AT THE CROSSROADS Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Commentary on John 6:51-58. The gospel story puts into climax the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with just five loaves of bread and two fish. By this act people recognized him as a prophet and more, they wanted to crown him king. But Jesus would not have anything to do with it, so he escaped from their popular clamor. Jesus’ capacity to do such mighty deed was proven again by the narrative of his walking on the waters. The people’s amazement of his person increased when they found him at Capernaum, without seeing his sailing in the boat with his disciples from one side of the lake to another. The people’s question: “Rabbi, when did you get here?” led the conversation to a higher plane: from the food that the people ate, to the living bread from heaven to eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man. It is a curve of desire: from the satisfaction of the natural hunger for food, rising to meet the need for eternal life and down again to the food for the life of the world, this time with a new qualitative difference: Eternal life begins in the world today, when we penetrate it with love and self-giving to serve the other. God is the sole source of nourishment for our life. In what could be the mundane existence of the Old Testament times, God feeds us with the bread that nourishes our life, perishable and mortal. But in the new time, in Jesus, we are fed with the bread that will nourish us for eternal life. It is a food that looks forward to the Cross which gives us Jesus’ body and blood, the true bread and drink of the new and eternal way of living. Yet how many of us today receive Jesus in the holy communion but are still actually very much living the old ways of the Old Testament times, and not the new and liberating way of love and self-giving of Jesus? How Do I Love In A New Way? This question has been raised since the last half of the 20th century. With the fast changing times, nothing seems to be permanent and constant anymore. With the advent of the new sciences, especially with the computer and digital age, everything can be explained in its production, in its passing and in the development of new brands. These experiences of the dynamics of the material world and the speed of its changes and development have affected the human psyche and human behavior. Is it still possible to commit oneself to a beloved for a long time? Is it ever possible to love at all? These fast changes also leave the human heart in the anguish of emptiness and lack. The words of Jesus come back to us alive: His love is his self-giving across the boundaries of time and space to all of humanity and all of creation. There is joy and satisfaction over the new discoveries that improve our ways of living; there is also the constant experience of human need, suffering and death. Why Do We Receive Holy Communion? Against the individualism and privatism of our time let us be givers and builders of communities once more. Against the commercialism and absolute reliance on science and technology today, let us re-cover our sense of the sacred once again. Jesus offers his way of loving as the constant of our time: receive him in Holy Communion, and extend this love of communion with him to our never-ending commitment to humanity and our common search for a fuller life! Fr. Ben
Posted on: Thu, 19 Jun 2014 23:26:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015