1. True Food & True Drink (Transubstantiation)

    Firstly, if you have any doubt as to whether Jesus has been serious about giving His flesh to eat as the bread of life. You can put away those doubts today. Our Blessed Lord is not speaking symbolically, He has not and will not stop and reassure His disciples that He was not telling us to “literally” eat His flesh and drink His blood. Our Lord says it very clear in the middle of today’s gospel. In fact, this is also the middle of the bread of life discourse. These words: “For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” 

    There is no doubt as to the purpose of Jesus’ discourse on the Bread of Life. He intends this gift of the Bread of Life to truly become His Body and His Blood. So then, we can be assured that when the priest consecrates the bread and wine with the words spoken by Jesus during the Last Supper, the Body and Blood, together with the Soul and Divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained in the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist. The word that the Church uses to entitle this mystery of the Eucharist is “transubstantiation” such that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the Body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the Wine into the substance of His Blood.

2. If you eat you will have life. If not you will die.

    There is another aspect from today’s gospel that has struck me. Jesus keeps telling us that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you do not have life within you.” What is this life that Jesus is offering? How can we come in contact with the life-giving properties of this bread? What does it look for us to receive this life? What does it look for us to not receive this life? What does the life giving food or the lack of life-giving food, the death dealing food do to us? If we do not eat the bread of life, if we do not approach the Holy Sacrament, if we do not come to Sunday Mass, if we do not fulfill the commands and laws of our faith….will we truly die?

    Is the Lord telling us that “if we don’t come to Him and encounter Him and surrender our lives to Him and receive the gifts that He instituted and gives us here and now at this holy Mass…if we don’t do this we will die?” What is He going to do? Surely, the Lord God won’t send a bolt of lightning from the sky and strike us dead, if we don’t come to Sunday Mass?

Will He?

What does our Lord mean when He talks about this death or this life?

    A wise Father of the Church once said that we might need to go back to some “old fashioned” language in order to understand what our Blessed Lord is speaking of in terms of death and life. This “old fashioned” term does seem to be used so often anymore, but is still clearly part of the teaching of the Church. I’ll quote this holy abbot for you, he said: “Remember when we used to say more frequently than we do now that it is a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sunday. Let’s think about that language a little bit, I find it useful” the abbot says, “even though it spooks people and makes them mad.” 

(Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, episode 10, #theologyatmtangel.com)

    Yes, it is a jarring word “mortal sin”, it is a word we don’t want to hear or talk about. It does spook people and make them mad. People become defensive and say why does the church have so many rules, they are so oppressive, it’s too hard to keep them and follow them, surely Jesus did not want so many rules, He was always breaking rules. But listen to the words today from Jesus Himself, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you do not have life within you.” “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died!” 

    Unless you eat His flesh and drink His blood, You will die. The word “mortal” means death dealing, a mortal sin deals death to our soul. So then, we need to realize the amazing gift that we have of the divine life we can receive through the saving flesh of Christ. It’s to say that if you have access and are able to encounter our Lord each and every Sunday and you don’t, YOU WILL DIE, you will spiritually die. Now it’s not like our Lord or His church will break into your house and kill you in the middle of the night all because you didn’t keep the rules, but what I want to emphasize is the spiritual death that will happen to us. The church is telling us, “hey don’t do this…it is not good for you, it will cause harm to your soul. 

    Our Lord desires to give us life. He has the words of eternal life. He has the gifts of life. He gives us His flesh for the life of the world. And so we must desire and seek after this life. 

    Now, I understand that sometimes we may not be able or we may not be ready to receive our Lord in the Eucharist, itself. And if that is so, do not be discouraged, but remain faithful to Christ and look for other ways of encountering His grace, His divine life. Make a spiritual communion, ask that our Lord’s body and blood be spiritually present in your heart. Remain faithful to daily Mass and come prepared and ready to Church with a desire to grow and increase in your love for God and neighbor. Do not be afraid, do not be ashamed, but take courage, because our Lord always desires to give us His life. He never stops giving. But we must be willing to receive.