Praised be
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
The Lord could not have given the teaching in clearer terms
than he does in today’s reading. He is not talking in some vague, symbolic
language. He tells us in plain and simple language: “Whoever eats my flesh and
drinks my blood has eternal life. For my flesh is real food and my blood is
real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in
him.” His words are so clear that even his enemies murmured among themselves
because they understood correctly what he was trying to say: “How can this man
give us his flesh to eat?”
The Jews were accustomed to sacred meals which they ate in
the presence of the Lord as a sign of Divine favor. But what Jesus is saying is
new for them. He goes beyond eating in the presence of God. Jesus gives his flesh
to eat and his blood to drink. He himself is the meal. “In the Eucharistic
meal, man feeds on God.” (John Paul II, General Audience on June 8, 1983.) The
change of bread into his flesh and wine into his blood is not merely a change
of perception, that is, a change in the way we look at what is on the altar.
The change is ontological, that is, whether we perceive it or not, the bread,
by the power of the word of Christ and by the Holy Spirit, becomes the flesh of
Christ. In like manner, the wine, by the same power of Christ’s word and by the
Holy Spirit, becomes the blood of Christ. It is a real, objective change –
regardless of the perception of the onlookers. It is Christ truly present, body
and blood, soul and divinity.
Christ is truly present so that the redemptive sacrifice can
be made present. Bread and wine becomes his body and blood so that his
sacrifice may be sacramentally renewed through the offering made by the
ordained priest. And once his sacrifice is made present, the Lord makes
accessible to us the fruit of his offering: eternal life. Eternal life is made
accessible to us through this sacrificial meal. Eating his body and drinking
his blood must not be understood in a metaphorical way for what we eat is truly
his body and what we drink is truly his blood. As material food is necessary
for the preservation and development of bodily life, so the Eucharist is
necessary for the development of the Divine life in us. “Just as the Father who
has life sent me and I have life because of the Father, so the man who feeds on
me will have life because of me.” “The Father is the first source of life; this
life he has given to the Son, who in turn communicates it to mankind. He who
feeds on Christ in the Eucharist does not have to wait until the hereafter to
receive eternal life; he already possesses it on earth, and in it he possesses
the guarantee of the resurrection of the body at the end of the world: ‘He who
feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up
on the last day.” (Ibid.) Truly, this is the food that does not perish. This is
the food that “endures unto everlasting life.” “Wisdom has…dressed her meat and
mixed her wine, yes, she has spread her table…and calls out from the heights
out over the city: ‘Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed!
Forsake foolishness that you may live, advance in the way of understanding.’”
Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for
us who have recourse to thee.
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