He Who Eats This Bread Will Live Forever
Introduction: May you continue to come to the Lord Jesus and feast on The Word and on His Body and Blood so that you might be nourished and strengthened for the rest of your journey to the House of Our Abba-Father.
Today we focus on the Lord Jesus’ continued presence with us, particularly through the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of Eucharist – “giving thanks” – especially as we receive the Bread of Life and from the Chalice of Salvation. Jesus desires to feed us with His very Self so that we will have the wherewithal to continue to follow Him as He leads us to the place He has prepared for us. He wants us to be in union with Him and with all those who partake of Him and are part of His Body. When we gather as a faith community, we are called to remember/re-enact/make present again His saving events of giving of Himself totally to us and for us. Let us continue to give thanks to our Abba for sending the Very Best – Jesus – and let us come and share in His Body and Blood.
Our readings today focus around God providing nourishment for us and our need to participate in this nourishment and give thanks to God for what we have been privileged to receive. God has provided for those who are divinely chosen. God has taken care of not only the physical needs of a hungry people, but also satisfied the spiritual hunger and thirst as the people chosen by God journey along the way back to the land of promise.
First Reading: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a: ‘He fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know.’
Commentary: Here the Church sets before us the model for the Eucharist, that is, God’s care in feeding his people during the forty-year desert trek of the Exodus from Egypt. During this time the Israelites were fed with manna; they called this ‘bread from heaven’, so that it has become the model for the Eucharistic bread. As in all folk-tales, the story has gradually grown in the telling, but originally manna seems to have been the wholly unexpected and seemingly-miraculous provision of a sweet substance exuded from a tamarisk bush. The Hebrews did not know what it was, and, with a word-play typical of the Bible, etymologized it as ‘man-hu’, the Hebrew for ‘What is it?’ The reading also stresses that this heavenly gift was a symbol of divine Wisdom, God’s revelation of himself given from heaven. Hence the saying, quoted by Jesus to Satan during his Testing in the Desert, ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ The manna became the symbol and reminder of God’s unfailing care for his people throughout their journey, just as the Eucharist is the expression of God’s care for his people today.
Responsorial Psalm: 147: 12-13. 14-15. 19-20. O Jerusalem, glorify the LORD!
Our psalm today is a hymn of praise to God for providing not only daily nourishment (bread) but the “finest wheat.” The “finest wheat” refers to the best part of the wheat plant. It provides the richest taste and the most nutrients. God is to be praised for giving not only what will enable us to survive, but also for giving us the very best of life-sustaining food. The psalm also praises God for giving the divine Word to those whom God had chosen.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:16-17: ‘Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.’
Commentary: Paul, in writing to that difficult and divided community at Corinth, chides them for their disunity and selfishness. There were some rich members of the community, who got to the Eucharist early, took all the best places, and proceeded to unpack their hampers and feast, while the later comers – presumably the workers and slaves – justifiably felt excluded and remained hungry. In the strongest terms Paul insists that the Eucharist must be the symbol and expression of unity, and that those who prevent it being so are making themselves ‘answerable for the body and blood of the Lord’. Paul seems to use ‘the body of Christ’ interchangeably of both the Eucharistic bread and the Eucharistic body which is the community, united in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. It is difficult to see when he means one, and when the other. He obviously regards them both as equally important and equally sacred. Later in the letter he will explain that the community is an organism, in which everyone has their own, individually special part to play, all living with the Spirit of Christ as the life-giving principle. Unless this life is truly shared it is distorted and fails of its purpose.
Gospel: John 6:51-58: ‘My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.’
Commentary: This is the last of the readings from the Bread of Life discourse. It moves on from seeing Christ as the Wisdom of God, who must be accepted and believed, to the sacrament of eating the bread of life. These correspond to the two halves of the Mass, first the service of the Word, then the Eucharistic banquet. We are all so diet-conscious nowadays that it is quite obvious that the food we eat affects us. By eating Christ we are assimilated into him. But, just as, if I am sick, food does me no good and can even harm me, so if I eat Christ sacramentally without wanting to be moulded into him, it does me no good at all. That is why Paul complained that the Corinthians were answerable for the death of Christ. And drinking the blood of Christ? Blood is the sign of life – if there is no blood, there is no life – and God is the Lord of life and death. So if I receive Christ’s blood I take on his life, his divine life, as the gift of God. That has alarming side-effects: it means I share Christ’s life with other Christians. We all live with the same life’s blood. Do I really share my life, my talents, my goods with others, knowing that I share the same bloodstream?
Reflection: What is the bread of life which Jesus offers to all who believe in him? It is first of all the life of God himself - life which sustains us not only now in this age but also in the age to come. The Rabbis said that the generation in the wilderness have no part in the life to come. In the Book of Numbers it is recorded that the people who refused to brave the dangers of the promised land were condemned to wander in the wilderness until they died. The Rabbis believed that the father who missed the promised land also missed the life to come. God sustained the Israelites in the wilderness with manna from heaven. This bread foreshadowed the true heavenly bread which Jesus would offer his followers.
Jesus is the "bread of life": Jesus makes a claim only God can make: He is the true bread of heaven that can satisfy the deepest hunger we experience. The manna from heaven prefigured the superabundance of the unique bread of the Eucharist or Lord's Supper which Jesus gave to his disciples on the eve of his sacrifice. The manna in the wilderness sustained the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land. It could not produce eternal life for the Israelites. The bread which Jesus offers his disciples sustains us not only on our journey to the heavenly paradise, it gives us the abundant supernatural life of God which sustains us for all eternity.
The food that makes us live forever: Jesus chose the time of the Jewish Feast of Passover to fulfill what he had announced at Capernaum - giving his disciples his body and his blood as the true bread of heaven. Jesus' passing over to his Father by his death and resurrection - the new passover - is anticipated in the Last Supper and celebrated in the Eucharist or Lord's Supper, which fulfills the Jewish Passover and anticipates the final Passover of the church in the glory of God's kingdom. When the Lord Jesus commands his disciples to eat his flesh and drink his blood, he invites us to take his life into the very center of our being. That life which he offers is the very life of God himself.
Do you hunger for the "bread of life"? Jesus offers us the abundant supernatural life of heaven itself - but we can miss it or even refuse it. To refuse Jesus is to refuse eternal life, unending life with the Heavenly Father. To accept Jesus as the bread of heaven is not only life and spiritual nourishment for this world but glory in the world to come.
When we receive from the Lord's table we unite ourselves to Jesus Christ, who makes us sharers in his body and blood and partakers of his divine life. Ignatius of Antioch (35-107 A.D.) calls it the "one bread that provides the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live for ever in Jesus Christ" (Ad Eph. 20,2). This supernatural food is healing for both body and soul and strength for our journey heavenward.
When you approach the Table of the Lord, what do you expect to receive? Healing, pardon, comfort, and rest for your soul? The Lord has much more for us, more than we can ask or imagine. The principal fruit of receiving the Eucharist or Lord's Supper is an intimate union with Christ. As bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens us in charity and enables us to break with disordered attachments to creatures and to be more firmly rooted in the love of Christ. Do you hunger for the "bread of life"?
Lord Jesus, you nourish and sustain us with your very own presence and life-giving word. You are the bread of life - the heavenly food that sustains us now and that produces everlasting life within us. May I always hunger for you and be satisfied in you alone.
Daily Quote from the Early Church Fathers: Let faith confirm you, by Cyril of Jerusalem, 315-386 A.D.
"Failing to understand his words spiritually, [the Jews] were offended and drew back, thinking that the Savior was urging them to cannibalism. Then again in the old covenant there was the showbread. But that, since it belonged to the old covenant, has come to an end. In the new covenant there are the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, which sanctify body and soul. For as bread corresponds to the body, so the Word is appropriate to the soul. So do not think of them as mere bread and wine. In accordance with the Lord's declaration, they are body and blood. And if our senses suggests otherwise, let faith confirm you. Do not judge the issue on the basis of taste, but on the basis of faith be assured beyond all doubt that you have been allowed to receive the body and blood of Christ. (excerpt from MYSTAGOGICAL LECTURES 4.4-6)
“eat my flesh” (see jn 6:56)
“How can He give us His flesh to eat?” —John 6:52
From a human viewpoint, the above question is understandably difficult to comprehend. “How can [Jesus] give us His flesh to eat?” (Jn 6:52) If we were to re-phrase this question as follows, it might be more comprehensible: “How can this God-Man give us His flesh to eat?”
The Eucharist makes no sense unless we know precisely Who Jesus is: fully God and fully man (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, 479-483). A man who is only human cannot give us his flesh to eat and remain alive. A god couldn’t give up his flesh to eat for he wouldn’t have any flesh (see Lk 24:39). A God-Man can, however, give His flesh for us to eat, and still remain alive. Jesus does not die; instead, we who eat His flesh will live (Jn 6:57).
Did the Eucharistic revival have the intended impact in your life? Well, that depends on if you gave your flesh for Jesus as He gave His flesh for you. Did you renounce your flesh? (see Lk 14:33) Did you deny your very self, take up your cross, and follow in His footsteps? (Lk 9:23) If not, tell Jesus: “Lord, this is my body to be given up for You.”
Prayer: Father, I open wide my mouth so You can fill it as You wish (Ps 81:11). “The man who feeds on Me will have life because of Me.” —Jn 6:57. “Sweet Sacrament, we Thee adore. O, make us love Thee more and more. O, make us love Thee more and more.”
The personal action for today: What does receiving Eucharist (Holy Communion) mean to me? How do I feel when I am in “union with” (cum unione) the Lord Jesus and, through Him, with the other communicants? How do I remember and give thanks to God for sending us the Very Best? How can I take What/Who I will receive (Jesus, Himself) and share it with others when I receive the Body and Blood of Jesus? How can I be more aware of others who need to be nourished by the Lord Jesus through me?
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ reminds us that Jesus remains truly present with us in the Eucharist. In every Holy Mass, Christ offers His Body and Blood as spiritual nourishment for our lives. The Eucharist is not only a symbol, but a living encounter with the love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Through this sacred gift, we are united with God and with one another as one family of faith. Jesus invites us to receive Him with reverence, gratitude, and a pure heart.
The breaking of the bread teaches us to share our lives, love, and resources with those in need.
When we receive the Body of Christ, we are also called to become the Body of Christ for others through acts of compassion and service. This feast reminds us that God never abandons His people but stays with us in every moment of life. The Eucharist gives strength to the weak, hope to the discouraged, and peace to troubled hearts. May this solemnity deepen our faith in the real presence of Christ and inspire us to live in holiness and love each day.
