The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ resonate with our sense of the Love of God that nourishes all humanity.
The reading from the Book of Deuteronomy emphasizes the role of God to humble us, testing us to know what is in our heart.
* [8:3] Not by bread alone: Deuteronomic theology puts the good things promised faithful Israel into the context of the Lord’s gratuitous love. As in 6:10–12, the goods of life must be seen as gift. Israel is to seek what really matters; all else will be added (cf. Mt 6:33).1
Psalm 147 exhorts the holy city to recognize it has been re-created and made the place of disclosure for God’s word.
* [Psalm 147] The hymn is divided into three sections by the calls to praise in Ps 147:1, 7, 12. The first section praises the powerful creator who restores exiled Judah (Ps 147:1–6); the second section, the creator who provides food to animals and human beings; the third and climactic section exhorts the holy city to recognize it has been re-created and made the place of disclosure for God’s word, a word as life-giving as water.2
In the reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul teaches we who are many are one body.
* [10:14–22] The warning against idolatry from 1 Cor 10:7 is now repeated (1 Cor 10:14) and explained in terms of the effect of sacrifices: all sacrifices, Christian (1 Cor 10:16–17), Jewish (1 Cor 10:18), or pagan (1 Cor 10:20), establish communion. But communion with Christ is exclusive, incompatible with any other such communion (1 Cor 10:21). Compare the line of reasoning at 1 Cor 6:15.3
In the Gospel from John, Jesus declares “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
* [6:54–58] Eats: the verb used in these verses is not the classical Greek verb used of human eating, but that of animal eating: “munch,” “gnaw.” This may be part of John’s emphasis on the reality of the flesh and blood of Jesus (cf. Jn 6:55), but the same verb eventually became the ordinary verb in Greek meaning “eat.”4
Julie Kalkowski observes that just as parts of her recently deceased mother-in-law live on in her daughters, may the parts of Jesus that are needed most now live on in us so that we too, can feed our struggling world.
That comfort led me back to today’s readings on this solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. By gifting us with an ongoing reminder of himself in the Eucharist, Jesus physically lets us know he is still with us. He did and will continue to feed us. Jesus knew our human nature so well. How else could we human beings carry on Jesus’ teachings without a lasting tangible presence? The Eucharist can provide us the resolve and ability to fulfill God’s greatest commandment to love one another.5
Don Schwager quotes “Let faith confirm you,” by Cyril of Jerusalem, 315-386 A.D.
"Failing to understand his words spiritually, [the Jews] were offended and drew back, thinking that the Savior was urging them to cannibalism. Then again in the old covenant there was the showbread. But that, since it belonged to the old covenant, has come to an end. In the new covenant there are the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, which sanctify body and soul. For as bread corresponds to the body, so the Word is appropriate to the soul. So do not think of them as mere bread and wine. In accordance with the Lord's declaration, they are body and blood. And if our senses suggests otherwise, let faith confirm you. Do not judge the issue on the basis of taste, but on the basis of faith be assured beyond all doubt that you have been allowed to receive the body and blood of Christ. (excerpt from MYSTAGOGICAL LECTURES 4.4–6)6
The Word Among Us Meditation on John 6:51-58 shares that in his book “He Leadeth Me,” Fr. Walter Ciszek described the risks he took each day to offer Mass at the Siberian labor camp where he was imprisoned: “I would go to any length, suffer any inconvenience, run any risk to make the bread of life available to these men.” The men worked long hours in frigid temperatures. Yet at noon, Ciszek would celebrate Mass wherever he could say it undetected, whether in a storage shack or huddled in a building foundation.
Ciszek wrote that he was “occasionally overcome with emotion . . . as I thought of how [God] had found a way to follow and to feed these lost and straying sheep in this most desolate land.” Today, may we too be filled with gratitude as we reflect on the generosity of a God who offers his life—and his very self—to us in the Eucharist.
“Jesus, thank you for the life you give me in your Body and Blood.”7
Friar Jude Winkler explains the mysterious manna God provided the Israelites in the desert. He emphasizes that both the vertical and horizontal aspects of our faith are important as communion and community. Friar Jude reminds us of the realized eschatology in Matthew’s Gospel and the future eschatology promise of more to come in Jesus “Bread of Life Discourse”.
Michael Barnes SJ, lecturer in the Theology of Religions at Heythrop College, University of London, asks; “How can our experience of the Eucharist, during the liturgy and in our everyday lives, influence our interactions with people of other faiths?”
In celebrating the Eucharist with people who have been across the threshold of the local mosque or temple I have always tried to stress the importance of taking that experience seriously – in all its beauty and threatening strangeness. That means returning to the sources of faith and what we know to be true, for that is where we learn to discern the presence of the living God. In celebrating the Eucharist we recognise that when Christ offers himself for the world he offers himself for all. At the same time, the inter-faith experience of crossing into the world of the other shows that we do not know everything about the ways of God. Like the disciples on the way to Emmaus we may be enlightened by those unsuspected moments when the Lord speaks in the darkness. And like them we may learn that the darkness is sometimes a good place to be, a place which mirrors the brokenness of Christ who also faced the otherness of death.8
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, shares that the freedom Jesus promises involves letting go of our small self, our cultural biases, and even our fear of loss and death. Freedom is letting go of wanting more and better things; it is letting go of our need to control and manipulate God and others. It is even letting go of our need to know and our need to be right—which we only discover with maturity. We become ever more free as we let go of our three primary motivations: our need for power and control, our need for safety and security, and our need for affection and esteem. [2]
Most of us didn’t grow up thinking of religion as a path of freedom. Instead, we were taught a set of prescriptions, dos and don’ts, musts, oughts, and shoulds—against which we pushed back, like children always do. When we’re young, we think rebellion is the only path to freedom! Some amount of structure is important, but it is first-level growth. Far too much religion stays right there, “milk instead of meat,” as Paul puts it (1 Corinthians 3:2). [3]
Authentic spirituality, as opposed to mere rebellion, is about finding true freedom. It offers us freedom from our smaller selves as a reference point for everything or anything. This is the necessary Copernican Revolution wherein we change reference points. We discover that we are not the center of the universe any more than the Earth is. We no longer feel the need to place our own thoughts and feelings in the center of every conversation or difficulty.9
As we meditate on Life received in the Eucharist, we are called to act to share Life with the communities in our environment.
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