Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ - Corpus Christi - June 27, 2011: "I Am the Bread of Life"

Click Here for the Mass Readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ - June 27, 2011 (Year A):

"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."  (Jn 6:54-55)

Most of us in the English-speaking world will celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi this Sunday.  The readings for this feast highlight the meaning and significance of Jesus' gift of His "flesh" and "blood" to His disciples, and are intended to nourish our personal faith in His presence in the Eucharist.  Much can be said about all three readings, as they offer ample material for reflection, but I will limit myself to a few particularly crucial points.

In the first reading Moses recalls Israel's forty year journey through the desert, but he also interprets the meaning of that experience for the Israelite people.  Moses reminded them that God allowed them to experience hunger and thirst in order to test their faith in His words.  He then fed them in the desert with manna to show them that one does not live by bread alone, "but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord."  The Lord taught them that He can fulfill His promises even in apparently hopeless or impossible situations, and that their hope should be in Him.  We too can learn from Israel's desert experience.  We see that man cannot truly live without God.  We find true life when we have faith in His promises and live by them, above all His promise to give us "the food that endures to eternal life" (Jn 6:27) - which is a reference to the Eucharist.

In the second reading St. Paul draws a direct connection between "the cup of blessing" and the "blood of Christ", and also "the bread that we break" and the "body of Christ".  By receiving "the cup" and "the bread" we are brought into communion with Jesus Christ, and in Him we enter into communion with every disciple who partakes of the same Eucharist.  If we did not truly receive the risen and glorified Christ in the Eucharist then such a "communion" would only be symbolic and not real.  In contrast to a symbolic notion of the Eucharist, Pope Benedict recently highlighted the real "dynamics" of Eucharistic communion.  He recounted the words Jesus spoke to St. Augustine in a vision: "You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me." (Confessions, VII, 10, 18) The Holy Father then commented that "the Eucharist is a different bread: We do not assimilate it, but it assimilates us to itself, so that we become conformed to Jesus Christ and members of his body, one with him."

Finally, in the Gospel Jesus tells everyone around Him that He is "the living bread that came down from heaven" and that "whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."  Just as God required faith from the ancient Israelites even when it seemed apparently impossible for Him to fulfill His promises, so now Jesus requires faith from His disciples as He promises something apparently even more impossible to fulfill.  Some argue that Jesus was speaking symbolically here, and therefore the Eucharist is only a symbol of His flesh.  And yet none of His listeners understood His words to be symbolic.  It was precisely because they understood Him properly that "many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him." (Jn 6:66)  And Jesus never stopped them; He knew they had understood Him correctly.  What is more, after watching people walk away He turned to the Apostles and asked them, "do you also want to leave?" (Jn 6:67)  The Apostles had no idea how Jesus would fulfill His promise, but they had faith in Him and therefore in His promise.

Jesus' promise to be truly and really present in the Eucharist has been met with disbelief from the very beginning.  Nonetheless, Jesus still asks each of us to believe the promise He made during the Last Supper: "this is my body"; "this is the cup of my blood".  Like St. Peter, may we renew our faith in the Lord's words and promises this Sunday and call out to Him, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."  (Jn 6:68-69)

(Photo of the "I Am the Bread of Life" courtesy of Dcn. Lawrence Lew, O.P.)