This Sunday, we hear the last in the series of five Gospel readings from John 6. After hearing about Jesus Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, some people found it too difficult to accept and they walked away from Him. But Saint Peter and the other apostles re-committed themselves to believing in and following Jesus. They knew that being in Communion with Jesus is where they would find true life.
With the help of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, let us contemplate for a few moments being in Communion with Jesus Christ and His substantial Presence in the Eucharist:
How tenderly Jesus speaks when He gives Himself to His own in Holy Communion. “For My Flesh is true food, and My Blood is true drink. Whoever eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood remains in Me and I in him…” (John 6:51-58)… Holy Communion, as the word implies, is the intimate union of Jesus and our soul and body. If we want to have life and have it more abundantly, we must live in the flesh of the Lord (He gives us His glorified Body and Blood in the Eucharist, supernatural food, to nourish and sustain us). The saints understood this so well that they could spend hours in preparation and still more in thanksgiving for the Holy Eucharist. This needs no explanation, for who could explain “the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God?… How incomprehensible are His judgments!” cried Saint Paul, “And how unsearchable His ways, for who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Romans 11:33-36). When communicating with Christ in your heart after partaking of the Living Bread, remember what our Lady, the Mother of Jesus, must have felt when the Holy Spirit overpowered her, and she, Mary, who was full of grace, became full with the Body of Christ. The Spirit in her was so strong that immediately she “rose in haste” to go and serve (Luke 1).
In the Scripture we read of the tenderness of God for the world, and we read that God loved the world so much that He gave His Son Jesus to come to be like us and to bring us the Good News that God is love, that God loves you and me (John 1-3; 1 John 4:16). God wants us to love each other as He loves each one of us (Ephesians 5). We all know, when we look at the Crucifix, how much Jesus loved us. When we look at the Eucharist, we know how much He loves us now. That’s why He made Himself the Bread of Life to satisfy our hunger for His love, and then, as if this was not enough for Him, He made Himself the hungry one, the naked one, the homeless one, so that you and I can satisfy His “hunger” for our human love. For we have been created for that. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has created us to love and to be loved. May He bring us all, by His grace, to everlasting love and life in Heaven.
With peace and prayers in Christ,
Fr. William
Saint Clement Parish 