Today our readings continue their five-week summer holiday. We are by the shore of Lake Galilee, in Capernaum. Jesus is speaking about himself as the Bread of Life. We are staying at Hotel St John the Evangelist, listening to his 6th chapter. The brisk and business-like St Mark is laid aside for a few Sundays. And the sunshine that’s warming us is Christ himself and especially Christ in the Eucharist.
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven: whoever eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the world.” The Lord is saying that what the manna was for the Israelites going through the desert, he is for believers. More broadly, he’s saying that everything food is for our ordinary life, he is for our real, inner life, our life as persons before God, our eternal life, the life of God in us. He is the food for sharing in God’s love which is the purpose of our life. And today he starts to be very specific: the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. He is looking to his self-offering on the Cross, that offering that, at the Last Supper, on the eve of his Passion he made a sacrament, the Eucharist. And then, presupposing his Resurrection and Ascension, he says: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” He is looking forward to the life of the Church and the celebration of the Eucharist which is its heart.
As with the crowd in Capernaum, so with us: we start objecting. There are many delicate issues around receiving Holy Communion. It presupposes we believe and are baptised. Normally, it requires that we be in full communion with the Catholic Church. In the Latin rite, we ask children to wait until the age of reason and sufficient catechesis for their First Communion. If we have committed grave sin, we need to approach communion through the door of confession, the Sacrament of Reconciliation. If we are in an intimate relationship outside the Christian norm, we need to tidy our house, as it were, before we receive him under our roof. St Paul warns against receiving Holy Communion unworthily. This is not the Church building road-blocks; it’s clearing the passage for the Eucharist to do its work. These are things we must not forget, any of us; they are not to be taken lightly. I’d be failing you as your pastor if I didn’t now and then remind you of them. We may need time and work to come to Holy Communion, but we are always welcome in God’s house, and at Mass, and everywhere and always the Lord is always open to our prayers. He’s the great listener. He’s the patient Father, able to wait. He’s the Holy Spirit always urging us to respond.
But there’s another thing I want to pick up. In the 1st reading, Wisdom, understood as a woman, a hostess, promises her guests wine as well as food. In the 2nd reading, St Paul says, don’t get drunk on wine, but drink the wine of the Spirit. And in the Gospel, out of the blue really, the Lord four times mentions not just eating his flesh, but drinking his blood. This is extraordinary. It’s even shocking. There are countries where the blood of tigers is value with the idea that if a man drinks tiger blood he’ll become a real tiger of a man. Crude nonsense, of course. But why does Jesus call us to drink his blood? The shedding of his blood on Calvary was the giving of his life and the sign of his love. And to drink this blood is to take this life and love into ourselves, to make it our own. The blood of Christ makes Christs of us. We become his blood-brothers and sisters. This is our human calling. Not gruesome nonsense, not cannibalism, but amazing grace: Christification. This is the true Wisdom Proverbs talks about (1st reading). This is the wise and joyful life St Paul evokes (2nd reading). It’s what filled every saint. It’s what enabled two saints, a woman, Edith Stein, and a man, Maximilian Kolbe, whom we remembered last week, to give their lives in the horror of Auschwitz. I met it the other day in Orkney, in a working lady who day in, day out, after her work spends 5 hours a day sitting beside her silent, elderly husband in a care home, just being there for him, as Christ is there for us.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Taste it in the liturgy and see it in life. Taste it in the chalice and see it Christian charity. God be praised for these things!
St Mary’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, 18 August 2024
