“Then taking the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to heaven, Jesus said the blessing over them, broke them and kept giving them to his disciples to set before the crowd.” Luke 9: 11-17
Our Second Reading today from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians complements the gospel-reading from Luke. Paul vehemently reprimands his community in Corinth for the fact that their way of celebrating the Eucharist is not a genuine expression of discipleship, while the gospel-reading is an object lesson on discipleship, pointing out how discipleship has to be a lived expression of the true meaning of Eucharist.
The connection of the First Reading from Genesis to the above two readings seems a little forced in that, while Melchizedek was actually King of Salem (another name for Jerusalem), he did not believe in the God of the Hebrew people. The story in Genesis tells how he gave bread and wine to Abraham. However, that gift was an expression of kindness and hospitality, with no real connection to Eucharist.
Chapter 9 of Luke’s Gospel, from which today’s gospel-reading is taken, begins with a description of Jesus inviting the ‘apostles’ to take a share in his teaching and healing. He readied them to take on the task by investing them with the power they needed. On their return, he took them aside for “rest and meditation” (Luke 9:10). People guessed where they had gone and gathered around. Luke tells us that Jesus made them welcome and “talked to them about the kingdom of God”. In other words, he gave priority to offering them nourishment for their spirits. It was his disciples who interrupted him, drawing his attention to the lateness of the day and asking how they might get sustenance for their bodies. Their question prompted Jesus to suggest that they themselves could give their attention to feeding the crowd. He then tutored them in crowd management. In effect, he said “Divide them into small groups and recognise that it is your responsibility to attend to their needs.” In the meantime, he proceeded to bless, break into pieces and hold out to them the small amount of food they were able to scrape together. However, he invited them to keep returning to him to pick up whatever their particular group needed.
Therein was the object lesson for them, as it is for us today. In our ministering to others, it is essential that we keep relying on Jesus. Jesus was also clearly making the point that ministering to others is likely to be more effective when it is done through team-work for small groups rather than for a large crowd.
While today’s brief reading from Corinthians offers us the New Testament’s very first account of Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist, it is part of a very savage reprimand directed by Paul at the Corinth community for the scandalous manner in which they had been celebrating the Eucharistic meal. He had just finished drawing their attention to the serious divisions in their community, to the fact that the poor members were given grudging acceptance at the Eucharistic table and that some involved in the celebration had lapsed into drunkenness. With that as preamble, Paul launched into explaining what a truly Christian community ought be giving their attention to when they gathered to celebrate Eucharist Paul recalled for them what Jesus did and said in the presence of his disciples at his final meal with them the night before he died:: “The Lord Jesus took some bread, and thanked God for it and broke it, and he said: ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.’ In the same way he took the cup after supper, and said: ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me’” (Luke 11: 24-26)These words of Jesus are the theology of the Eucharist in a nutshell. To dig into that theology, I suggest it is important to explore the meaning of Jesus’ expression “do this as a memorial of me”
In order to grasp the meaning and significance of these words, we cannot ignore the fact that Jesus was an adult, intelligent, Jewish man and, as such was fully versed and embedded in Semitic culture. In Jewish, Semitic culture, the act of remembering was something more than a cerebral activity. It was a powerfully spiritual and emotional experience. It not only recalled the past, but evoked the emotions attached to the event/experience being remembered. That opened the way for past, not only to touch the present, but to give the present purpose and meaning and, in addition, direction for the future. We hold, in faith, that at the last meal Jesus had with his disciples, he instituted the Eucharist. So, whenever we celebrate Eucharist now, whenever we remember him in the breaking of bread, we receive him in his action of giving himself and commit ourselves to similar self-giving in his memory.
On taking bread, giving thanks, breaking it and giving it to his disciples, Jesus said: ““This is my body which will be given for you; do this as a memorial of me.’ He did the same with the cup after supper, and said: ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood which will be poured out for you.’ “ (Luke 22: 19-20)
It is no wonder that Salesian, Fr Frank Moloney SDB entitled his book on Eucharist: A Body Broken for a Broken People (Francis J. Moloney, Collins Dove, Blackburn VIC. 1990). Are we prepared to be bread broken for a broken people?
The key message in today’s Second Reading is that Paul was saying to the Christians of Corinth that whenever they participated in the Eucharistic meal, whenever they broke and ate the bread and drank the cup of the Eucharist, they were pledging themselves to be bread broken and wine poured out for others. And that’s the message for us too. When we celebrate Eucharist, we don’t sit, stand and kneel in the pews as observers. We are participants, called to recommit ourselves to proclaiming the death of the Lord, to spending our lives for others in service that mirrors the service and self-giving of Jesus.
When St Augustine urged his priests to say to the people in their communities as they filed up to the altar to receive Communion: “Behold who you are, become the One you receive! “, it was evident that he knew what Jesus meant when he said: “Do this as a memorial of me.” We have to learn to live what Jesus meant.