If today’s Gospel sounds familiar, a bit like last week, your right on target. During the coming weeks we will continue to hear Gospels that speak of the Eucharist, Jesus as the Bread come down from heaven, for the sake of the world! The genteel southern writer, Flannery O’Connor, shocked her companions when in conversation about the Eucharist, she objected, “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” In one of her letters, she wrote that the Eucharist “is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”
The meaning of the Eucharist resists taming; it refuses to be reduced to a mere statement of faith. The Eucharist is not an abstract idea. It is an experience of mystery that will always be more than our struggle to articulate it can say. It is a “more” that is always shocking. It is a raw, unmediated encounter with the very presence of Jesus Christ! Just as it shocked the disciples so too we should allow it to shock us…to wake us up to just how deeply and passionately we are loved by Jesus…willing to feed us on his very flesh that we might have eternal life.
Elijah was told by the angel “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you”. The Eucharist is “bread for the journey” of our lives. It is meant to feed us spiritually, to make us more and more the Body of Christ present in the world. It gives us the strength to be and to do in the world as Jesus has commanded us to do, to love one another as He has loved us. If we are truly disciples of Jesus then we are called to “feed” others…to respond to their hungers…not just for physical food…but to their hunger for justice, for peace, for respect of their human dignity! Filled with the Eucharist, how will I take it out into the world to share that presence with others? Who are the hungry in my life? What do they hunger for and how can I feed that hunger?
Blessings,
Fr. Tim
The meaning of the Eucharist resists taming; it refuses to be reduced to a mere statement of faith. The Eucharist is not an abstract idea. It is an experience of mystery that will always be more than our struggle to articulate it can say. It is a “more” that is always shocking. It is a raw, unmediated encounter with the very presence of Jesus Christ! Just as it shocked the disciples so too we should allow it to shock us…to wake us up to just how deeply and passionately we are loved by Jesus…willing to feed us on his very flesh that we might have eternal life.
Elijah was told by the angel “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you”. The Eucharist is “bread for the journey” of our lives. It is meant to feed us spiritually, to make us more and more the Body of Christ present in the world. It gives us the strength to be and to do in the world as Jesus has commanded us to do, to love one another as He has loved us. If we are truly disciples of Jesus then we are called to “feed” others…to respond to their hungers…not just for physical food…but to their hunger for justice, for peace, for respect of their human dignity! Filled with the Eucharist, how will I take it out into the world to share that presence with others? Who are the hungry in my life? What do they hunger for and how can I feed that hunger?
Blessings,
Fr. Tim
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