Gospel Commentary: Body and Blood of Our Lord

By Fr. John De Celles
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 6/10/04)

Sometimes we ask God for signs, and sometimes He asks us for signs. In this week’s text from the Gospel of St. Luke, Jesus gave His apostles a sign of His power and love. The 12 ask Him to send the crowd away to find something to eat. Christ's response is to ask the apostles why they don't feed the people themselves. They respond, "We have nothing but five loaves and two fish" — they can't feed the people by themselves. So the Lord took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to the disciples to give to the crowd. He gave them a sign that He alone had the power to do what no mere man could — give His people the food they needed.

And yet, the very next day, some of these same people wanted still another sign. According to St. John's account of this miracle, they asked Jesus: "What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?" And in response He promised to give them another sign: "the bread which I shall give … is my flesh … if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever."

A few months later, at table with the 12 on the night He was betrayed, Jesus once again took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. But this time Jesus added: "This is my body." And the apostles understood that this was the new sign the Lord had promised. And although they may not have understood exactly how what appeared to be bread was now the actual body of Christ, by remembering the powerful sign of the loaves, the apostles believed.

This sign remains with us today. Of course, it is not the same kind of fantastic sign that appeals to people looking for wondrous worldly phenomena. But for those who believe Jesus is God the Son, with the power to feed 5,000 people on five loaves and two fish, that kind of sign is not necessary. In this context of faith in Jesus, we believe the Eucharist is the living sign of His true presence and power and love. And just as a man’s body is not a mere empty symbol of himself, but rather a physical expression of his real and complete presence in both body and spirit, in the same way the Eucharist is no mere symbol, but Christ’s actual, real and complete presence bodily and spiritually.

Christ gives us the sign of the Eucharist — what sign do we give Him in response? Begin with the simplest signs: as we approach to receive Him in Holy Communion, do our clothes, posture and attitude signal our faith and love? Furthermore, after receiving Him, do our lives become signs of His love for us and our love for Him? And perhaps most significantly, is our reception of the Eucharist a sign that all we have done in the hours and days before has been consistent with our faith in Him and all of His teachings? Is it a sign of faith not only in the Eucharist, but in everything His apostles handed down to us through their successors? Is our reception of Communion a sign not merely that we identify ourselves as devout Catholics, but rather a sign of our total unity with the teachings of the Pope and all the bishops in union with Him?

God has given us the Eucharist as the most sublime sign of His love and power — it is not a mere empty sign, but truly His very life. Do we respond with empty symbolic gestures and words, or do we respond with our very life as well?

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