by Br Julian McDonald cfc
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” John 6: 51-58
For the third week in succession, we are celebrating and reflecting on an integral part of our faith and on our lived lives as Christians. The faith we hold dear would be empty and meaningless without our understanding of God as Father, Son and Spirit, without our appreciation of the role of the Holy Spirit in motivating the first disciples and all of us who have succeeded them in bringing to our world the love and graciousness of God made visible in the life of Jesus, and without the Eucharist which nourishes and sustains us in our efforts to live in communion with Jesus Christ as his followers and disciples. In order to adequately celebrate and reflect on these essential dimensions of our faith lives, we need to bring together our best understanding and appreciation of theology, scripture, liturgy and ritual.
This coming weekend, our Church invites us to focus our attention on the meaning and place of Eucharist in our lives. In relatively recent times, we have seen efforts to revive devotional practices such as Benediction, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and Eucharistic Processions as demonstrations of faith. These are all worthy opportunities and practices for prayer, reflection and witness. There might be further benefit if we invested similar effort into educating one another in the meaning of Eucharist and its relevance to our day-to-day lives.
I suggest that there is no better place to start than with the readings of this Sunday’s liturgy for the celebration of The Body and Blood of Christ, together with John’s teaching about Eucharist in chapter 13 of his Gospel. For John, Eucharist is all about communion and the making of community. Accordingly, he used the Jewish ritual of welcome and hospitality on which to build his understanding of Eucharist. The other Gospel writers relied on the symbols of bread and wine, the central ingredients of the final meal Jesus celebrated with his disciples. John took the symbols of towel and dish of water used in Jewish culture by the master of a household who witnessed hospitality to guests by washing and drying their feet. Foot-washing was the ultimate expression of hospitality. To be in communion with another was to extend the welcome of foot-washing. For Jesus. Eucharist was about inviting others into communion with him, to being united with him in intention, purpose and commitment to service which epitomised his whole life – a life of complete service.
In addition, it is important to remember that hospitality is foundational to building any and every kind of community. In ancient cultures it was expressed by offering to guests the courtesy of hand-washing or foot-washing. These, along with invitations to both friends and strangers to share in a meal were expected expressions of welcome. What’s more, in Jewish culture, the sharing of bread and wine with others was a symbol of communing with God. Hospitality, which is first and foremost an attitude of acceptance, reflects our openness to God present in those we welcome. That attitude of openness and acceptance was expressed by Jesus in its fullness in his welcome to everyone he encountered.
In today’s gospel-reading, Jesus refers to himself as “the bread of life…the bread come down from heaven” and proceeds to state to the Jews, who do not or cannot appreciate his symbolism, that the way he has lived and the message he has proclaimed are of God. And that leads him to put to them an ultimatum: “Let me solemnly assure you: if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6: 53). With the startling imagery of flesh and blood, Jesus was stating unequivocally that he, along with all he proclaimed and modelled, was the only authentic way to God. Embracing him and his message is sustenance and nourishment for life in its fullness.
The startling, poetic and symbolic language that opens today’s gospel-reading is Jesus’ bold statement: “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.” I suggest that it has to be read in the context of today’s first reading from Deuteronomy in which there is an account of how God saved the Jewish people from starvation when they were wandering in the wilderness by sending them “manna from heaven”. By describing himself as “living bread from heaven”, Jesus was stating that he was the new manna, God’s ultimate gift of nourishment sent by God for the life of the world. He followed that with the even more graphic symbolism of his statement that he was about to give his flesh and blood, his life for the world into which he had been born. Jesus’ reference to himself as “the living bread” had nothing at all to do with cannibalism as some in his audience tried to suggest. Rather, he was declaring that he was alive with the life of God, and he was offering that life to the world. Being in communion with him was the way to communion with God. That turned out to be a bridge too far for many in his audience.
This idea of our being invited by Jesus to be in communion with him opens the way for a brief look at today’s second reading from Corinthians in which Paul reminds the Christians of Corinth that eating and drinking with one another in the name of Christ implies being at one with him in his life of service and self-giving, in his dying and in his resurrection. Taken together, today’s three readings underline the message that communion with Jesus is more than an opportunity for an intimate conversation with him following our receiving him sacramentally during our celebration of Eucharist. To celebrate Eucharist is to open ourselves to hear the invitation of the risen Christ to step beyond our personal preferences, aspirations and desires and to embrace Jesus’ offer to be in communion with him. That will call for levels of trust that might take us well beyond our comfort zones. Consolation for us is surely not just the reassurance that the Risen Christ promises us his accompanying presence but a share in his communion with the God who gave him life.
We cannot conclude this reflection without a final reference to Paul’s further exhortation to the Christians of Corinth to whom he later wrote: “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11: 16). Paul was underlining the fact that participating in Eucharist requires communion with Christ in his self-offering and in putting our own flesh and blood at the service of our local community and our wider world in imitation of Christ.
In conclusion let’s not forget that, when we speak of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, we are not stating that Jesus Christ is physically present, body and blood on the altar. His presence is a sacramental one that extends to us an invitation to engage personally with the risen Christ and with all he offers and represents. It is a real engagement with the person of Jesus Christ.
