20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

Chew your food well and don’t forget to say thank you! (fr. James McTavish)

Prov 9:1-6 Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7 Eph 5:15-20 John 6:51-58

“Make sure you chew your food well!” Most of us have either read this good advice or heard it first from our own mothers. To chew the food well aids digestion. “Take your time eating” is an additional advice to be heeded especially for those who gulp their food down. So where is this dietary advice leading us? Well the psalmist again this week reminds us to: “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34). But the food we are offered as Christians is not just any old fast food. It is a food that nourishes and builds up. The living Word of God will not leave us malnourished! In the first reading Wisdom advises us, “Let whoever is simple turn in here; To the one who lacks understanding, she says, Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed! Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding”(Proverbs 9:1-6).

There is food available. No need to go hungry. The Word of God is a light for our path and lamp for our feet. It lights up the way and helps us to see the potholes to avoid on the way. However it is important to chew well the Word of God, not just to gulp it down but to chew it, to reflect on it, to assimilate and digest it. St Ignatius was fond of repeating that it is not many things that nourish and fill the soul, but a few things, deeply savoured. Maybe I do not know so many things but what I understand I put into practice. It is useful in the hustle and bustle of life to try to find one aspect of our relationship with God that is nourishing us. Sometimes it is not easy to savour something deeply. Perhaps you feel that many things are happening in your life right now but what is the common thread? What is the deeper connection? For me it is that God is asking me to trust in him unconditionally. How about you? What is God asking of you at this moment? The Holy Spirit often gives us many clues as usually God manifests his wishes not just once but often he repeatedly shows us the area where he is asking us to grow. This is why St Paul reminds us: “Brothers and sisters: Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:15-20)

The will of God will lead us to a closer identification with Jesus. In every Eucharist we are called to become what we receive – Body of Christ. Jesus says “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.” The classical Greek verb for eating (phagein) is not used here but rather trogon which has the sense of gnaw or munch. In a sense when we partake of the body and blood of Christ it cannot be a merely external participation but to really digest the mystery we receive. We need to allow Jesus to live in us, to vivify our way of thinking and acting, to be a sign of his presence in the world. So that our lives may be a living Eucharist by being concrete signs of communion.

Eucharist means thanksgiving, so we can live a Eucharistic life by continually giving thanks too – “giving thanks always and for everything” (Ephesians 5:20). One day in a hospital there was a young woman dying of cancer with no money to pay for proper treatment. She woke up and I dreaded to hear the complaints she would have. What a surprise I got when the first words to come out of her lips were “Thank you Lord for another day of life.” Were our first words this morning when we awoke thanksgiving?

How great the other day to go to the 10th anniversary of a highly successful company and find them celebrating a mass of thanksgiving of the Lord for his many blessings. How often we can foolishly boast that it is because of our efforts alone and forget to thank the Lord for his help. They say the only healthy thing you are allowed to have in excess in life is thanksgiving. Thanksgiving leads to trust in God. We start to see the wonderful things he is doing in our lives. And that what we receive in the body and blood of Christ is eternal life. In a funeral mass the priest gave communion and as each person received the body and blood of Christ he said, “You will never die.” As Jesus said, “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Let us give thanks to God for this great Good News.

Help us Lord to savour what we receive, to let it nourish us. Teach us how to chew the Word we receive, to ponder and reflect on what you are doing in our lives. Teach us how to become what we receive in every Eucharist to be aware that we receive your body and blood every time we receive Holy Communion. And Lord Jesus, remind us to be thankful. Thank you! Amen.

The Feast of Corpus Christi

“This is my blood poured out for all…do this in memory of me”

(Fr. James McTavish FMVD)

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of Corpus Christi. As we all know Corpus Christi is Latin for ‘body of Christ’. Today’s feast helps us appreciate the gift of the Eucharist. A little story can help us enter into the historical aspects of this feast and to see why it was instituted. One weekend in the middle of my studies in Rome we had an outing to a beautiful lake. On the way home we stopped off in a small town called Bolsena outside of Rome. There we encountered the basilica of St Cristina. Inside this beautiful little church how surprised we were to find out about the eucharistic miracle of Bolsena. In 1263 a priest was visiting the church. He was having difficulty to believe in the real presence of Christ in the consecrated host. One day during mass, after consecrating the bread and wine, the eucharistic host took to the form of human flesh. As he raised the Eucharist, drops of blood fell on the marble floor. How powerful is this blood that even marked the marble stone floor. The eucharistic flesh remains preserved as does the stained marble floor where the drops of the blood of Christ fell on it. This miracle eventually led to the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi.

What does the feast signify for us? Let us look at the readings proposed this day and ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten us. The first reading is from the book of Exodus (Ex 24, 3-8) where Moses sprinkles blood from sacrificed animals on the altar he has built. He then sprinkles the blood on the people. What is the meaning of this rite? The concept of a blood relative is familiar to us all, whereby blood gives ties or a relationship between different people as they ‘share the same blood’. This is also known as consanguinity (co=sharing, sangui=blood). Moses establishes a blood relation or consanguinity between God, represented by the altar, and his people. However the people break the covenant so that a more permanent covenant will need to be established. Only a covenant that is unbreakable and eternal can save a sinful people. For this the blood of animals will not suffice, only the innocent blood of the spotless Lamb, Christ himself. Only the blood of the only begotten Son can clean God’s people innerly. One drop of Christ’s blood is powerful enough to penetrate stony hearts and take away all the sins of the world. In the second reading of today the author of the letter to the Hebrews (Heb 9, 11-15) states “how much more effective is the blood of Christ, who offered himself as a perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit, purifying our inner selves so that we can worship the living God.”

For our participation in the Eucharist to be more fruitful it requires faith to believe that Christ is truly present in the consecrated bread and wine. Externally we do not see any visible change in the bread and wine so what is the basis of our faith in the transubstantiation? The very words of Jesus himself - “This is my body…this is my blood”. St Thomas of Aquinas noted that in front of the Eucharist sight, touch and taste are often deceived, such that the ear alone is best believed. In the text of his hymn ‘Pange Lingua’ he wrote “though our senses cannot see, faith alone which is unshaken shows pure hearts the mystery’. As followers of Christ we believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist because Jesus told us so.

And Jesus in the Gospel today asks his disciples to help him prepare the Passover meal. Jesus does not want his followers to be mere passive spectators in his eucharistic love. This is why he says ‘Do this in memory of me’. We marvel at the mystery of the Eucharist but Christ does not want mere admirers or adorers but imitators. As Christians we are called to become what we receive (See Lumen Gentium 26). To become living bread and nourishment for others with our words and life. Many followers of Christ have given their blood for love of him. Martyrs such as the Jewish philosopher convert, Edith Stein. From a brilliant intellectual life, being a disciple of Husserl’s school of phenomenology, her search for the truth eventually led her to become a Catholic and then a nun in the Carmelite order. She was put to death in a Nazi concentration camp. She always said that the atrocities of Nazi Germany would have to be atoned for. She died pouring out her blood as an atoning sacrifice and doing this in ‘memory of me’. Each Christian is called to give their blood, perhaps not as dramatically but in a way just as real. Perhaps it is drop by drop, day by day in self giving, in patiently bringing up a family, in studies, in prayer and in doing God’s will. Christ still asks for active collaborators to transform this world. He wants that his blood still flows through the self giving of many Christians today. 

Lord we pray that as your followers we can allow your Spirit to transform us. We place our lives, our efforts, our drops of sweat in the paten and ask you to transform us so that through each one of us you can continue your self giving, that you may be able to continue pouring out your love on this world and to each brother and sister. Amen.