I Am the Bread of Life

Saint Anne Church - June 13, 1998

Today we celebrate the wonderful gift Jesus made to us in the Holy Eucharist. In this Sacrament, we have not only precious graces of the Lord; we have Jesus, really present in our midst: body, soul and divinity. He comes to live in us. The same Jesus who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago. As we receive him in Holy Communion, he comes to dwell in us, to share his life with us, to be "our life."

In recent years, the Gallup Poll people have found, to their astonishment, that a good number of Catholics no longer believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. They find this too hard to believe. Like some of the disciples of Jesus, one day, as we read in John's Gospel, Chapter 6. Jesus has just said, for the first time "I myself am the living bread come down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world" (Jn 6:51).

(John continues in the Gospel, saying:) "At this the Jews quarreled among themselves, saying 'How can he give us his flesh to eat?' Thereupon Jesus said to them: 'Let me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you... My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink." (Jn 6:52-55) He had not yet explained, as he would at the Last Supper, that he was referring to eating his flesh and blood under the form or appearance of Bread and Wine. But Jesus did not budge, even when a number of his disciples abandoned him, saying: this is too hard to believe.

Now we know Jesus was not talking about "cannibalism", eating human bodies in the obvious sense of the word. Yet, the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is a great mystery no one will really understand this side of heaven. We believe that somehow by the power of God the consecrated bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ.

Surely, the bread and wine we receive in Holy Communion does not look like Jesus. It still looks like bread and wine and tastes like bread and wine. But Jesus said plainly at the Last Supper: "Take ye and eat. This is my Body; take ye and drink, this is my blood." He did not say: this looks like my body, like my blood; for it did not; but this is my body, this is my blood. St. Paul understood these words so literally, as they sounded, that he said: "He who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks a judgment on himself. So, a man should examine himself first; only then should he eat of the bread and drink of the cup." (1 Cor 11:27-29)

Some Catholics today are like those disciples of Jesus who abandoned him when he spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. It's absurd, it's impossible to believe that. So, they say: The Holy Eucharist is not the real thing; it only reminds us what Jesus did at the Last Supper. It is just a memorial meal. Recalling the love of Jesus for his disciples and their love for him. But, that is not what Jesus said. That is not what the early Church and the Catholic Church throughout the centuries believed, up to the days of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century.

What we believe is that Jesus is present under the appearance of Bread and Wine. An example may help us to understand what we are talking about.

Think of the Incarnation: the Son of God took a human body, born of the Virgin Mary. A real human nature: body, mind, soul, like us. He had a name: Jesus of Nazareth. We believe he was God the Son, the 2nd person of the Blessed Trinity.

But the Apostle John says plainly: "No one has ever seen God." (Jn 1:18) Why? Because God is a spirit, he has no body that can be seen touched, heard. What we have seen in Jesus is the man, who was also God. God the Son revealed himself to us through Jesus the man. God, invisible in himself, assumed a human nature, a body, in which he could be seen, through which he could speak, express love in a human way, etc.

The presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, is something of a mystery like that. Just as Jesus, the man, did not look like God, yet he was able to act like God, do things only God could do. The consecrated bread and wine in the Eucharist do not look like Jesus, the Son of Mary, the preacher of Galilee. He comes to us in the Eucharist under borrowed appearances of food, but he assures us it is really he. A mystery? Surely. But one of those things that God does in our life. No greater a mystery than the fact that God, the 2nd person, became Jesus the man, the Son of Mary when he decided to come to earth and become our Savior. To accomplish a human task, he took a human form. It was still God among us in a human form, as the Eucharist is Jesus under the appearance of Bread and Wine. We know it because God has revealed it to us. We know it when we receive the faith.

This is a great mystery. Everything about God is a great mystery to us. Creation itself is a tremendous mystery. How does he do it? I don't know, you don't know, nobody can understand. Creation is producing something where there was nothing. Such is the power and the mystery of God.

The presence of Jesus in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist is likewise, a mystery. What still looks like bread and wine, and tastes like bread and wine, has now only the outer form and appearance of bread and wine. How do we know? Only because God, the author of countless miracles we do not understand, told us so. "Take and eat: This is my body, this is my blood." And he told us that by eating this mysterious bread, he comes to dwell in us and share his life with us. Just as God the Son came to us in the form of the man Jesus, that we humans might see him, hear him, so Jesus the God-man became visible for all times in the form of food: Bread and wine, that we may understand that spiritually he is food for our soul, food that gives us divine life, the very life of Jesus, dwelling in us. Yes, the consecrated bread and wine are truly the body and blood of Jesus.

When we believe that, what joy to receive our Lord, the real Jesus, under the appearance of bread and wine. He is there in totality: his body, soul, and divine life, to come and dwell in our souls and share that life of his with us.

A couple of stories will help us realize more vividly the awesome reality of Holy Communion.

A first story is one that preachers of old used to like to tell. It's about a Protestant woman who said to a Catholic friend: "If I believed as you do that Jesus is really present in the Holy Eucharist, I would crawl on my hands and knees to go and receive him every day."

Now, the moving story about a Protestant minister who converted to the Catholic faith in 1986. His name is Scott Hahn. While still a Protestant, he studied the Catholic faith just to be able to prove by the Bible that we were in error. The more he read the Scriptures with that in mind, the more he realized that one thing after another, the Catholic Church was right according to the Word of God. He even took a course at the Catholic University of Marquette to really understand the Catholic faith from Catholic theologians.

One day, he went to Mass for the first time at the University parish. There, to his amazement, he saw rank and file people, working people from the neighborhood, coming for the 12 o'clock noon mass. "I looked at their devotion, their sincerity, taking time off in the middle of the day to worship.

I watched how, during the consecration their heads were bowed, their lips were moving... I was moved. I went back the next day, and the next and the next. Within a week or two I had fallen in love head over heels with the Mass. The Eucharist became in a sense the all-controlling, the central desire of my life. I can't describe to you the passionate hunger and thirst that came over me as I saw all those people going up and being fed with the Body and Blood of Our Lord."

The more we believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, the more we shall receive this sacrament with joy and fervor! Like Scott Hahn and many other converts I could name, we shall hunger and thirst for that heavenly food which is Jesus himself "I am the Bread of Life. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life within him and I will raise him up on the last day." (Jn 6:40) AMEN.

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