Sunday 20 (B-2006): Fed by the Trinity; fed on the Trinity

John 6: 51-58

Jesus was very straight-talking with the people around him in today’s Gospel.

He had previously challenged their motivation for looking for him.

From him they only wanted free food, he said.

They had misunderstood the sign that he had given in the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

They were thinking only with their stomachs.

For his part, he has been talking about satisfying their true hunger, a hunger they seem not to feel because they are so concerned with their bellies.

It is the hunger of their whole being for immortality.

So Jesus spells it out for them.

His language is shocking: the eating of flesh, the drinking of blood. And he is not speaking in metaphors or symbols, but in real terms.

His flesh is real food; his blood is real drink; real because it is the source of immortal life, not of the “fake” life which is mortal life.

In other words, he is the bearer of immortal life in his very flesh and blood.

But we must be clear about what he means.

Jesus is not offering the people his mortal flesh and blood. He is not proposing cannibalism.

Rather, he is offering them his risen body and blood since these live with the life, the strength and the glory of the Blessed Trinity.

His mortal body and blood lived with the life of fallen human nature, which he had assumed in the incarnation, yet without sinning.

Implicit in what he was saying to the Jews was the truth of his resurrection, of his divinity in full and manifest possession of his full humanity, body and soul.

Otherwise he would indeed have been talking nonsense.

He was challenging them to believe, that is, to think on a higher plane, to come themselves to the conclusion that, if his words were to be true, they could not be referring to mortal body and blood, but only to immortal body and blood.

He hoped they would come to believe that, just as a baby in the womb draws food and therefore life (but mortal life) from the body and blood of its mother, so those who fed on the risen body and blood of Jesus would draw life (but risen life) from him.

The body and blood of Christ are replete, are filled, are “saturated” with the immortal life of the Blessed Trinity, since it was the Trinity which raised Jesus from the dead.

It is equally valid to say that the Father raised him and that the Spirit raised him and that he himself, the Son made flesh, also raised himself! The Trinity raised Jesus to life.

But to what life?

Not to this life of ours which, however beautiful it may be, will end in death.

It made no sense for Jesus to die then rise only to die again. That would be akin to reincarnation. Jesus died only once and rose only once, and so shall we.

Had he kept dying and rising, that would have meant that his death on the Cross had failed in its purpose to deliver humanity from death.

So Jesus was raised to eternal life. And what is eternal life?

Let me first say what it is not.

We are inclined to think that eternal means without end. Thus, if you or I found the right vitamin or stem cell, we would not die (is the stem cell mindset, however well-intentioned, but a prelude to a self-proclaimed immortality?).

To think of eternity as time without end reduces it to meaning that the clock does not stop.

But eternity is not about limitless time or advanced biology.

Eternity is not unending mortal life. The terms mortal and eternal are mutually exclusive, just like you cannot speak of a square circle.

Eternity is not about the quantity of life we have, but about the quality of life. It is life of a different order.

Plants have life, but it is not the same kind or quality of life as that of animals; nor is that of animals the same as ours.

Eternal life is that quality of life which is proper to the Most Holy Trinity. It was in view of that life that we received human life in the first place.

Eternal life is the life with which the Trinity breathes. It is divine, Trinitarian life. It is certainly difficult for us to think of any life outside of time and space, yet even our souls already share something of a timeless and spaceless existence ...

It is to the eternal life of the Trinity that the humanity of Jesus is raised in the resurrection.

The resurrection, then, is not simply a private act of the individual called Jesus. Resurrection is not like getting out of bed.

Rather, resurrection introduces a completely new order of existence into the universe, a new principle of being. It is not only new life, but a new way of life. It is that condition which the Bible calls the “new creation.” It is the life of God which has erupted or exploded into the universe. It is a new “big bang.”

In the resurrection, therefore, humanity is lifted out of its mortal conditions of time and space and is given participation in the life of Almighty God which clearly goes beyond the created order.

Eternal life is a completely different dimension from anything we experience in our mortal humanity. And while it is truly the human body and soul which are raised, they are absorbed into that other dimension.

The resurrection is therefore the core of our faith in Jesus Christ!

If he is not risen from the dead, our faith is empty and vain.

Christianity would be at worst an illusion, at best an ideology.

Without the resurrection, the Eucharist means nothing, the Mass means nothing, the Church means nothing, our being here means nothing, our attempts to live good lives, to suffer, to sacrifice and to surrender ourselves in love – ultimately they all mean nothing!

If the resurrection does not mean that our flesh and blood, our soul, mind and heart, our psyche, memory and imagination, indeed our whole selves, are given the sure hope to become immortal with the immortality of God, then Christ has no more to say to us than Aristotle or Ghandi.

Furthermore, if the risen Christ does not make himself available to us in his flesh and blood, then it means that he became human only for himself, as an act of divine curiosity (“I wonder what it’s like to be human?”).

It would mean that, at best, he offered us a great, indeed an exceptional, example of how to live as human beings. But examples remain external to us; they can only offer incentive, demands, abstract notions and principles. Even if an example inspires us, it gives us no wherewithal to imitate it: it is we ourselves who must summons the energy from within.

Jesus did not become man out of idle curiosity, nor did he come only as an example. He came above all to empower (enable, energize) us from the inside of our very being, body and soul, to become truly united with him.

Jesus became flesh so that he could become forever united with every human being, more truly, more fully and more intimately than the union of husband and wife. The marital union ends at death, but union with Christ comes to fruition and fulfillment at death, since death is no more than the doorway to eternity. Death is our moment of explosion into eternal life.

The incarnation was not an academic exercise or a philosophical proposal: it was an act of salvation, an act of total self-surrender by the loving power of God to the fragile and mortal human being, to every human being.

This act of salvation is communicated to us par excellence on our earthly pilgrimage through the unsurpassable marvel of the Eucharist!

The Eucharist, by Christ’s will, is the continuation of the incarnation, only, if I might be permitted to put it this way, it is arguably even more marvelous than the incarnation.

For in the incarnation, Jesus takes on the mortal flesh of one man in order to make the immortality of the resurrection possible for all men.

But in the Eucharist, yet because of the resurrection, his immortal flesh and blood, through the signs of bread and wine, are united with the full humanity of each and every human being who partakes of this sacrament in faith.

With faith! We must of course believe that this sacrament is his body, blood, soul and divinity. Not a symbol, not a sign, not a metaphor, not a simile or an “as if”, but in reality, objectively and unequivocally.

The bread and wine do not become Jesus in virtue of our faith, but in virtue of his sovereign, creative power. Whether a person subjectively believes it or not, his power, through the ordained priest, changes the bread and wine objectively into his body and blood, soul and divinity.

This truth has been called transubstantiation from the high Middle Ages, a term we should remember, study and treasure.

Yet, if we do not believe that Jesus in truth exercises that power in this way, receiving the sacrament will do us no good.

For this sacrament to endow our flesh and blood with the seed of eternal life, our hearts and souls must believe and must sincerely seek union with Jesus, a union of mind, of purpose, of will, of sentiment and of action.

It is a dangerous contradiction to receive this sacrament and at the same time live knowingly and deliberately at odds with the will of Christ, especially if that contradiction is habitual and self-justified.

It is dangerous because it violates the meaning of the sacrament: it violates the loving death of Christ and the glorious work of love of the Trinity which is his resurrection. St. Paul makes it clear that to receive the Eucharist in this way is to eat and drink one’s own condemnation, not salvation.

But when we receive this sacrament with living faith and sincere and persevering love, ready at least to try to love as he loved and live as he lived, then the eternal life of the Trinity, through the flesh and blood of Christ, sets deep roots within us.

Through that most holy of all unions he draws us into that most holy of all communions which is his, and our, beloved Catholic Church.

In the life to come, it will be the unification of all who have believed, loved or sought him with sincere hearts, and of the universe itself, in the sacred intimacy of the life and love of the Blessed Trinity.

What else in this life or in death can compare with this gift?

            What else can bear such fruit in eternity?

When we say “amen” to the Eucharist today, let it be a defining moment, a moment of truth and renewal for us.

Let it be a moment in which we bring without fear and with immense trust the entirety of our passing lives to him.

Let it be a moment in which we allow the entirety of Trinitarian life and love to permeate all we are, have and do through the Wonderful, the Blessed and the Most Holy Sacrament of his Sacred Body and Blood.

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday, August 20^th, 2006

Annunciation, DC: 11.30 am & 1.00 pm