FLESH FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD

In the breaking of the bread…

Blessed Carlo Acutis had such an intense love for the Eucharist that he masterminded the Vatican International Exhibition of the Eucharistic Miracles of the World. Since the age of 7 he had never missed a day of receiving Jesus in Holy Communion, and made every effort to pray in front of the tabernacle. “The Eucharist,” he said, “is my highway to heaven.” At 15, that highway led him back to our Father, and now he’s likely to be canonized as the first millennial saint during the Catholic Church's 2025 Jubilee Year.

There are other martyrs who had the same fervour for the Eucharist: St Tarcisius in AD 575 (also the patron saint of altar servers), that young girl in China during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, St Pedro Maldonado in Mexico in 1937, Father Brenner in Hungary in 1957… so many who died defending or protecting the sacred Host.

Here in Singapore, we have the Eucharist within easy reach every day of the week, morning and evening. No one to harass us on the way to receiving it. No one to terrorise or torture us into refuting transubstantiation or rejecting the Host. What great good fortune! If we wanted to, every single day we could join the throng of angels that Saints Angela, John Chrysostom, Brigid, and Padre Pio, among others, said they saw surrounding the altar and tabernacle, as bread becomes the Body of Christ.

Who are we to be so blessed?

…we have known Him; we have been fed.

Jesus gives the answer: He comes to us in the sacred Host because the Father first drew us to Him (Jn 6:44). It wasn’t us that chose Him. Jesus declares that no one can come to Him otherwise, and therein lies our blessing: called, chosen, known by the God that wants us to know Him, too.  He teaches us as He writes His laws on our hearts, and feeds us like He fed Elijah.  We only have to say yes to partnering Him in saving the piece of the world He’s placed us in. Even when it becomes way too much and we’re exhausted and want to give up, if we trust Him and stay on course, He sends His angels to rescue and revitalize us. That’s what Elijah did. Obeying the angel, he ate God’s food and walked for 40 days and nights to the next part of his mission with God.

The Bread of Life discourse will carry us through the next few weeks as we listen to God speaking of His ultimate gift: His own flesh and blood and divinity in the consecrated Host. It’s not a relic. It’s not a prayer aid. The martyrs knew Jesus in the Eucharist. They had absolute belief they were consuming Jesus’ actual flesh and blood, that He was feeding them with Himself. And while the Jews complained that this couldn’t be, that they knew Him because they knew His father and mother, we know Him because God has blessed us with faith that overcomes our human eyes to look beyond the bread and wine.

We don’t need to wait until the feast of Corpus Christi to ponder this amazing grace.

With this Sunday’s readings then, it’s a good time to reflect: have we grown complacent in receiving the living bread of Jesus? Do we still have the same reverence as when we made our First Holy Communion? Have we lost the awe of this most holy of mysteries and are we taking the profound love of God for granted?

Jesus the stranger, Jesus the Lord…

Pope Benedict XVI, in his homily in Vienna on 9 September 2007, referenced the depth of this love: ‘…we ourselves need this look of loving-kindness not only on Sunday but beyond, reaching into our everyday lives. As we ask, we know that this loving gaze has already been granted to us. What is more, we know that God has adopted us as his children, he has truly welcomed us into communion with himself.’

It was the Holy Spirit of God who marked us ‘with his seal for (us) to be set free’ (Eph 4:30-5:2).  In his Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity), 2007, Pope Benedict states that the Eucharist is at the root of every form of holiness, and each of us is called to the fullness of life in the Holy Spirit.

How do we live such a life?

Consuming Him, carrying Him in our very bodies, we become tabernacles within which His heartbeat and presence must fill us with the desire to live as Paul exhorted the Ephesians (Eph 4:30-5:2), to ‘never have grudges…or allow…spitefulness’, to be ‘friends with one another, and kind, forgiving…’. To imitate God, ‘as children of His that He loves’ – that alone should fill us with joy: that since He has welcomed us into communion with Himself, we are not strangers to Him or one another but sharers of His Blood and Body. It’s the joy that right now, already, God becomes a real part of us when we receive the Eucharist and we become a part of Him as we use His grace to bless the world.

How could we not love the living bread?

…be our companion, be our hope. 

In his book Compassionate Christ, Compassionate People:  Liturgical Foundations of Christian Spirituality, Bob Hurd, who composed the hymn In the Breaking of the Bread, describes communion as ‘the most heightened actualisation of Christ’s corporate Body’. In Holy Communion, Jesus is incarnate and fuses with us. Hurd believes the fundamental meaning of the Eucharist is to be sent as Christ’s Body into the world to build up unity and peace. Because they knew Christ was always with them, the disciples didn’t fear the world as they went forth on this mission, and neither should we fear our trek through the world.

We can’t do it alone, of course. But God in us works with us and we are gifted to be partnered with Him in this task of drawing others back to Him, of being His Body in the world. Long ago, Jesus was the unknown companion of the disciples along the road to Emmaus. In this present time, we know He is our companion along the road to eternal life, just as we know He is the hope we need to cling to.  

‘In the Sacrament of the Altar, the Lord meets us and becomes our companion along the way’ (Sacramentum Caritatis). If we have any doubt about our union with Jesus, Pope Benedict says, we need simply look to the Eucharist where Jesus shows us the bond that He willed to establish between Himself and us. ‘In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us. Unlike any other force known to us, the mystery of the Eucharist contains an innate power — a power making the Eucharist the principle of new life within us. That is, a source of revival.’

And what a revival for us who are in distress! As we stumble in our human frailty, we listen to the psalmist and look towards the Father; we praise, glorify and bless Him; we seek and call Him. Then, like Elijah we are fed, renewed, encouraged by God’s angels, accompanied by Him, in the bread that comes down from heaven.

In the weeks ahead as we go to meet Christ in the Eucharist, let’s press stop on our external lives, listen to His voice and His heartbeat within, thank Him for His presence, adore Him with worship, and ask Him to take us into Himself. Ask to live the week in Him and with Him, so that His life flows through us. Then rise, and do all that Paul instructed us to do.

Cherish this holy gift of God’s living flesh in you and take Him into yourself as often as you can! Let us become angels and companions to others struggling to love Christ as He loves us, trying day by day to offer ourselves, in return, as fragrant offerings and pleasing sacrifices to God, who still today gives Himself as flesh for the life of the world.

Article by Joyce Norma, HFC Blog Contributor