Eighteenth Sunday - 2024

 When Jesus provided bread to feed the multitude, they expected that their struggle to acquire their daily bread was over. Now their life was secure. Never again would they have to face hunger, for Jesus would feed them.

It is easy to see how people would be drawn to Jesus. Here is someone who is able to secure life itself, proof positive that he is truly a man of God, a prophet like the great prophets of old, the one God had promised to send.

But now confusion is about to set in. Jesus is missing. Where is he? Finding him on the "other side", (note the significance), does not seem to help for his message has changed, he seems to be distancing himself from "the provider of bread". "On the other side you welcomed us, sat us down and fed us. Now on this side you tells not to work for this life's bread. We are confused."  

Food that perishes

We are alive because we eat the bread that grows up out of this earth. But the life it gives will soon perish. Jesus tells us that there is a bread that comes down to this earth from heaven. This bread gives eternal life.

Food that endures for eternal life

The people now try to regain the other Jesus, the one who provides this world's bread, the one with whom they could identify. At this point Jesus makes a startling claim, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst”. What is he saying? Are we to eat Jesus?  

We understand the process of the metabolism of food. We ingest the wheat in the form of bread, then our bodies use its components to make new components, compatible with our bodies. (In metabolism some substances are broken down to yield energy for vital processes while other substances, necessary for life, are synthesized - definition) 

In "Communion" There are two mysteries taking place. Firstly, the substance that is bread is changed into the substance of Jesus' glorified bodily presence. Secondly, in the act of "Communion", the communicant's substantial form co-mingles with that of Jesus, in a profoundly intimate way . Remember, the glorified Jesus is now freed from the constraints of natural world as we know them. Eternal life is a radically new form of life.

Communion in Jesus is the summit of every possible meaning we give to to what is intimate. Jesus uses our experiences of things that are intimate to help us get a rough idea of what the intimacy of "Communion" in him really is. 

In the celebration of the Eucharist, at the offertory, the priest lifts up the bread brought to altar for consecration saying: "Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life."
Then a few drops of water are mingled into the chalice of wine with these words; "By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity."

These drops of water sink into the wine until they too become wine. In the act of taking Communion, our being sinks into the being that is Jesus, and we share in the very divinity that is Jesus'. This is the COMMUNION that is the experience of the faithful sharing in the Eucharist - what we mean by the Communion of Saints.

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a “Communion” in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a “Communion” in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. 1 Cor. 10:16,17