the bread of life...Jesus!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Jesus said to the Jewish crowds, 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. The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Jesus said to them, Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me, and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unless you're unlike the ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not of this reading that will come, but of the feast itself, the feast of the body and blood of Christ. I don't know the exact year, but at 13 something, a Bohemian priest was making a pilgrimage to Rome, and he stopped in Orvieto, and the little town that is right outside Orvieto to celebrate Mass. However, part of the reason he was making this pilgrimage was to increase his faith. Now we all gather here because we have faith. But I think we all can understand at times the temptation to not believe. Does God really take time to listen to me? Does he really take time to hear my prayers? You know, and that's a doubt, and that's a lack of faith. So as he was celebrating Mass, he's saying that to himself, doubting what he's doing. And as he holds up the Eucharist, the host, which is the Blessed Sacrament, it starts to bleed. He stops, continues with the cup, and he's completely overtaken with fear. The deacon at the Mass takes the cloth that's on the altar, it's called a corporal, and it had blood on it. And he wraps it up with the host, and just so happens that the Pope is visiting the next town, and he brings this to him in Orvieto. The Pope looks at it and with a lot of consultation realizes what happened, that God, Jesus Christ, in order to respond to this man's lack of faith, caused the bread of the Eucharist to bleed, proving that the Eucharist, the bread, is indeed the body of Christ. That started an annual celebration that most recently in the last few days, few years, was moved to the end of the Easter cycle as a way of concluding the whole Easter cycle and beginning ordinary time. So today we celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. And of course, we can't celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ without referring to our scriptural history. When Jesus is talking in today's Gospel of John, he's talking to the Jews, and he says something that's really off the wall. Unless you eat my flesh, you're not going to go to heaven. You're not going to be part of me. I mean, the Jews found that to be a problem. And many people through the centuries have found that to be a problem. Eat his flesh? That's gross. And yet, the night before he died, Jesus confirmed that promise by taking the bread of the Last Supper and telling his disciples, This is the new covenant. This is my body given and broken for you. Test it out, they ate it. And the cup, this is my blood. The same phrase that we say every week we gather at Mass. The same phrase that is reiterated in the scriptures. The same phrase that he probably said at the night of the Easter event when he appeared to the disciples in Emmaus. His word. So Paul comes on the scene, and Paul's like you and me, he's a person who believes in God. In the early days of his ministry, he was a Jew, don't forget. He had doubt too. Who's this guy that they're dying for? And one day this guy, Jesus Christ, appears to him and says to him, Why are you persecuting me? Paul says, Who are you? He says, I am Jesus Christ, whom you are persecuting. Now, this starts something very strange, very strange and unique in the history of our faith. Jesus revealing himself in his people, us, as the body of Christ. Jesus also reveals himself in the Eucharist as his body and blood. So Paul develops his theology, and we hear some of it tonight in the scriptures of Paul from Corinthians, that Jesus is giving us the bread of life in the Eucharist, but he's also giving it to us as a way of us looking around and realizing that each one of us is a member of the body of Christ. Like he wasn't confusing enough, giving us his bread to chew on, and that's the word that he used with John's gospel when he spoke to the Jews. You've got to chew on this. Translation is gnaw, like we chew on a bone. I love ossubuko, so at the end I pull out the inside and gnaw on it. Eat it, enjoy it. But Jesus is not talking about osubuko. Jesus is talking about the bread that he gives us is meant to be eaten. And as we eat it, we are united with him. So that bread that he gives us as a nourishment is also a symbol of his body as a member of the church. So we look around later on when we receive the Eucharist, notice people coming and going. Every one of us is a member of the body of Christ. Paul gives us that in his theology of the body and gives us another understanding into the depth of the message. This is the body of God coming to us in bread and wine. In the book of Deuteronomy, we have one of the first references to taking what the Lord says, remembering the manna in the desert, you remember that story. People were grumbling, we have no food. You brought us out here, Moses. We're in the middle of the desert, we have nothing to eat. Moses complains to God. God sends them mana. Mana is the word means what is it? He sends them a kind of flaky dough from the trees, from the tamar's trees, that they are able to pick up and put into patties and eat like bread. So they were saved from starvation by the what is it, by the manna in the desert. The book of Deuteronomy reminds us, all of scripture is a remembrance. Reminds us, remember when you were in the desert? Now he's the author is talking to his ancestors, but their ancestors, the Jews, when you were hungry and God gave you something to eat in the desert, that manna, and the story is they saved pieces of it. I'll tell you why in a second. They saved pieces of it, even though they made their journey in safety eventually. And the author of Deuteronomy is reminding all of us, God feeds us with food that is unknown. And when he keeps his word, we're reminded that it is his word not to just toss it aside, because every word that comes from the mouth of God is alive, is powerful, is an insight. So the author of Deuteronomy is reminding us of the past, the manna, preparing us for the future, and the author of, as you know, Deuteronomy never knew Jesus, but Jesus is using words for us, words to teach us. And at the Last Supper, he gives us those words when he says, This is my body, this is my blood. And to reiterate that, the early church, after Deuteronomy, that's the Old Testament, under Paul, Paul starts his letter to the Corinthians by reminding us of God's words. Remember, the cup of blessing is the blood of Christ. The bread is his body. And because he uses the metaphor of a loaf of bread, because the loaf is one, but broken up into many pieces, so are we one in many pieces. Every member of us, every member of the body of Christ is a member of the loaf, the body of Christ, the Eucharist. So we have the Eucharist as a gift from the Father, of the presence of Jesus. We have the gift of the Eucharist as a reminder of our need to respect each other and regard each other as members of the body of Christ. And because it is Jesus and he is God, we put time aside to adore Him, hence the feast of the Corpus Christi, the body and blood of Christ. When the Eucharist was placed into the monstrance for the first time in the Middle Ages, 1300s, it was a way of showing off that bread to the public. The word of the object that holds it is two. One is ostentorium and two monstrance. And what both mean is to show off, to show out, to demonstrate. The end of Mass, we will take the Eucharist and place it in the ostentorium, the monstrance, and put it on the altar for a few moments of our adoration. We come to church and we forget sometimes that this is God in the presence of his son Jesus as bread and wine. We reserve it in the tabernacle. Very much like the book of Deuteronomy said that the people of God preserved a piece of the tablets of the Ten Commandments, as well as a piece of manna in the tabernacle, the ark, as a reminder of God's living presence among them. We have the presence of Christ among us every day. Sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we forget how to treat one another. Sometimes we forget how to respect each other. And Paul reminds us that we're one. The respect and love we give to Christ, we owe to one another because every one of us is a member of his body. So, as a reminder for our faith on this, the feast of Corpus Christi, after communion, we will enthrone the Blessed Sacrament just for a few moments of your private prayer and adoration before we leave. As a reminder to ourselves that we become tabernacles. We take the body of Christ within us when we leave here. Does not give you pause as to how we should treat ourselves and treat one another, who are living tabernacles, carrying the body and blood of Christ and the Eucharist out into the world. And we all know how much the world needs the presence, the real presence of Christ. So we gather tonight to share the food that will be eaten. We gather to share the food that reminds us that we are brothers and sisters, and we gather to adore Him, Jesus Christ, the real presence.