June 22^nd 2014. FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI

Gospel: John 6:51-58

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL: John 6:51-58

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 quarrelled 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,

and 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. 

Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,

whoever eats this bread will live forever."

 The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . .  In the first reading, Moses reminds the people how God looked after them during the forty years in the desert. When we know that we are in a desert, we realize that we have nothing to rely on but God. We no longer live on bread alone but on the life-giving word that comes from the mouth of God. Our existence is a desert, but we don’t always realize it. What do we try to base our lives upon? How many silly and frivolous things we are fixated with! Jesus comes to us in the form of bread to show us that he is as essential to us as physical food is for our existence. The feast of Corpus Christi is a wonderful opportunity for us to look at our situations and ask ourselves “What is really essential for me to live an authentic life?” We must reflect on our lives and recognize that much of what we base our identities upon is non-essential. Those things are an empty desert that fail to nourish us in a permanent way. Jesus is our true bread that gives us life of a genuine nature. When we look to the Eucharist, we see the same loving, provident God that looked after the people of Israel during those forty years. He looks after us too in the desert of our existence, this God who becomes bread for his people and nourishes us to eternal life.

Just as the people of Israel depended on the providence of God during the forty years in the desert, so too we must learn to trust in the providence of God in the desert of our lives

To celebrate the gift of the body and blood of Christ, the first reading this Sunday is the important passage from Deuteronomy 8. Here we learn that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Moses is recounting all of the events that took place during the glorious exodus of the people of Israel from the land of Egypt. At this point there are close to the Promised Land, and Moses is about to hand the reins over to Joshua. Before entering the Promised Land, Moses wants the people to reflect on what they have experienced during these forty years in the desert. Remembering is a very important part of our faith! The words, “Do this in memory of me”, are central to the Eucharist. Remembering is our way of taking possession of history. Sometimes our memories can play terrible tricks on us because it is an affective faculty. It can be preoccupied with events that are negative or obscure, whilst burying things that are much more important and helpful. Moses must work on the memories of the people so that they will recall history from the right perspective. They must never forget that the forty years in the desert were an experience of dependence on the Lord who never fails to provide. As Moses reminds them, this great desert was a frightening place filled with poisonous snakes and scorpions. But they survived with manna from heaven and water from the rock.

What is my life based on? Silly things? Or the providence of God?

What gives us life? What do we live for? Are we aware of those many times when our lives were balanced on nothing more than a knife edge? Quite often we forget the precariousness of our existence and we become fixated instead with silly issues and frivolous things. When moments of crisis come, these things are simply wiped away from our set of priorities. Even economic difficulties can show us how that certain elements of our lives are vain and without substance. What do we truly live for? What is it that is absolutely necessary? A person that knows the power, mercy and providence of God discovers that what brings life is that which comes from the mouth of God. God’s word is active. He created the heavens and the earth by his word. He said let there be light, and there was light. He said let the waters be separated from dry land, and so it came to pass. I can choose to live for the silly things that I customarily base my life on, or I can choose to live by what the Lord places at my disposal through his providence.

Jesus chooses to be present to us in the form of bread because just as food is necessary for life so too he is necessary for true life.

In the Gospel passage from John for this Sunday we learn that Jesus offers himself to us in the form of bread. God could have chosen many other ways to enter into relation with us. Why did he choose food? Because food and drink are linked to survival. We can survive without many of the things we possess, but we cannot survive without food and drink. Jesus decides to be present in the bread because he wants to show that he is absolutely necessary for us. It is incredible how we Christians think that we can go through life with an occasional prayer, and with ambivalent attitudes towards obedience to the Lord We abandon ourselves to God only if there is no other alternative. Ideally, we think, we should never have to abandon ourselves to God. We ought to be able to manage by ourselves. In the depths of our heart, we do not live by the word that comes from the mouth of God; we live by other things. And this is evident in our behaviour. If we really had true life, then we would not be frantically pursuing the things that we do pursue. Authentic Christians, by contrast, manifest a marked peace and serenity. They are not plagued by fears and anxieties. The fact is that it is possible to live by Christ, to be detached from the world and to have serenity at the most authentic level of our being. Many Christians who claim to live by Christ are full of anxiety! They are always seeking something, always complaining about things as if it were a national sport, always feeling insufficient as if something fundamental were missing. Christ is our true food, our real sustenance. We still need to eat and drink ordinary food too, but we must do so according to Christ. Everything we do must be done in the light of Christ. His love, tenderness and providence must be discerned in everything that we experience.

By making the Eucharist the centre of our lives, we submit to the loving providence of God and begin to partake of eternal life here and now.

When everything is embraced as coming from Christ, we are able to get by with much less that we habitually do. In some monasteries where people live a frugal life by Christ, we find more serenity and happiness than in palaces where there are things in abundance. Many Christians, on the other hand, fail to find satisfaction in ordinary things because they lack this attitude of submission to the providence of God. The Gospel text tells us that whoever eats the bread that Jesus gives us will live forever. This does not mean that we avoid bodily death. It signifies that we begin to partake already of the eternal dimension of things, a dimension that is characterised by attachment and surrender to that which bestows authentic life. The feast of Corpus Christi is an opportunity to contemplate the true manna, a food that nurtures us even in the most frightening and desolate deserts of our lives. The Lord Jesus, in his providence, gives his very self to us in the wonderful sacrament of the Eucharist.