20th
Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 16, 2015
Eucharist, Part III
It helps
to know a little Greek to better understand this Gospel. There are two words in
Greek that mean “eat”. One is “ephago” – that simply means to eat. But there is
another word, “trogon”, which is a much more graphic verb. It means to gnaw, to
chew, to rip with one’s teeth. As we have been working our way through John 6 –
Jesus’ important “Bread of Life Discourse” – up to this point, Jesus has used
the word “ephago”. This could be taken figuratively, like when we say that we
need to “digest that idea” – not literally with our stomach, but it means to
absorb it in our minds.
But at
this point, in today’s Gospel, Jesus switches words. He no longer uses ephago –
now he uses trogon, which can only be used literally. He is being incredibly
graphic here – we must chew, gnaw His
flesh…He clearly did not mean this figuratively!
He
strengthens His statement with the phrase, “Amen, amen, I say to you…”.
Whenever Jesus says this in the Gospels, He is basically saying, “Listen up,
disciples, because I am about to tell you a most solemn truth, one that is
literally and absolutely true.” So when Jesus says, “Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no
life within you,” He is putting it in the most forceful, literal way possible.
And of
course, it was difficult for the Jewish people to understand this. A good Jew
would be horrified by the thought of drinking blood, as it was expressly
forbidden by the Old Testament. For a Jewish person, blood equaled life – to drink
the blood of some animal was equivalent to drinking its very life, which
belonged to God alone. So the Jews were hearing Jesus ask them to consume His
very divine life, which was not something they were prepared to do!
Even the
early Christians were persecuted, partly, because of this belief in the Real
Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The ancient Romans heard rumors about this
new sect of Christianity, and how they ate bodies and drank blood in their
secret rituals. Well, of course that was true about their Masses, but the
Romans thought that they were cannibals!
Of
course, we are not cannibals…because we believe in transubstantiation.
Transubstantiation means that the substance of the Eucharist changes, from
bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus, while the accidents – the external
things like taste, touch, smell – stay the same. Jesus wants to draw near to us
in the Eucharist, so He hides Himself in something small so that we are not
afraid to approach Him. Yes, it takes faith – but if the Eucharist is truly
Christ, then it is a gift beyond all price.
I love
what JRR Tolkien, the author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, wrote about the
Eucharist: Out of the darkness of my life, so much
frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the
Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the
true way of all your loves on earth. Every Sunday, we get to receive Him…even every
day if we choose. Let us always approach Him with reverence, with clean hands
and souls free of mortal sin, recognizing that it is the King of Kings that we receive
here.
In 1263
in Bolsena, Italy, many people struggled to believe that what we receive in the
Eucharist is truly the Lord. One day, a priest who was struggling with that
belief was celebrating Mass. As he began to break the Eucharistic Host, he
found that it started to drip blood, which flowed upon the altar cloth (known
as a “corporal”). He was so amazed by the miracle that he told the bishop, who
in turn told Pope Urban IV. The Pope visited the town, which has preserved the
bloodied corporal to this day, and he was convinced of the miracle’s
authenticity. So he declared that the universal church should celebrate a feast
of the Body and Blood of Jesus, and in 1264, the Feast of Corpus Christi was
first celebrated (which we now celebrate every June).
What a
feast it truly is when God Himself offers His body and blood as food for our
poor souls!
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