The Eucharist is food for our journey toward a self-emptying way of life
Jesus promised that those who consume His Body and Blood will have eternal life. Why, then, is there so much fear and anxiety about the future? Even with that eternal assurance, we seem to live with so much insecurity. The Body and Blood of Jesus have the power to raise us to eternal life, but we too often keep turning back to less powerful things like gossip, divisiveness, hatred, warfare and violence. None of those things has the power to raise us to eternal life, but we keep resorting to them as if they do.
For most of us who have been living this life of faith for a while, we have learned that when Jesus promised eternal life, it involves more than just coming to church for Mass, receiving Communion and then going home and living our lives as we always have. At the Last Supper with His disciples, Jesus gave them the gift of His Body and Blood, and then was beaten, betrayed and killed. To eat His Body and drink His Blood does not move us into a comfortable way of life where we can simply fit in with everyone else, but it moves us into the pattern that Jesus lived. The Eucharist is food for the journey and that journey is meant to be one of voluntarily self-emptying ourselves for the sake of not just our friends, but our enemies and those who would do us harm. No wonder we have some feelings of insecurity and anxiety.
If we have been going to Mass, receiving Communion and continuing to live the way everyone else does, the celebration of the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) should be an awakening. Who am I as a disciple of Jesus to believe that I am called to less than what Jesus did for us? Who am I to believe that Jesus did it all and has left us a journey of simple, comfortable and convenient life until we are taken into heaven? This awakening will call each of us to a deeper commitment to the ways of Jesus. As we saw in the early community in the Acts of the Apostles, they were challenged with inclusion of foreign groups into that newly formed community and were challenged to share their resources with folks who were poorer than they were.
A life of voluntary self-emptying is not about convenience or material security. It’s a call to form the community of disciples in the same way that Jesus formed it. Notice the disciples He picked. They were not all of the same nationality or political belief, but they were all included in the community. They did not have the same economical resources or the same educational backgrounds, but they were all included. Jesus welcome those who were considered sinners, people who were not true believers and even people who practiced various religious rituals. The early community that Jesus formed was open to everyone, but Jesus noticed quickly that there was one group that was difficult for Him to help and bring to a deeper spiritual formation. He noticed right away that the self-righteous people believed that they already knew everything and they didn’t need His help. In fact, they saw Him as a threat to their status quo. The gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost should challenge all of us to look at our own self-righteousness and see how that keeps us from being humbly formed by the word of God and the movement of the Holy Spirit in our world.
As St. Paul stated, we are the body of Christ. We are nourished by His Body and Blood along the journey so that we can be an example to others of how a true Christian community looks and acts. May this feast encourage and challenge us to move closer to the ways of Jesus.
