This is our 5th Sunday reading from chapter 6 of John's gospel. This particular Chapter presents John's teachings on the Bread of Life, the Eucharist. John's gospel is the last of the four gospels to be written, so the thinking on the Eucharist is highly developed. Three generations of Christians have already been celebrating and reflecting on the mystery.
The Eucharist is the richest of the sacraments in that there are several levels or aspects to it. We can never hope to exhaust its meaning. The first level of course is that it is bread and wine, the Bread of Life and the cup of salvation. So the Eucharist is solidly grounded in human experience: the bread that sustains and the wine that gladdens our heart, as the psalms puts it. The Eucharist is the primary nourishment of the Christian and the Christian community.
The next level of meaning is of course that fact that we perform this ritual in memory of the Lord Jesus, obeying his command: "Do this in memory of me." It is primarily through the celebration of the Eucharist that the knowledge and memory of Jesus has been preserved and handed in the Christian community for over 2,000 years now. It is in the community that Jesus alive. And, when we read the scriptures and recount the deeds of Jesus, he is really with us.
This is the third level of significance is an extension of his command to 'do this in memory of me'. It is the focus of our identity. It is sacred to us. Parallels are often drawn between the secular symbols of a nation and the religious symbols of a Church. For example, the unique history and memory of a particular nation is vested in the national flag. And a whole reverential ritual has been devised so that that history and memory may be honoured. Somehow, the struggles that gave us our shape and identity as a people are embodied in that flag. The flag reminds us too of the great sacrifices involved in forging that identity. Memory is also central to the Christian Eucharist.
The Eucharist relates to us in a similar fashion, but on a religious level, obviously. The Eucharist has always been regarded as the sacred core of Catholicism. We know from human experience that those we know and love can be present to us in very different ways. They can be present to us as we think of them and what they mean to us; they can be present to us through a letter, or a phone call, for example. If they send a present or a photograph, they are present to us in a different way still. It has been the constant teaching of the Church that Jesus is present to his people in a great variety of ways: through prayer, through devotions, through the helping hands of our neighbours and friends.
But the Church teaches that he is present to his people in a very special and intense way through the seven sacraments. And the most intense and important presence of all is his presence in the Eucharist. There the good news of his saving death and resurrection is recounted again and again. The Church calls the Eucharist 'the summit and the source of the life of the Christian people.' In other words, the celebration of the Eucharist expresses most clearly what and who we are; and through it we become most truly what we are called to be.
The fifth level of significant is the most challenging of all: the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ. This doesn't simply mean that the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. It means that, if we celebrate the Eucharist properly, we too will become the Body and Blood of Christ. But we can only become the Body and Blood of Christ if we strive to live as he would have us live: to look out for each other and to care for each other as brothers and sisters. Eucharist mean building up the community.
Too often in the past we reduced the Eucharist to a private devotion, concentrating on the individual relationship between the single worshipper and God. This misunderstanding was best seen in the concept of the 'private Mass'. A Mass without a community makes no sense. There are four central actions in every Eucharist: we take the bread, we bless the bread, we break the bread and we share the bread. In our offertory prayer, we remind the congregation that we are offering the fruit of the earth and of the vine, the work of human hands. He returns it to us in communion as the Bread of Life, bread that had first to be broken in order that it could be given and shared.
Finally, the Eucharist is a great challenge: we are sent out into the world after every Eucharist to live the Eucharist in the world. In other words, to bless the world and to accept it as Gods gift to the human race; while we are obliged to address the sufferings and injustices in the world, we must accept the world as a great gift too. We are challenged by the Eucharist to break and share our resources with our less fortunate brothers and sisters. This is the ultimate challenge: to live life as unselfishly he lived it.
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