Memorial of Saint Athanasius
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May 2, 2020This Gospel passage today is followed after yesterday, but I used the Gospel for St Joseph feast yesterday, so you did not hear the progression of the two Gospel readings. It has been named the Bread of Life discourse.
It is chapter 6 of John, where Jesus really hammers the point that His Flesh becomes food for us as bread.
Today some of the Jews are asking who can accept this, it is a hard teaching that the bread become His body. Those that did not accept it left. Here we are almost 2000 years later and now the same question is arising or has arisen.
We recite the Creed every Sunday and the shorter one, the Apostles Creed when we pray the rosary. Did you ever notice it is the basic main points of our faith - in fact 12 of them, yet that the belief in the Eucharist - the bread and wine as His Body and Blood are not in there? Why? Because until the 1500s no one questioned it.
Even though there were the Armenian churches of the East split in the first 300 years, and the rest of the Orthodox in 1054, no one ever questioned the bread and wine truly becoming His Body and Blood until the 1500s with Martin Luther’s break off.
Now Protestants question it and do not believe it, as well as over 65% of Catholics do not believe it. They think it is only a symbol. Jesus can say this same question today, “Does this shock you? As many left, he allowed them to leave.
First of all, if it was only a symbol, Jesus would have said something like, I am speaking figuratively, but He did not. He did not invite them back - He let them leave Him and let them leave belief in Him.
Look at the rest of the Gospel and first reading. No Protestant or weak Catholic that I know questions the cure of Aeneas, or the raising of Tabitha back to life, yet we will question the bread and wine becoming the true Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus.
This is the center of our Faith. Without the Eucharist we can be any other denomination. Without the Eucharist, the scandals of the church would have destroyed us, but because it is real and true, we are the one true faith, and nothing can destroy us.
It is not a hard concept at all. Jesus left Divinity and became human yet was Divine. Those that knew Him saw Him as a human, yet He was divine spiritually. They saw Him as a human. No Christian will dispute this. Now He did the same thing and became food, - still Divine, still Jesus the human, but now bread and wine, the same concept. It is HIM!!!
At the end of the Gospel, Peter said, to whom shall we go? We should say the same, to whom shall we go?
Who else and where else can we get the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus as food to nourish us?
At this beginning of May, the month of Mary who gave birth to Jesus, contemplate this awesome, most awesome gift, and make the Eucharist more the center of your life than ever before. Do not walk away.
Help those who have rejected this notion to know Jesus in the Eucharist, and in this way, receive the words of everlasting life - The Word became flesh nourishing us forever.
