"Give them some food yourselves"
(Feeding of the 5,000 - Getty images)
Luke 9: 11b-17"
The Word: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/061922.cfm
If there is any food which has been a universal
experience for all humanity over the past thousands of years, I think it would
be bread. Everyone from the ancient Egyptians and Romans, to modern Africans,
Americans, Europeans, and all those in South America and beyond have some form
of bread as a constant staple. Various forms of “designer” bread today filled
with all sorts of grains and seeds and other fruits and berries, we all enjoy
this universal source of food, gluten free or not.
One local well known bakery even sells bread named “Super
Food” (its great toasted by the way.) Yet, the bread we reflect on today has
far more benefits than even the most powerful of super foods, although it
remains a kind of super bread indeed.
If we look carefully at our readings on this beautiful
feast of the Body and Blood of Christ we will hear of bread. The first reading from Genesis, the first
book of the Bible, uses the image of an elusive king/priest by the name of
Melchizedek. He offers bread and wine as an act of sacrifice in a prayer as
blessed by both Abram and by God.
In our second reading, Paul reminds the Corinthian
Christians that what they have received from him, Paul received “was handed
over” from the Lord himself. He
continues to verify that their gatherings for the breaking of the bread is a
meal of remembrance of what Jesus himself did on the night before he died when
they proclaim the death of the Lord “until he comes.” That early reminder is a same assurance of what
we many centuries later must also be given confidence. It is our collective memory from Christians
of ages past that continues to remain alive and present to us today every time
we, like them, gather in the presence of Christ under the signs of bread and
wine. He becomes our food, the very bread we consume.
If we move to the Gospel we hear what must have been one
of the most impressive and dramatic miracles Jesus ever made for thousands of
hungry people who had come to hear his teaching and witness his healings.
Of all the Gospel events, this one must have held a
consistent impression on all the early Christians, for the feeding of thousands
is retold in every Gospel. It ever remains an allusion to the later Eucharist
and the liturgies which form the very structure of our prayer as we too gather
like those along the hillside. Like the manna from heaven which sustained the
hungry Hebrews as they wandered in the desert, Jesus provides bread to eat for
the masses who clung desperately to his teaching. They came to hear him and he
provides for them far more than they ever imagined. Rather than be broken up
and scattered to many area villages to find food, they remain one unified early
expression of Church, sharing along with the Lord and his disciples on one
great meal of remembrance. While not the
sacramental Eucharist here it provided a foreshadow of that greater super food.
This is a great sacramental mystery – the Eucharist –
which we Catholics truly believe to be not a symbol, some sort of reminder or
recall of a meal eaten with Jesus 20 centuries ago like one might remember a
birthday party or family picnic. But
this IS a Person and every time we consume, literally eat and drink, this
Person, we share in his risen life. So,
no we are not cannibals as the early Christians were unfairly labeled by pagan
Roman Emperors and suspicious other non-Christians.
One of the best reasons to attend Mass weekly is not so
much because it is established Catholic obligation. That “obligation” really means little if our
reason to attend is simply obedience.
I come because I am hungry and I need to be fed. I attend to ever deepen my walk in friendship
with the Lord. I come because I desire
to collect with the larger Church and share in this food which never stops
giving. I come because I see this
privilege as not an obligation merely but as an invitation, an opportunity, to
be with Christ. I want to stay with the Lord
along the hillside and I desire to go and invite others to come and see.
Jesus came as God’s word made flesh. What God says brings confidence and hope.
This is a time to remember what God did and we are given confidence that he
continues to do for us today. So, the
word is a living word, not just a book of ancient history.
Called to lay our lives, to sacrifice for the common good
and for the good of others, we live out the meaning of this super food. Jesus doesn’t come for me alone but for US in
a way that brings about a bond of unity with him and with others through this
bread from heaven. This encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist is a
transformative moment for us. One that commands us to go and to announce the Gospel
of the Lord.
While the theologians, St. Thomas Aquinas in particular
in the 14th century, coined the term: “Transubstantiation” to explain the real
presence of Christ in the Eucharist if it only remains on a shelf of books in
some theological text, then we miss the whole point of Jesus’ example. The “full, active and conscious
participation” the Second Vatican Council called for in the celebration of Mass
goes well beyond the walls of the Church – to the world outside. I should hunger to be fully, consciously and
actively involved in the life of Christ himself.
So “remember” but let us remember this great act of
divine love and with humble hearts, share in the super food which has the power
to change us to conform more to his own example.
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Lo! the angel's food is given
to the pilgrim who has striven:
See the children's bread from heaven,
which on dogs may not be spent.
. . . Very bread, good shepherd, tend us,
Jesu of your love befriend us,
You refresh us, you defend us,
Your eternal goodness sends us
in the land of life to see.
(from: the Sequence: Lauda Sion)
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