Summary: When you step forward before one of us distributing the Body of Christ, bow and extend you open hand for the gift of this Bread of Life that comes down from heaven, this living bread, flesh for the life of the world, you say: “Amen.”At that moment, something happens, and I’m not sure it is always the right thing.Our Eucharistic piety usually directs us to a momenet of solotude in private prayer before we are called to common prayer in a song of praise and thanksgiving. This shift in the movement of the liturgy is one that should reflect an internal movement as well, and I’m not sure it always works.While no one has yet responded to the words: “Body of Christ” with the words: “It’s all mine.” we may not be far from it. There is always a temptation, and it is a temptation, to think that this is some kind of personal, private experience or a priviledged experience of intimacy with Christ. This is why I often recoil a bit when someone mistakenly reaches out to grab the Body of Christ. This is not “mine” to grab and run. There is something being said in these verses from John’s Gospel that is essential to our common understanding not only of what has been given to us, but why.This gift, “my flesh for the life of the world” is given for the world. It is not my personal and private possession. “The Bread that I will give” is given for the life of the world, not just for me: for the world. So, how is it going to get to the world? The answer to that question is the essential message of this Gospel. Think deeply for moment: BREAD, FLESH, LIFE FOR THE WORLD. The Eucharist is not flesh, it is bread. That is the essential element. If it were not bread it could not become the Holy Eucharist. We are the Flesh. We enter into the mystery of the Incarnation when we receive and consume this Eucharistic Bread of Life, and in that awesome experience, it is our flesh that must give life to this world: our flesh nourished and strengthened, consecrated and commissioned to bring life to this world.The issue is: “Why do we get this gift?” “What are we to do with it?” What are we to become becasue of it?” The answer is all revealed here in John 6. This Eucharist gift is not all mine - it is not mine to keep or simply to adore. Once I receive this gift, the Bread of Life, I am responsible for the life of the world; that bread becomes my flesh in union now with the Body of Christ which is given for the life of the world.But look at what happens when we fail to perceive and respond to what is revealed here. We turn the Eucharist into a private devotion that may or may not move us out of ourselves, our little world of wants and needs, pains and sorrows. This is not the intent of the one who has given us this gift. He left us this gift so that we might continue his work. It is not given to me and you to hold onto like some prize treasure we find and then hide in order to keep it all for ourselves. The life of the world depends upon our flesh doing something and becoming something because of the Bread of Life we share.This Mass is not just for us, it is for the world. The Word of God feeds us, the Bread of Life feeds us so that we can satisfy the deepest hunger of this world for forgiveness, for vision, leadership, hope, and joy. I am convinced that if we lived our faith this way, we would need Mass, and wait and long for next Sunday to be fed again, renewed, and encouraged with the Christ’s vision of the Kingdom of Heaven that has already come into the world. Likewise, I am beginning to suspect that the reason some are not here is that they spent the week preoccupied with themselves, their jobs, their worries and concerns. Instead of feeding the world, they are exhausted from their own little world and are too tired to find their way back into the life of the world.You try living the Gospel this week for the life of the world, and you will be hungry again in no time at all, and we will gather again around this table to encourage each other, lift up the discouraged, and heal the broken hearted; and Christ will come again to fill us with his life.
