Food and Life (Corpus Christi Sunday)

The more grains of food we drop on the ground for a fowl, the friendlier it becomes and the closer it comes to us. Food conditions animals to become attached to the person who feeds them. This is a very natural conditioning which is also operative in the human person. 

Our attitude to food is built on the instinct of survival which is found in every living thing. If we don’t eat, we will wither away like a grass without water. Food is needed for our survival, growth and development. No two ways about it!

And that is why Jesus considered food/bread a good starting point for his teaching on the Eucharist which later turned out to be a hard teaching for many of His followers even to this day. Yes, He knew that it would be a hard teaching; that is why he began with bread, using something that was very common to the people, in order to drive them into the mystery which will be very difficult for them to accept. We see that His entire teaching on the Eucharist in John 6 all started with the miracle of the loaves, just mere loaves. From the physical food (miracle of loaves), Jesus gradually led them to the spiritual food, the Eucharist. A great teacher He was!

In the first reading from Deuteronomy, Moses told the people of Israel pointblank that God used hunger (occasioned by lack of bread/food) in order to humble them; and then fed them with manna (a special kind of bread) in order to draw them into a certain belief that man does not live on bread alone but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God: from lack of food, then provision of manna and then led them to a spiritual fact that God is the true bread, the true manna, the true food – without whom, they can never live.

And that is why Jesus did not mince words when He said that His flesh is that real, true and living bread and His Blood is the true drink: whoever that eats His flesh and drinks His blood shall live forever. 

A very hard teaching! Still hard and difficult to comprehend for many Catholics, not to talk of other Christians from other denominations! To some people, the Eucharist is just a symbol of Christ’s Body and Blood, not His real body and blood; to some, it is just mere bread and wine eaten and drunk at fellowship! To some other ones, it means many different things. But if our authority is the Word of God, we shouldn't deny a fact of the Scripture when Christ took bread and said it is His Body and took a cup of wine and said that it is His Blood (cf. 1 Cor. 11:24): “My flesh is food indeed; my blood is drink indeed” (John 6:55). He didn't say that they are SYMBOLS of His Flesh and Blood. His statement was not metaphorical; it was not figurative; it was not a symbolic language: it was a statement of fact. Yes, it was and is very difficult to conceive or think about or imagine or even accept; but just as every other mystery of our faith, we must accept it.

As we celebrate this mystery today, we are not trying to prove how the bread we break at mass becomes the real Body of Christ and the wine His real Blood. Amongst other things, we celebrate to remind ourselves that all of us who partake of this divine meal, who eat from the same bowl and drink from the same cup, must be one. That is one amongst many spiritual benefits of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is called Holy COMMUNION: something that should establish communion amongst those who partake of it. That is what St Paul is proving in 1 Corinthians 10. 

Let us be reminded that anyone who receives communion and still causes division, instigates hatred and promotes sectionalism, tribalism and discrimination does not actually understand what he or she is receiving.