Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

 

My dear parishioners,

God Is Good!!! All the Time!!! And All the Time!!! God Is Good!!!

The opening lines of today’s Gospel are some of the most hotly debated words in the entire Gospel of John.

Obviously they were meant to be eucharistic. The debate is over whether they were inserted into the Gospel later on, or whether they are part of John’s original text. We follow the majority of Catholic exegetes who understand this whole passage to be original with the Evangelist who intended them to be understood eucharistically.

I am the living bread. This “I am” assertion comes at the end of a long discourse on the bread of life. It offers a deeper understanding of what happened when Jesus miraculously fed 5,000 people with a few barley loaves and two fish. If read carefully, one can see that what is said here in John 6:51-58 flows from what has been previously said by Jesus in this discourse. It is not a separate section inserted out of context. The one who fed the Israelites with manna in the desert (Ex 16) is the same one who just fed the 5,000 with barley loaves and fish. But now he equates himself with the bread, and whoever eats this bread will live forever. Just as the Word became flesh, so also this flesh is for the life of the world.

A misunderstanding. The Judeans cannot grasp how Jesus can give his flesh for them to eat. This makes no sense to them at all. Jesus does not appeal to logic. Instead, he pushes the conversation even deeper. Having life eternal depends on one eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood. Clearly this is Johannine Eucharistic theology based on the foundation of Eucharist as divine food, the body and blood of Christ, coming from God.

Eucharist as divine relationship. Whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood actually enters into a divine relationship with Jesus. There is shared divine mutuality here expressed by the term remain. Jesus is himself the bread come down from heaven. But, unlike the manna which God provided for the Israelites, Jesus is the living bread, and whoever eats of this bread will never die. Throughout this whole discourse, Eucharist is understood as God’s way of abundantly filling the people with divine nourishment, which will lead them into eternal life.

 

Excerpts from “Sunday Homily Helps”, is used by permission of Franciscan Media. www.FranciscanMedia.org. All rights reserved

 

Sincerely in Christ,

Fr. Aloysius