We come to Mass to receive the actual Body and Blood of Christ. He is our life-giving food, as John sets out in his Gospel today.
Even in the time of Christ, this teaching was extremely difficult to accept. Many of his followers turned away from him, leading Christ to address the others and ask if they too are going to walk away. The disciples’ reply was: ‘To whom else shall we go?’ They may not have understood. But they followed Jesus by doing his will.
And we, two thousand years later, are still coming to Jesus as our life-giving source of food and drink. We are still following his will. We cannot say we understand, but we follow his will. And this is what we are called to do.
When Cardinal Basil Hume visited famine-stricken lands he commented that, ultimately, humanity needs two things: food and love. In Jesus’ single commandment to love, we began to love in a new and more Godly way. And he also gave us food and drink; he became our sustenance. Jesus satisfies both of humanity’s most fundamental desires of food and love.
Mass is the ultimate moment of meeting Christ because that is exactly what we are doing. We are going there to receive him. Let us come to the sacrifice of the Mass with a firmer belief that we are meeting Christ in a special and powerful way. Let us give ourselves to him fully, as did those first disciples who didn’t understand yet followed.
Gospel
John 6:51-58
Jesus said to the Jews:
I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.
Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever;
and the bread that I shall give
is my flesh, for the life of the world.’
Then the Jews started arguing with one another:
‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ they said.
Jesus replied:
I tell you most solemnly, I am the bread of life.
if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood, you will not have life in you.
Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day.
For my flesh is real food
and my blood is real drink.
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood
lives in me
and I live in him.
As I, who am sent by the living Father,
myself draw life from the Father,
so whoever eats me will draw life from me.
This is the bread come down from heaven;
not like the bread our ancestors ate:
they are dead,
but anyone who eats this bread
will live for ever.’
The Gospel of the Lord.