Corpus Christi Year A; Deut. 8:2-3,14-16;
1 Cor. 10:16-17; John 6:51-59.
AIM: To help the hearers understand the Eucharist
better and celebrate it more
fruitfully.
Running like a golden thread through
all three readings on today’s feast of the Lord’s Body and Blood is a common
theme: food and eating. Each reading tells us something about the heavenly
bread of the Eucharist, and how we should eat it. Our eating of this food
should be continual, corporate, and contrite.
1. The mysterious food called manna (a Hebrew word thought to mean
“what is it?”) mentioned in our first reading, reminded the people who received
it of their dependence on God. In giving the manna to his people during their
desert wanderings, God commanded them to gather each day only enough for that
day. There was one exception. In order
to observe the Sabbath rest, the people could gather a two-day supply the day
before. Inevitably some of the people disobeyed God’s command by gathering more
than they needed. The excess supply spoiled.
Making it impossible to hoard the manna was God’s way of teaching them
that they could not live from their own resources. They remained always
dependent on the Lord’s bounty.
A similar principle applies to the heavenly
food of the Eucharist. Like God’s people under Moses, we must receive this food
continually. The Catechism says: “The
Church strongly encourages the faithful to receive the holy Eucharist on
Sundays and feast days, or more often still, even daily” [No. 1389]. Why? Is
God’s gift to us limited? Of course not. When God gives, he gives not only
abundantly, but super-abundantly. Jesus demonstrated this repeatedly. The
quantity of water he changed into wine at the wedding feast at Cana would have kept the party going for a week. When
Jesus fed the vast crowd in the wilderness, he didn’t give them just a snack.
They all ate to the full, and there was food left over.
What is limited is not God’s gift, but
our capacity to receive. It is
something like fetching water in a cup from an ever-flowing spring. Though the
water flows continually, the amount we can take away is limited by the size of
the cup. Our need to come continually to receive the Lord’s Body and Blood
reminds us of our dependence on God. We live not from our own resources, but
from God’s gift.
2. Our second reading tells us that our
eating of the food God gives us in the Eucharist is not a private, me-and-God,
affair. It is corporate. “Because the
loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the
one loaf.”
Ordinary food is converted, through
the process of digestion, into substances which we need to build and maintain
bodily strength. It becomes, in a sense, part of us. When we eat the heavenly
food of the Eucharist exactly the opposite happens. We become what we eat.
“What material food produces in our bodily life,” the Catechism says, “Holy
Communion wonderfully achieves in our spiritual life” [No. 1392]. We, who have
been made members of Christ’s body in baptism, become his members afresh in the
Eucharist. The Catechism says: “Communion with the flesh of the risen Christ
... preserves, increases, and renews the life of grace received at Baptism.”
[No. 1392]. Through the Eucharist we become people through whom Jesus continues
today the works of love and compassion which he accomplished during his earthly
life through his physical body. United with him in the Eucharist, we are united
too with one another. That is why, before coming to the Lord’s holy table, we
share with one another the greeting of peace. “Those who receive the
Eucharist,” we read in the Catechism, “are united more closely to Christ.
Through it Christ unites them to all the faithful in one body – the Church”
[No. 1396]. Our continual eating of the food God gives us is corporate.
3. In the gospel Jesus tells us that his
Body and Blood, given to us in the Eucharist, nourish us not only in this life,
but for eternity. “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.”
As with other food, however, our
capacity to benefit from the
nourishment it contains depends on our condition when we eat it. A person who
is gravely ill cannot benefit from a hearty meal. A spiritually sick person does not benefit from receiving Christ’s
Body and Blood in the Eucharist. Essential to spiritual health is the admission
that we are sinners. That is why we say, following the greeting of peace: “Lord
I am not worthy ...” To benefit from the food the Lord gives us in the
Eucharist, therefore, we must come with sorrow for our sins. The technical term
for this sorrow is contrition.
“Before so great a sacrament,” the Catechism tells us, “the faithful can only
echo humbly and with ardent faith the words of the Centurion, ‘Lord, I am not
worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul
will be healed’” [No. 1376].
The capacity of Christ’s Body and
Blood to nourish us is unlimited. Our capacity to receive nourishment, however, is limited by our consciousness of
our need, by our contrition for our sins, and by our longing for the Lord’s
healing and strengthening love.
On today’s feast of the Lord’s Body
and Blood the readings remind us of the conditions imposed by the Lord who
gives us the Eucharist upon our eating of this heavenly food. We must receive this heavenly bread:
— continually, conscious of our permanent
dependance on God;
— corporately, rejoicing in our fellowship
with all who share this sacred meal with us; and —
— contritely, acknowledging our
unworthiness, and seeking not a reward for good conduct, but God’s mercy and
love.
For those who are trying to fulfill
these three conditions Jesus’ words in the gospel reading are fulfilled:
“Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
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