Corpus Christ – John 6:51-58

There is a raging debate online as to how Holy communion must be received. I have weighed in on this topic but today I want to take a different approach. I would like to present you with an understanding of what the Gospel of today says and let it lead you to the truth.

The Gospel of today is taken from John 6:51-58 and forms part of what has now been called the ‘bread of life discourse’. At the start of the sixth chapter of John, Jesus is in Galilee. It is here that he has performed the miracle that fed five thousand. The response of the crowd was to ‘take him by force and make him king’ (6:15). Jesus withdrew from them.

Scripture tells us, that the next day, they went seeking him, but Jesus confronts them; “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me not because your saw the signs, but because you ate your fill of the leftovers.” These are words that Our Lord could well say to us today.

Jesus then exhorts them to ‘seek the food that endures for eternal life’ and their response, which clearly lacked understanding was to ask for this food always. Now, Our Lord declares himself to be the ‘bread of life,’ with a further assertion, whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

It is an assertion that he will make again in verse 48 and then by verse 51 he will assert that he is the LIVING bread that comes down from heaven. He is not just bread that fills your stomach but ‘living bread ‘that gives you eternal life and that the bread he gives us is HIS FLESH.

By now, the Jews thought that he was raving mad and perhaps we too would have had the same reaction had we not been Catholics by convention. Here in lies the problem. A Catholic by convention is not repulsed by talk of eating the ‘Body of Christ’ or as Jesus put it, REAL FLESH. But imagine convincing someone beyond our shared faith. To a person of another religious belief, this sounds nothing short of cannibalism.

Sadly, because of our faith is lived by convention, many Catholics receive this food meant for angels very casually, if not, as many pew studies have shown, they receive it symbolically. Ask many Catholic and they will say this is symbolic of Christs’ body. How else will we explain the casualness that the sacred species are sometimes treated both by priest and people?

Today’s Gospel lifts the veil of ignorance. Jesus is emphatic when he says, “Amen! TRULY, TRULY I say to you unless you, unless you eat the FLESH of the son of man and drink his BLOOD, you can have no life in you.” Jesus is not presenting us with some symbolic flesh and blood because he prefixes this statement with the words TRULY and AMEN. Even more, when we receive the body of Christ at communion, our response to the minister’s ‘the Body of Christ,’ is AMEN; a loud and emphatic SO BE IT! How can we deny what we profess as true?

It is understandable when one may say, my senses sees bread and not flesh, When St Thomas Aquinas was commissioned by the Pope Urban IV to compose the liturgical text for the newly instituted feast of the Corpus Christ in 1264, he gave us the ‘Tantum Ergo’ in which he declared and we today profess, “senses cannot grasp this marvel, faith MUST serve to compensate.”

In today’s text, it is Jesus who is teaching us the TRUTH about the Eucharist and he is emphatic, “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you can have no life in you.” Jesus insists we EAT his flesh. In English this word sounds all tidied-up. In Greek, ethios does describe a manner of eating by which one bites and chews, but Jesus adds another dimension when he uses the Greek word trogos to describe the manner of eating his flesh. Trogos demands that you eat like an animal, that you munch and gnaw at your food, as if your life depended on it.

Now weigh this into the debate. This is HIS LIFEGIVING FOOD, THIS IS FOOD FROM HEAVEN THAT ASSURES US OF HEAVEN. THIS IS FOOD THAT RAISES US ON THE LAST DAY. How then would you like to receive this food? Would it not be with reverence?

Fr Warner D’Souza