“I myself am the living bread come down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, she/he shall live forever.” John 6, 51-58
The three readings selected for our Eucharistic Liturgy complement one another very nicely. The first is from the Book of Deuteronomy, written several centuries after Moses had led the Israelite People out of slavery in Egypt but designed by its author to remind the people of his time that the Exodus experience of their ancestors was also an integral part of their religious faith and life. The Exodus event for Jewish people is foundational to their religion, life and culture. People of every race and culture can repeat stories of events that have similar significance to their lives and cultures. The writer of Deuteronomy set out to remind the people of his era that Moses had directed the people he had led out of slavery to remember and make sure not to forget that, when they thought they had been tricked by God to flee from Egypt and its Pharaoh only to die of starvation in the desert, God had stayed faithful to them by guiding them by day and night and miraculously providing them with food from the sky and water from a rock. Every one of us who has been through a Catholic Elementary School knows how God provided Moses and his people with manna from heaven. What we were not told was that manna was a Hebrew word of complaint invented by the very first people to discover and collect it. It literally meant “What’s this stuff?” However, in time, the Hebrew people Moses was leading came to place their faith in the God who had been guiding and caring for them throughout their forty years of ordeal in the desert. The writer of Deuteronomy was reminding his audience that, like their ancestors, they, too, were being guided and nourished by God.
Today’s gospel-reading from John gives us an account, in highly figurative and symbolic language typical of John, of how Jesus was offering his audience His very self, the bread of eternal life and nourishment that would lead them into union with God. Yet, they were unable to see beyond their craving for a free supply of the kind of bread they were accustomed to eating every day. Jesus was really inviting those in front of him to open themselves to receive him, the gift his Father was offering the world and, by doing so, to become, themselves, bread for the life of that world. In effect, Jesus was offering them an invitation to participate in a new Exodus, a journey through the kind of suffering that would eventually be visited on him.
This offer from Jesus is challenging for us, too. For we, too, have to come to learn that, to participate meaningfully in the Eucharist we celebrate when we gather each Sunday around the table of the altar, we are being invited to become bread broken and wine poured out for the nourishment of our world.
In today’s second reading from Corinthians, we hear how Paul told the members of the neophyte Christian community of Corinth how their participating in the celebration of Eucharist was not only a time to reflect on Jesus’ offer of himself as living bread for a needy world but a committing of themselves to imitate him in self-giving. It is a communion with him in being bread broken and given for others. That is as challenging for us as it was for the Christians of Corinth. The challenge for us and for the Christians of Corinth parallels the challenge experienced by the people who heard the words of Jesus recorded by John in today’s gospel-reading.
Let’s now take some time for a closer reflection on the significance for us of today’s celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ. Many of us will recall the days when we were urged to participate on the afternoon of the Feast of Corpus Christi in a Diocesan Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, which culminated in Benediction or Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. We were rarely told that the procession in which we participated was also a symbol of the Exodus journey of the Hebrew people out of slavery from Egypt. Today’s gospel-reading is a central contribution to our understanding of both today’s celebration and the Eucharist itself. The reading, from John’s “Bread of Life Discourse” in chapter 6 of his Gospel opens with a direct, unqualified statement from Jesus to the crowd around him: “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6: 51) To ensure that his audience did not misunderstand him, Jesus proceeded to add: “My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He/she who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him/her…anyone who eats this bread will live for ever.” (John 6: 55-58)
Late in the Second Century, St Irenaeus, a Greek Bishop who had evangelised much of the southern part of France and who was noted for his assertion: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”, underlined the truth that the Eucharist is the seed of eternal life that will come to fruition on the last day, when he said: “Our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist are no longer corruptible, having the hope of resurrection to eternal life” (Irenaeus in Against Heresies, IV.18.5). Our participation in the Eucharist is not about receiving some magical formula but rather being nourished and fortified to live as followers of Jesus, living our lives in imitation of the way in which he lived. Our participation in the Eucharist becomes an invitation to become bread for our world and nourishment for those in need. As the late Frank Moloney SDB put it in the title of his classic on the topic of Eucharist: A Body Broken for a Broken People (Darton, Longman and Todd, UK 2015).
In other words, for us to participate authentically in the Eucharist calls from us a commitment to be other Christs, spending our lives in the loving service, care and nourishment of others. The challenge of the Eucharist is not merely about spending time in adoration and private prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, though that is a good practice. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to let ourselves be broken and poured out for others. By doing so, we participate in the Paschal mystery, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.