THEME: ALLOW THE LORD TO FEED YOU
Deut 8:2-3, 14-16; 1 Cor 10:16-17; Jn 6:51-58
I consider the feast we celebrate today, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, as one of the most important feasts for every Christian. The first thing man struggles in life for, is to have something to eat. In order to keep the corporal strength and life in general, one needs nutrition. If food is so
important for man here on earth, how much more important is the food which sustains the strength for a fight against the self, the seductions of the world and the evil one.
In this life, we are like the people of Israel who are on the journey to their own inheritance. The very moment the people of Israel accepted God and Moses his servant, and decided to leave Egypt, they also accepted to leave behind the Egyptian melon and cucumber and follow God through the desert.
The journey upon which the people of Israel embarked, is not their initiative. They did not even know where they were going. God was leading them.
At a time, they got hungry, and wished to go back to the melon and cucumber in Egypt, without knowing that melon and cucumber are not the proper food that would sustain them on this particular journey. God would have ordered cucumber and melon and onions to grow from the ground, but the food the people needed was not something that would come from
below (da giù) but something that would come from above (da su).
The journey on which they have embarked is the one that needed a different kind of food, the food that sustains. Hence, they needed
God for this food. But it is interesting to see that God waited until the people of Israel recognized that they were hungry and complained to Moses (Cf Exodus 15:3). They needed not just to be hungry, but to know that they were hungry and to ask that they be fed. The novity and the specialty of the Israelites’ desert food lies in their question when they saw the food from heaven, and they asked Mah-nah? (what is this)? It is not cucumber, it is not melon, it is a different kind of food, it is the food cooked by God himself. And this food kept on reviving the people’s strength throughout their desert life.
In the first reading therefore, Moses reminds the people never to forget how God’s food sustained them throughout their desert days (Deut 8:14-15). Another point to remember is that, although the people of Israel could not understand the food that came from heaven (Mannah), they believed that in it lies their survival in the desert.
In the gospel reading, Jesus presents himself as that food which has come down from heaven. And just like Manna which came down from heaven became the only food for the life-sustenance of the fathers for forty years in the wilderness, so is Jesus, the only real food from heaven for us who are on our desert journey in this life. Before this bran (Jn 6:51-58), Jesus already fed the people with five loaves and two fish (Jn 6:1-15). Now, the people came back to Jesus so that he would feed them again because they were feeling hungry again. And since Jesus is capable of giving them free food, who does not like free food?
But Jesus, without denying that they needed physical nourishment, wanted to show them that there is the most important nourishment which they were not seeing, and which is more important. Jesus wants to show them that their hunger cannot be satisfied by bread and fish, the real hunger is the one that needs not food from below, but the food that has come down from heaven, which is Jesus himself. There is this hunger in man that needs to be satiated.
In Mk 1:36-37, Simon articulated this longing in man and he said to Jesus: “everyone is searching for you”. Yes, we are all searching for someone who can satisfy the huge hunger in us, even though sometimes we do not know it. Our soul is that which sustains us in the journey of life, and this soul which bears the image of God cannot be satisfied or fed or nourished by the material food. It needs he who has made it in his image to satisfy it.
Hence, no matter how much we seek for the satisfaction of this inner longing and deep hunger in material things, instead of getting it satisfied, we will be hungrier. Everyone is looking for Jesus, but the question is: “for what reason?” Are you looking for Jesus because of your material needs or as the food which your soul needs for its sustenance in this our desert journey? Are you looking for Jesus for him to continue providing for your material needs or for him to quench this inner desire in you that seeks everyday for its satisfaction? The Israelites discovered their hunger and desired that it be satisfied. Do you really know how hungry you have left your soul, making it to long and thirst for the presence of the Eucharistic Jesus? Just as we all are made in the same image of God, our souls desire one thing: the daily presence of Christ in us.
So in Jesus, we have one common food for the satisfaction of our common hunger for God. Why not give Christ chance to feed you? What constitutes your doubt in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist? When you go to receive him, do you just go because it is the time, and everybody is going or because you have identified your hunger for Christ in the Holy Eucharist? In the desert, the Israelite fathers were not given another alternative to their feeding, but God’s food. Hence, whoever wanted to have the strength and be nourished, must have to participate in the Mannah eating. There is no alternative to our inner satisfaction outside Jesus.
In this case, as Jesus himself presented it, we are left with Either….Or. It is either we do not eat him and keep on wallowing in our unending search for satisfaction, jumping from one place to another, or that we have him as our daily food in worthy participation, in order to fill us with life. There is this wonderful Italian song that goes thus:
O Gesu, tu sei la Manna senza te il deserto, manna robusto cibo vieni in me, vieni in me Signore
(O Jesus, you are the Manna, without you there is desert, manna, solid food, come into me, come into me Lord)
O Gesu, tu sei il pane, senza te la fame; pane di cielo vero, vieni in me, vieni in me Signore
(O Jesus, You are the bread, without you there is hunger; true bread of heaven, come into me, come into me Lord).
Yes, Jesus is the bread, and without him our inner life, our spiritual life becomes a desert; without him, we die of incurable hunger and thirst; without him our spiritual life is dead; without him we wallow like people in exile. But with him in us, we receive the divine life and strength which our soul desires; with him, our hunger and thirst for happiness is resolved; with him in us, we have the
Trinitarian indwelling and the power to live as sons and daughters of God. Remember, he came to the people he has made, for the sole purpose of giving them life, but his people unfortunately did not receive him. But the Scripture notes, to all who receive him, he gives the power to become children of God, children born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God (Jn 1:11-12) because outside Christ, there is no other name (or food) under heaven which has been given among mortals for the salvation of men (Acts 3:12). Even when it seems difficult for us to understand, and we see ourselves questioning like the Jews did in today’s gospel, may we not abandon Jesus because when we leave him, to whom else do we go, since he alone has the words of eternal life (Jn 6:68)?
How is your reception of Holy Communion? Do you still prepare yourself before receiving it?
Do you grow in grace and holiness because of your daily reception of Eucharistic Christ?
Remember, the same eucharistic gift was given to the twelve apostles at the table during the Lord’s Supper. While the rest of the disciples ate him and got more interested in standing with him and giving their lives for him, Judas ate him and it became night and dark in his life, and he became more resolved in handing his Master over to his enemies (Jn 13:24-30). Hence, the same Holy Communion, the same Eucharistic Jesus performs different functions depending on the state of who receives him. In mortal sin, Eucharistic reception becomes a condemnation to the recipient. Do you still revere the Eucharist?
Unfortunately, many Catholics now see Eucharist as a party food, or a kola-nut which is shared during ritual gatherings. Parents donate money and ask for favor so that their kids be allowed to be admitted into this sacrament
even when they have not undergone proper Catechatical formation. If we do not approach the Holy Eucharist like the saints of old, then we lose the life which it gives.
Happy Feast of the Corpus Christi
Fr. Nnamah Chukwuezugo