back from Chicago at Catholic Heart Work Camp. I
know that a lot of them were shocked to see the rough inner city neighborhoods
of a big city – very different from what they are used to here in Tupelo. Yet, God called them out of their comfort zone to be the Body and Blood of
Christ. This week some of them are going to New Albany to bring Vacation Bible School
on the Road to them. The parish there
has not had VBS in probably 4 to 5 years. We
have tried to respond to those around us who are hurting from the tornado. And
we have received so much help ourselves. Being the Body and Blood of Christ means living the Eucharist, and that is not
easy or one-sided task. As
we meditate on the mystery that we receive each time we gather around the
Lord’s table in our Eucharistic celebration, let us try each day to become what
we believe.
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