Corpus Christi 2011.   June 26.  Our Lady of Grace 5:15, 9:30.   I Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a.  I Corinthians 10:16-17.  John 6:51-58.

Eating is a necessity and a habit familiar to all of us.  We need to eat in order to stay alive.  We need to eat to stay healthy.  We are growing in our consciousness that what we eat is very important.  Heath is about much more than eating to say alive.  Many recent studies show that too many of us eat foods that add to our size and our weight but do very little to make us healthy.  In fact eating may even destroy our health and limit our mobility.  This past week all the priests of the Archdiocese met in Rochester for our bi-annual assembly.  One of the speakers talked about the regular Sunday routine in his family when he was a child.  If the children were good during Mass the family went to a restaurant with a huge selection of bakery goods.  He talked about pressing his little nose to the bakery selection window – you know like the one in Perkins – knowing that he could have any sugar coated, juicy item that he wanted.  Every week he chose a big donut stuffed with raspberry jelly. The speaker said that his grandmother was a very wise woman.  One day he asked her what happened to the donut after he ate it. His grandmother said that the donut went deep into his stomach and was dissolved and absorbed there until the jelly donut became a part of him.  She explained that the food that we eat becomes a part of who we are. 

A long, long time ago St. Augustine (born in 354 AD) told us that when we receive Jesus in Holy Communion Jesus turns nature upside down. When we eat ordinary food the food we eat disappears and becomes a part of us.  If we eat many jelly donuts we don’t become a jelly donut, but we may well become too much of ourselves. When we eat the Body of Jesus and drink the Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion Jesus turns us into himself.  Jesus makes us his living Body the Church.  Becoming the Body of Christ is the first thing that participating in the Mass does in our lives, week after week.  The Mass makes us more and more deeply and truly the Body of Christ present in the world today.

Jesus said, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give in my flesh for the life of the world.”   When a quarrel broke out about how Jesus could give us his flesh to eat, Jesus didn’t change what he had already said. Jesus didn’t back up and say, you misunderstand me.  I am only using an image or I am only speaking in a poetic way.  No, Jesus stated even more strongly what he had already said. “Truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you… 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.”   In the mind of Jesus and in the two thousand year old tradition of the Catholic and other apostolic churches Holy Communion is much more than a symbol, or a reminder, or a ritual.  The Church has always taught and we believe that when we receive Communion we receive the true and living Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

The most potent reality in our lives and in the life of the Church is the celebration of the Eucharist.  This is true because the Eucharist has the power to transform us into the Body of Christ and make us the living and saving presence of Jesus Christ in our world.  Every time we eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus we live more deeply in Christ and Jesus lives more deeply in us. But it is not magic.  We can receive communion out of habit, or with little devotion and affection and very little will happen in us and through us.  Our disposition and our faith are very important in opening our hearts to the power of Christ as we receive him in Communion.  It is possible to receive Christ into our mouths and our stomachs and never really receive him into our hearts.   To receive Christ with power demands that we prepare to receive him before Communion, that we welcome him with reverence in receiving Communion, that we spend time after Communion loving Jesus and speaking with Jesus, as we seek to live Jesus in our daily lives.

Jesus is the healthiest food we can eat because Jesus alone can make us healthy, generous and good in spirit, mind, heart and body.  Jesus alone can make us saints.   I would like to offer these suggestions for growth in our lives through the power of the Eucharist:      

• Come to Mass every Sunday.  It is an awesome gift to receive the God of Universe in Communion. Jesus comes to transform our lives as we offer praise to God.  There will always be reasons for not going to Mass every Sunday.  Most of them are bad reasons once we understand the power of Holy Communion.
• Prepare for Sunday Mass with prayer during the week.  Talk to Jesus and tell him that you long to receive him into you heart in Communion.  Look forward to Sunday by longing for Communion in prayer every day of the week.
• Come to Mass a little early.  My experience tells me that we have to warm up before we perform well.  We warm up for sports, the car works better if we warm it up on a cold day.  We are more effective when we warm up before important events.  Come to Mass a little early and give yourself time to settle down and warm up.
• Don’t hurry away after communion.  The most precious and powerful time may well be after we have received Jesus.  Why are we in a hurry to go out the door with Jesus still fresh in our mouth?  Those who want to avoid the crowd or the parking lot may find that staying in church to pray until things calm down outside is an added grace and a good witness to the young.
• Finally the power of the Eucharist must show in our lives.  St. John Chrysostom, a bishop who was born in 349 AD said, “Do you wish to honor the Body of Christ? Then do not disdain Him when you see Him in rags. After having honored Him in Church with silken vestments, do not leave Him to die of cold outside for lack of clothing. For it is the same Jesus Who says, “This is My Body” and Who says “I was hungry but you would not feed Me. Whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.”

Celebrating and receiving the Eucharist is the most revolutionary thing we could do in overcoming the violence, false values and confusion of the world in which we live.  Living in a new and holy way begins here in church.  For the Eucharist we give God thanks and praise.