Oh, they were all thrilled to death when a day before he had multiplied the loaves and the fish to feed them all, to fill their bellies. It was a really neat trick.
But then he said something they just couldn’t stomach. Six little words that made them all run away. Six little words: I am the bread of life.
You see, bread from heaven they could accept. After all, they all knew the story of the chosen people starving in the desert and how Moses called down the bread from heaven. So this must be the new Moses, they thought, who can do magic tricks with food…all the food we could ever want. Satisfy our every need.
But no. Now, now he he has to spoil it all by saying that he is the bread come down from heaven. And then it gets even weirder: Unless you eat his flesh and drink his blood, you will have no life in you, but those who eat his body and drink his blood will live in him and he will live in them, and they will never really die.
It was just too much for them. And so they ran away.
And then, as Jesus said to his disciples, he says to you and me. And you? What about you? Will you run away too?
Do you believe that the consecrated bread you eat is truly the flesh of the Son of God?
Do you believe that unless you eat this bread you will have no real life in you?
Do you believe that if you eat this bread you will live forever?
Do you believe that if you eat this bread you will never really be hungry, ever again?
Do you?
For if you do, you will reply to the Lord as the faithful remnant did: Lord, give us this bread always.
And if you do, you will place the sufferings and hopes and dreams and pain and sacrifices of your life upon that altar to be joined to his Paschal sacrifice. And if you do, you will come to Communion with the firm belief that you are receiving the bread of angels.
As Mother Teresa once wrote:
“We cannot separate our lives from the Eucharist; the moment we do, something breaks. People ask, 'Where do the sisters get the joy and the energy to do what they are doing?' It is because they receive Jesus in Holy Communion every morning and pray before him every day. I beg you to get closer to Jesus in the Eucharist…to pray to Jesus to give you that tenderness of the Eucharist, showering us with the healing, sustaining and transforming rays in the Eucharist.”
When I was a boy, going through all the angst and suffering of every teenager boy, I used to take my bike home from school and stop on the way at Saint Brigid’s Church and gaze at that little red light, which told me Jesus was there, God Almighty knew my name and loved me in all my brokenness and littleness.
And I still kneel before that little red light today. But now I also understand what Caryll Houselander, the great English mystic once wrote about an old Father O’Grady at Mass:
He lifted the unconsecrated Host, light as a petal on its thin golden paten, and with it lifted the simple bread of humanity, threshed and sifted by poverty and suffering…
He lifted the wine and water mixed in the Chalice, and with it offered the blood and the tears of his people to God. And God accepted the offering, the fragments of love were gathered up into the wholeness of Love and nothing was wasted.
Slowly, exactly, Father… repeated the words of Consecration, his hands moved in Christ's hands, his voice spoke in Christ's voice, his words were Christ's words, his heart beat in Christ's heart.
Fr. O'Grady lifted up the consecrated Host in his short, chapped hands, the server rang a little bell, the sailor, the handful of old women and the very old man bowed down whispering "My Lord and my God" and the breath of their adoration was warm on their cold fingers…
The little server rang his silver bell. The people bowed down low. Time stopped. Fr. O'Grady was lifting up God in his large, chapped hands.
Christ remained on the Cross. The blood and sweat and tears of the world were on His face. he smiled, the smile of infinite peace, the ineffable bliss of consummated love.
“LORD, GIVE US THIS BREAD ALWAYS.”
