Wisdom’s Feast
The Wisdom of God has prepared a feast, we hear in today’s First Reading.
We must become like children (see Matthew 18:3-4) to hear and accept this invitation. For in every Eucharist, it is the folly of the cross that is represented and renewed.
To the world, it is foolishness to believe that the crucified Jesus rose from the dead. And for many, as for the crowds in today’s Gospel, it is foolishness — maybe even madness — to believe that Jesus can give us His flesh to eat.
Yet Jesus repeats himself with gathering intensity in the Gospel today. Notice the repetition of the words “eat” and “drink,” and “my flesh” and “my blood.” To heighten the unbelievable realism of what Jesus asks us to believe, John in these verses uses, not the ordinary Greek word for eating, but a cruder term, once reserved to describe the “munching” of feeding animals.
The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom (see 1 Corinthians 1:18-25). In His foolish love, He chooses to save those who believe that His flesh is true food, His blood, true drink.
Fear of the Lord, the desire to live by His will, is the beginning of true wisdom, Paul says in today’s Epistle (see Proverbs 9:10). And as we sing in today’s Psalm, those who fear Him shall not want for any good thing.
Again today in the liturgy, we are called to renew our faith in the Eucharist, to forsake the foolishness of believing only what we can see with our eyes.
We approach, then, not only an altar prepared with bread and wine, but the feast of Wisdom, the banquet of heaven — in which God our savior renews His everlasting covenant and promises to destroy death forever (see Isaiah 25:6-9).
Let us make the most of our days, as Paul says, always, in the Eucharist, giving thanks to God for everything in the name of Jesus, the bread come down from heaven.
St. Gaudentius of Brescia
Paschal Homily
The heavenly sacrifice that Christ instituted is indeed the inheritance bequeathed to us through his new covenant. He left it to us on the night he was delivered up to be crucified as a token of his presence. It is viaticum for our journey, food on our life’s path until we come to it on quitting this world. That is why our Lord said: “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you do not have life within you.”
He wished his deeds of kindness to remain among us and the souls he redeemed by his precious blood always to be made holy in the image of his own Passion. This is why he commanded his faithful disciples, instituted as the first priests of his Church, to celebrate these mysteries of eternal life in perpetuity… Thus all the faithful would have before their eyes day by day a representation of Christ’s Passion. Taking him in our hands, receiving him in our mouths and hearts, we will hold fast to an indelible remembrance of our redemption.
The bread should be made with the flour of innumerable grains of wheat mixed with water and finished off in the fire. Thus we shall find a close likeness of the body of Christ in it for, as we know, he forms a single body with the multitude of humankind brought to completion by the fire of the Holy Spirit… In the same way, the wine of his blood is taken from many grapes – that is to say the fruit of vine he planted – is crushed beneath the press of his cross, poured into the hearts of the faithful and ferments within them by means of his own power.
This is the Passover sacrifice bringing salvation to all those set free from bondage of Egypt and Pharaoh, that is to say the devil. Receive it in union with us with all the eagerness of a pious heart.
Saint John-Paul II
Encyclical « Ecclesia de Eucharista » 15
“My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink”
The sacramental re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice, crowned by the resurrection, in the Mass involves a most special presence which – in the words of Paul VI – “is called ‘real’ not as a way of excluding all other types of presence as if they were ‘not real’, but because it is a presence in the fullest sense: a substantial presence whereby Christ, the God-Man, is wholly and entirely present”. This sets forth once more the perennially valid teaching of the Council of Trent: “the consecration of the bread and wine effects the change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. And the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called this change transubstantiation”. Truly the Eucharist is a mysterium fidei, a mystery which surpasses our understanding and can only be received in faith, as is often brought out in the catechesis of the Church Fathers regarding this divine sacrament: “Do not see – Saint Cyril of Jerusalem exhorts – in the bread and wine merely natural elements, because the Lord has expressly said that they are his body and his blood: faith assures you of this, though your senses suggest otherwise”.
Before this mystery of love, human reason fully experiences its limitations. One understands how, down the centuries, this truth has stimulated theology to strive to understand it ever more deeply. These are praiseworthy efforts, which are all the more helpful and insightful to the extent that they are able to join critical thinking to the “living faith” of the Church… There remains the boundary indicated by Paul VI: “Every theological explanation… must firmly maintain that in objective reality, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the consecration, so that the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus from that moment on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine”.
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address, Sunday, August 19, 2012
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This Sunday’s Gospel (cf. Jn 6:51-58) is the concluding part and culmination of the discourse given by Jesus in the Synagogue of Capernaum after he had fed thousands of people with five loaves and two fishes the previous day. Jesus reveals the meaning of this miracle, namely that the promised time had come; God the Father, who had fed the Israelites in the desert with manna, now sent him, the Son, as the true Bread of life; and this bread is his flesh, his life, offered in sacrifice for us. It is therefore a question of welcoming him with faith, not of being shocked by his humanity, and it is about eating his flesh and drinking his blood (cf. Jn 6:54) in order to obtain for ourselves the fullness of life. It is clear that this address was not given to attract approval. Jesus knew this and gave this speech intentionally. In fact it was a critical moment, a turning point in his public mission. The people, and the disciples themselves, were enthusiastic when he performed miraculous signs; the multiplication of the loaves and fishes was a clear revelation that he was the Messiah, so that the crowd would have liked to carry Jesus in triumph and proclaim him King of Israel. But this was not what Jesus wanted. With his long address he dampens the enthusiasm and incites much dissent. In explaining the image of the bread, he affirms that he has been sent to offer his own life and he who wants to follow him must join him in a deep and personal way, participating in his sacrifice of love. Thus Jesus was to institute the Sacrament of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, so that his disciples themselves might share in his love — this was crucial — and, as one body united with him, might extend his mystery of salvation in the world.
In listening to this address the people understood that Jesus was not the Messiah they wanted, one who would aspire to an earthly throne. He did not seek approval to conquer Jerusalem; rather he wanted to go to the Holy City to share the destiny of the prophets: to give his life for God and for the people. Those loaves, broken for thousands, were not meant to result in a triumphal march but to foretell the sacrifice on the Cross when Jesus was to become Bread, Body and Blood, offered in expiation. Jesus therefore gave the address to bring the crowds down to earth and mostly to encourage his disciples to make a decision. In fact from that moment many of them no longer followed him.
Dear friends, let us once again be filled with wonder by Christ’s words. He, a grain of wheat scattered in the furrows of history, is the first fruits of the new humanity, freed from the corruption of sin and death. And let us rediscover the beauty of the Sacrament of the Eucharist which expresses all God’s humility and holiness. His making himself small, God makes himself small, a fragment of the universe to reconcile all in his love. May the Virgin Mary, who gave the world the Bread of Life, teach us to live in ever deeper union with him.
After the Angelus:
I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present for this Angelus. In the Gospel of today’s liturgy, Jesus presents himself as the living bread come down from heaven. May we always hunger for the gift of his presence in the Eucharistic sacrifice, wherein Jesus gives us his very self as food and drink to sustain us on our pilgrim journey to the Father. God bless all of you!
In the past few days Kyrill I, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, is visiting the Orthodox Church in Poland. I cordially greet His Holiness, as well as all the Orthodox faithful. The schedule of this visit also included meetings with the Catholic bishops and the joint declaration of the desire to cultivate fraternal union and to collaborate in spreading Gospel values in the world today, in the spirit of the same faith in Jesus Christ. This is an important event that promises hope for the future. I entrust its fruits to the benevolence of Mary, as I implore God’s blessing. Praise be to Jesus Christ.
I wish everyone a good Sunday. Thank you. Have a good week.
Then looking out on the square in front of the Apostolic Palace, the Pope invited the faithful present to live well this period, which for many is one of peacefulness and relaxation, saying “may it help us see things that we normally do not see: the beauty of creation, the beauty of the Creator who knows us and loves us; and therefore to be aware that behind those things there is a heart, the heart of the Creator. Let us learn this in these weeks. The Lord blesses you. Happy holidays and a happy Sunday! Best wishes!”.
