Body and Blood of Christ, June 26, 2011 (Deut.

8:2-3,14b-16a; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58) The end of the festival season comes with this feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord. After Easter and Pentecost and then a reflection on the Holy Trinity, today we reflect on the Eucharist. Then we return to Ordinary Time for the next few months until the much ballyhooed English revision of the Roman Missal translation will descend upon us. More about that will follow as we get closer to its implementation. Meanwhile we see how the Liturgy places the Eucharist in its proper Old Testament light with the reading from Deuteronomy which recalls the forty year journey in the desert. This unique take on this forty year period interprets the journey as an opportunity to test the peoples will to obey the commandments of the Lord. Thus Deuteronomy makes the Lord the responsible party for the affliction the people have encountered along the way to see whether they trust in the Lord or not. During this forty year period it was the Lord who sustained this people throughout. Now that they are almost completed with their journey and are almost ready to enter the Promised Land, Moses reminds them about the water and the manna that the Lord provided for them. The idea is if the Lord has provided for them during this whole journey, then surely the Lord will provide for them now in the new part of their journey. Certainly this pilgrimage journey image is an attractive one to describe the Church herself and helps explain why Vatican II chose pilgrim people of God as an apt way to describe the Church. We are always on the way during our journey from here to the Lord. Like any pilgrim we need certain basics to sustain us but we trust that the object of our journey is worth the price so we journey on, no matter what the peril or unpleasantness we meet along the way. What is important is to stay the course, trusting the Spirit of Jesus to get us where we going. And the food we rely on to get us there is the Eucharist. Paul mentions the cup of blessing as a participation in the blood of Christ. I wonder how many people really think of this reality; namely, that the cup we bless is a participation in the blood of Christ. Why would there be such a rush to pass by the cup because things get crowded a little during Mass at Communion time? If indeed we are aware of participating, how could we dare rush by, even if we dont drink? The word Paul uses is (koinonia in Greek), a word I wrote about in connection with last weeks feast of the Holy Trinity (although it might have been censored from the CT). It means a becoming one with the blood of Christ in drinking from the cup in the same way that we become one with the body of Christ by eating his flesh.

That brings us to Johns reflection on eating the flesh of Jesus. It was just as graphic and shocking in his own time as it is in ours. The reaction of his contemporaries was pretty much disbelief, and probably many of his own disciples cringed at the idea. And yet most of us cannot conceive of living without his flesh and blood. The act of faith it requires when we expose ourselves to the very mystery of the presence of Jesus, is the same kind of trust that the ancestors used in trusting that the Lord would sustain them on their journey. The difference is that we gain life by feeding on him. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. Fr. Lawrence Hummer