A Reflection on the Feast of the

Body and Blood of Christ

 

By Father Frank Gaeta

Pastor

  Jesus eats and drinks with many people during His ministry.  We realize these meals prepare us for the Eucharist.  They are also a beautiful outreach to the sinners and the misfits telling them that everyone belongs at the Table.

Something else is at issue here:  Jesus is teaching us how beautiful life is.  It is the simple and basic things of life that really mean anything.

Imagine what it means to have a family and friends who will sit down at Table with you and share a meal!  Imagine what it means to love and be loved.  No matter who we are or what we are, the most important thing in our life is that we are loved.

Jesus was just like us in that.  His meals were not things He had to get through.  No.  His meals were celebrations of love and friendship.  Think of those meals He ate with Mary and Joseph and cousins and friends as He grew up.  Think of the meals he ate at the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary.  He was able to relax with them.  How delighted He must have been that Martha ignored His instructions and cooked up a storm whenever He showed up.  Think of Jesus with the publicans, tax collectors, and prostitutes.

What meals they must have been!  Imagine some of the salty language that must have slipped out and Jesus giggling over it to Himself.

The first Eucharist took place at the Last Supper, but I think there were many Eucharists before and after Holy Thursday as Jesus celebrated the sacrament of love and friendship with His friends.

Thank Jesus for the Eucharists of love and friendship you celebrate as you sit down and break bread with those who love you.  How privileged we are to have people who love us so much they want to break the bread of life and love with us.  When we do, Christ is really present.

 

The Hunger of the World

The crowds following Jesus after the great feeding miracle are hungry.  They have been once fed and they hope that Jesus will continue this miraculous ministry for their benefit.  They represent in their hunger the whole human family, hungry for bread but starving for the Bread of Life.

We are all so hungry for the Word of God.  We yearn for love and acceptance.  We are looking for meaning and fulfillment, but we often look for love in the wrong places.  Jesus assures us that He is the Bread that will give us life.

Jesus welcomes us in our hunger and our yearning to come to Him and feast on the banquet of love.  Jesus calls us by name and invites us to take our place at His table and to sup with Him.

As we reflect upon our personal hunger, are we able to name and admit what we are yearning for?  Are we able to give that hunger to Jesus and allow Him to be our Saviour?  When we come to share in the Sacrament, do we come in our poverty realizing that our emptiness and brokenness is that gift that we have to give Him?  Do we realize that it is OK to be hungry?  Or do we think that the Eucharist is for the wealthy and the healthy?

What a moment of Grace it is for us to be able to tell Him that we are so hungry and we need him so much!  What a moment it is when we stop trying to manipulate and impress Him with our holiness and our well being!

            The Eucharist begins truly to be the Body of Christ when I am able to admit my hunger and give it to the Lord.  When I do that the feast begins and I know that I will never be hungry again.

The Eucharist ~ the Food of Sinners

 

            Jesus comes to call sinners.  Much of His ministry was table ministry.  He ate and drank with anyone who would invite Him.  This fellowship with sinners would be a major reason why He would be crucified.

            Eating with sinners was more than just having a meal.  When Jesus ate with sinners he was saying by that action that He loved them and that He wanted to have communion and intimacy with them.  Instead of avoiding them and condemning them, His eating with them is saying: “Come closer to Me ~ you are precious to me.  You are my beloved.  You belong to me and I belong to you.”  It is no wonder that Jesus infuriated the religious folk.  He was rewriting the rules.  He was also preparing for the great meal, the Eucharist.

            Jesus continues to sit down at table with the sinners.  He still eats with them.  He still delights in telling them how much He loves them.  We call that meal the Eucharist or Mass.

            The Eucharist is not a reward for being virtuous.  The Eucharist is the meal of sinners who come to Jesus asking for His love and help.  The Eucharist is the prime sacrament of forgiveness in the Catholic Church.  It is true we have another beautiful sacrament in which we celebrate and experience forgiveness, but the Eucharist is the most ancient, the most powerful and the prime experience of forgiveness that we have.

            When people sat down with Jesus they experienced the power of His love and friendship and their sins were forgiven.  So, too, as we sit down with Him at Table, we are the sinners who are given new life as our sins are forgiven.  All of us ~ modern tax collectors, publicans, prostitutes, misfits, sinners ~ have found a wonderful table companion ~ the Lord God, whose love is so great that His delight is to tell us that we are forgiven.  “Say but the word and my soul shall be healed.”

            Isn’t it sad when the Church tries to decide who is worthy of the Eucharist?  Of course, we know that no one is.  None of us should be sitting there, but there we are at table ~ right next to Him!  We are there because He has invited us.

 

Communion in Death of Christ

 

            When we receive the Eucharist we enter into the mystery of the death of Jesus.  The Eucharist continues to offer the Father the most loving of all prayers ~ the gift of Jesus on the cross for the redemption of all.

            As we share in the Eucharist we are part of the prayer of Jesus.  We die with Him to all that is evil so that we might be reborn to a new life in His Spirit.  Jesus has called us His disciples, to love one another the way He first loved us.  How did He love us?  He gave us everything.  He gave us His life.

            The only true Christian love is that in which we love one another to the point of laying down our lives in love.  That is the kind of love husband and wife are called to have for one another.  It is a love modeled on that of Jesus in which He gives Himself for His beloved.

            When we share in the Eucharist we are saying “yes” to the call that Jesus gives us to love the way He loved ~ totally and without holding anything back.  When we love the Lord and one another like that, then the Eucharist becomes the powerful force for renewal and redemption.  Jesus joins our prayer to His to give all glory and honor to the Father.

            As we become the new creation we die to ourselves and the old and rise to the new life of His resurrection.  Creation then begins again.  Every time we share in the Eucharist we nail to the cross a part of our heart that is not yet redeemed.  As we do that our personal redemption begins.  What do you need to nail to the cross?

 

Christ is Our Life

 

            As we share in the Eucharist we share in the life of Jesus, in His glorious resurrection.  In sharing in the Eucharist we enter into the Paschal mystery of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  We believe that the Eucharist draws us into the gift of Jesus to the Father, His death on the cross.  In that death we are restored to communion with the Father.  We are again made one with Him.

            But as we die with Him we rise with Him to a new life.  The resurrection of Jesus is our new life as we receive the Eucharist.  In the Eucharist the risen Saviour fills us with His life, power and love.  We become part of the new creation begun in us in Holy Baptism and renewed and deepened in the Eucharist.

            As we enter the new life in the Eucharist we join Jesus in conquering our sin and brokenness.  We sit down with the risen Lord at the holy table and we recognize Him in the Breaking of the Bread.  We hear His promise to be with us always, to be our life and to be our brother and companion.