Dear Sisters, dear brethren, as we continue with the fourth excerpt of our continuous reading from the 6th chapter of St John’s Gospel, we should note that something entirely new has now been added by our Lord. So far, since the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, He has taught the same people whom He fed with five loaves and two fish: first, not to look for bread that will only leave them hungry, but for the living bread; secondly, that He in person is that bread, and that those who wish to live must eat it; and now, today, most truly shocking of all that ‘the bread that He shall give is His flesh, for the life of the world.’
The crowd, until recently so eager to listen and learn, but who began to show signs of unease last Sunday, now react with disgust, ‘how can this man give us His flesh to eat?’ Yet our Lord does not back down. He says instead, using His most solemn teaching formula: ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man…you will not have life in you.’ But this is not all, for He goes a step further, a step from which there is no turning back, for when the people hear what He says next, they will have to accept something all Jews would think utterly abhorrent, even taboo, or else they will have to reject Him altogether. What is this that causes such mayhem, such confusion, such horror and division? It is when Jesus says, ‘unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood…’ For blood is, to the Jews, sacred and they are forbidden by God to shed it and contact with it will make them ritually unclean. The very idea of drinking blood is appalling.
Nonetheless, our Lord continues, ‘Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.’ It is for this that He has been preparing the crowds ever since the miracle, and now He opens to them the fullness of His heart and teaching. He is promising to give them His own flesh and blood as food and drink, not for this life only, but for eternal life. In eating and drinking Him, we draw life from Him. Indeed, He says, if we do not eat and drink Him, we shall not have life in us.
Eating and drinking Him. Put like that, it still has the power to shock. Of course, at the Last Supper He will give Himself as food and drink not in the visible forms of flesh meat and blood, but rather under the appearances of bread and wine. This is also fitting, not only to avoid the horror of literal cannibalism, but to show us that He is true to His word: ‘I am the bread of life’. In this way He will enable us to draw life from Him just as He draws life from God the Father. That Last Supper is still some way ahead at the time of this teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, but we should bear all this in mind when we hear those now very familiar words in every Mass: ‘Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you’ and ‘Take this all of you and drink from it, for this is the Chalice of my Blood…’
Practical Issues
What can we learn from this? First of all, there is the important matter of receiving Communion under both kinds. Our Lord speaks today of both eating His Body and of drinking His Blood. Yet often, as here, when we receive Communion we seem to be only eating His Body. If we do not receive directly from the chalice, are we then disobeying Christ’s command? And if so, are we actually receiving the Sacrament of Holy Communion properly, or even at all? There have been some people in the past who have indeed believed that it was not only wrong not to receive from the chalice, but that if anyone received only the Body without the Blood, then they had not received the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at all.
In reply, (and briefly because this is a big subject), the custom of receiving the chalice at Mass was for many centuries allowed only to the priest who celebrated the Mass. It is essential that the priest should do so because it is intrinsic to his role in offering the sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood, but it can be practically problematic. I think everyone here will at some point have received from the chalice at Communion. Here it was common until the pandemic and the fear of infection brought a stop to sharing the same chalice and Precious Blood. But it was only ever allowed for the sake of the completion of the sign of eating and drinking. And for this reason, although it is desirable in principle, it is difficult in practice. But thinking of the many centuries when nobody received from the chalice but the priest, does that mean that all those people did not receive the entire Body and Blood of Christ? As here today, will you only receive the Body in the form of the host, the consecrated bread, and not the Blood, because you will not be receiving the consecrated wine? No, not at all. For the truth is that in Holy Communion we are not receiving the Body and Blood of Christ separated as they were at His death. Remember, we are receiving not the dead Christ, but the risen Christ, in whom Body and Blood are reunited completely and indivisibly. So, therefore, when we receive either the host, or the chalice, or both, we always quite simply receive everything that the living Christ is. Hence the phrase we use, that we receive the ‘Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity’ of Christ whenever we receive Communion, whether in a large or small portion, or whether we receive under the appearance of bread only or under the appearance of wine only. Either way it is totally Himself that we receive.
Our Lord gave this Sacrament under two forms to represent to us the human desire to eat and to drink for nourishment and for enjoyment. We consume Him as our nourishment and from Him we draw both life and joy. This is the foretaste of what the heavenly banquet will be. Every Mass, every Holy Communion is just that: a foretaste of heaven.
But how can we draw life from Him in Communion? How do we avoid simply thinking of Him as giving us mere bread and wine as a memorial? We do so by faith in His words. For when He said: ‘This is my Body’ and ‘This is my Blood’, He meant those words; by saying them He changed the bread and wine into Himself. And He wants something from us, just as He wanted it from the crowd in Capernaum, He wants our faith in Him. This is why we make an Act of Faith in every Mass. In fact, we make two. We solemnly proclaim the word ‘Amen’ twice in order to proclaim our faith. It is worth reflecting on this little Hebrew word, Amen. It means: ‘let it be so!’ or ‘I give my complete assent to this.’ The first time we do this in this particular way is at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, when we all proclaim the so-called ‘Great Amen’, not to validate the Eucharistic Prayer the Celebrant has just prayed at some length, but to express our faith that Jesus has now offered Himself on this altar as a sacrifice to the Father for us. Then, secondly, at the Communion rail, as the priest holds before our eyes the sacred host and proclaims, ‘The Body of Christ’, we answer ‘Amen’, to express our faith that this living Lord, under the appearances of bread, is now coming into us as nourishment and joy, to prepare us for the banquet of heaven. And so this food is both bodily and spiritual, not only one or the other. It feeds our bodies and our souls. It sanctifies us body and soul because it is the Body, Blood. Soul and Divinity of the Saviour in Person.
Now, finally for today, there is something else to remember. If we are to receive this Living Flesh and Blood into our flesh and Blood, and this living soul and divinity into our souls, then we must prepare ourselves duly. We do this in various ways, but principally by two: first, we must strive to be in a state of grace. We must go to confession so that we are fit to receive the all-holy One into our bodies and souls. Secondly, we must fast from all earthly food and drink for an hour before receiving Him. For most of history, Christians fasted from midnight until they received Communion, and then more recently for three hours before, but now the Church asks us to fast only one hour. It is a small price but one that helps us to concentrate on this unearthly food that, whilst nourishing us here, prepares us for eternity.
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