I was delighted to spend the morning with pro-life workers from around the Diocese at the Cathedral last Saturday, at the kind invitation of Allison LeDoux of our Office for Life. Here are copies of my presentation and the homily I preached at the Mass opening the morning.
The Eucharist and Life
The opening line of Pope Saint John Paul II’s landmark epistle, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, is foundational to what I am about to say today. “The Church draws her life from the Eucharist.”1
The Holy Father expands on this assertion by recalling that the Fathers of the second Vatican Council saw the Eucharistic sacrifice as the source and summit of the Christian life.
For it is in the gift of his own Body and Blood that Christ gives us life. Remember his words: He who eats my body and drinks my blood will never really die.
Now it is true, that we first received life from God through that “intimate community of of life and love”2 which is the sacrament of marriage. Just last week I was celebrating a marriage back at Saint Cecilia’s with a bride and groom so overjoyed and overwhelmed that they were both practically jumping out of their skin.
They were overjoyed because they understood what the Church means when she says that children are the “supreme gift and ultimate crown”3 of marriage; that the bond they were about to enter was “established by God the Creator”4 through which new life comes into the world.
Which is why, in just a few short months, we will gather to celebrate the birth of another child “the Birth of a Child which is proclaimed as joyful news:
I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.”5
This source of great joy is the Birth of the Savior; but [as Pope Saint John Paul II reminds us] Christmas also reveals the full meaning of every human birth, and the joy which accompanies the Birth of the Messiah is thus seen to be the foundation and fulfilment of joy at every child born into the world.”6
That’s why Christmas is such a magical time: not because of Santa Claus or the lights or the trees or the gifts (although they are all wonderful) what beings us true joy is when from this ambo we hear the old familiar story:
“And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”7
And these words touch our hearts every time. As the miracle of the birth of every child is a sign that God has not given up on us, that miracles still happen and that another human being has come into the world.
Pope John Paul II said it best:
The newborn child gives itself to its parents by the very fact of its coming into existence. Its existence is already a gift, the first gift of the Creator to the creature…The child becomes a gift to its brothers, sisters, parents and entire family. Its life becomes a gift for the very people who were givers of life and who cannot help but feel its presence, its sharing in their life and its contribution to their common good and to that of the community of the family.8
Now we have spent most of our lives, you and me, trying to convince others of what a gift children really are. And while there’s a lot of myopia about these days, we’ve have some pretty good support through the years.
I think of the great Poet Dante Alighieri, who us often referred to as the Father of the Italian language, but he was also the father of three children: Pietro, Jácopo and Antonia. And there’s a touching line in his Paradiso, which reads:
Tre cose rimangono con noi dal paradiso:
stellae, fiori e bambini.
Three things remain with us from paradise:
stars, flowers and children.
And then there’s the brilliant young painter, Vincent Van Gogh. Did you know he was a missionary for a time? He died, of course, a suicide, after years of struggling with psychosis. Yet a few years before that, his brother Theo married and names his first child after his brother. In a letter to Theo, Vincent wrote:
If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.9
All it takes for someone to believe the Gospel of Life is to see the eyes of a little child. For, as Pope Francis reminds us, “God does not reveal himself in strength or power, but in the weakness and fragility of a newborn babe.10 And as Winnie the Pooh adds, “sometimes the smallest things take up the most space in your heart.”
This is why you have spent a good part of your life defending the life of the unborn child, because Jesus promised us that he has come “that they may have life, and have it abundantly,:11
But what Jesus says here goes beyond even the miracle of the beginning of life. For Jesus comes not just to give us birth in a manger or a cradle. He comes to bring us life eternal.
Sometimes it is very hard for people to believe that life is a gift from God. I suspect that most of you have had that experience in the past years of advocating for life.
And it is hard to accept that life is a gratuitous gift, gratuitously given. Given only out of love.
Such was the case when Jesus told the crowds that he was the “bread of life,” and that unless they ate his Body and drank his Blood they would have no life in them.
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven... [he told them, and] he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life.”12
And do you remember what they did. John the Evangelist tell us they walked away.
“After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.”13
They just could not believe it. It was incomprehensible to them.
So, do you remember what happened next? Jesus turns to his disciples and says: And what about you? “Will you also desert me?”14 And Peter, big impetuous Peter, does not say no. Rather he says “Lord, where else could we go?” “You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”15
Saint Augustine once preached a wonderful homily on this passage:
See how Peter…understood Jesus when he said “You have the words of everlasting life.” For eternal life is in the giving of your Body and Blood...You are the Christ, the Son of God…that is, You are eternal life, because you give us Your Flesh and Blood…”16
Jesus then is the “bread of life,”17 the “living bread”18 come down from heaven.
That is why we are engaged in three years of Eucharistic Renewal, in order to reaffirm the belief in and celebration of the Holy and Living Sacrifice which is the source and summit of our lives.
And that’s why, as committed disciples of the Gospel of Life, the centre of our work and the source of our strength must be our full, conscious and active participation in the Sacrifice of the Mass and a reverent reception of Holy Communion.
For in Holy Communion, we receive more than we could ever have hoped for. As we will pray in each of our parishes at Mass tomorrow, the gift of Christ’s Body and Blood surpasses all our “merits and the desires”19 to pardon what our consciences dread “and to give what prayer does not dare to ask.”20
For in Holy Communion we receive the very Body and Blood of Christ. As we recall at every Mass, on the night before he died, Jesus took bread and said “This is my Body...This is my Blood.” So, while the outward appearance of the bread and wine remain unchanged, the substance of both has been changed into the Body and Blood of Christ whole and entire, God and Man.21 Indeed, under the appearance of bread and wine, Christ is present “in a true, real and substantial way, with his Body and his Blood, with his Soul and his Divinity.”22
What’s more, he gives us his Body and Blood as our food for our journey through life, as our spiritual nourishment. Take and eat... take and drink, he commands us, for his Body and Blood is give for us, that our sins might be forgiven.
For, though we are many, we are made one body in him “we all partake of the one Bread and one Chalice.”23 This is what the Church means when she prays that we might be “transformed into what we consume,”24 that “partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, we may be gathered into one by the Holy Spirit.”25
—
One last point, made eloquently by the author of Evangelium vitae, 27 years ago.
It comes from the Book of Genesis, where Cain slew his brother Abel. He took the life of a member of his own family, out of expediency.
And when God accuses Cain, do you remember his words? “The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.”26
The blood of Abel was but the first blood. Since that day, the blood of every innocent victim, including the blood of every child whose life was taken from abortion, cries out to God.
Now lets go to the Letter to the Hebrews, which speaks of the Blood of the innocent Lamb, crucified for our sins, for which Abel’s blood was a prophecy:
You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God ...to the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.27
Sprinkled blood. Here the author of the letter to the Hebrews speaks of the blood sprinkled upon the altar in the Old Testament, sacrifices fulfilled in the perfect sacrifice offered by Christ upon the Altar of the Cross, “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”28
Of this the Holy Father reminds us:
This blood, which flows from the pierced side of Christ on the Cross,29 “speaks more graciously” than the blood of Abel; indeed, it expresses and requires a more radical “justice,” and above all it implores mercy, it makes intercession for the brethren before the Father, and it is the source of perfect redemption and the gift of new life.”30
The Blood of Christ, then, reveals for precious each human life is in the eyes of God. As we sing in the Exultet at the Easter Vigil: “To ransom a slave, he gave up his Son.”
Again, to the Holy Father:
Precisely by contemplating the precious blood of Christ, the sign of his self-giving love,31 the believer learns to recognise and appreciate the almost divine dignity of every human being…
Which is why when we eat the Body of the Lord and drink his Precious Blood in Holy Communion we are drawn into the centre of the mystery of life, given by God, saved by God in the shedding of his Blood and sustained by him whenever we receive the Holy Eucharist.
One last time to Pope Saint John Paul II:
It is from the blood of Christ that all draw the strength to commit themselves to promoting life. It is precisely this blood that is the most powerful source of hope, indeed it is the foundation of the absolute certitude that in God's plan life will be victorious. “And death shall be no more…”32
Almighty God,
By the precious Blood of your Son,
the spotless and unblemished Lamb,
we have been redeemed.
By our reception of these Sacred Mysteries
May we live with you forever in heaven.
Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist
GOSPEL John 6:60-69
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John.
Many of the disciples of Jesus who were listening said,
“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,
he said to them,
“Does this shock you?
What if you were to see the Son of Man
ascending to where he was before?
It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.
The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.”
As a result of this,
many of his disciples returned to their former way of life
and no longer walked with him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve,
“Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him,
“Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
___
Homily
Every day of our lives, from the beginning to the end, God feeds us, sustains us and calls us to himself.
On the day I made my First Communion, Saturday, June 4, 1960 my Godparents, Nora and George, gave me this little prayer book. This book, which has probably survived the last sixty-one years better than I have, taught me a very important lesson.
On page 55, there’s a picture of the Priest holding up the host, entitled “The Changing of the Bread.” Here is what it says: “This is the holiest part of the Mass. The priest first changes the bread into the living body of Jesus. He uses the same words Jesus used.”
I can still remember how. excited I was to receive Jesus in Holy Communion and to know that he would be always with me, even when I felt afraid or little.
Our beloved Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI felt the same way when he made his First Communion on a Sunday in March of 1936. “I understood,” he said, “that Jesus had entered my heart, he had actually visited me. And with Jesus, God himself was with me. And I realised that this is a gift of love that is truly worth more than all the other things that life can give”33
That feeling never really goes away. As when I would take my bike home from High School. often overwhelmed with the angst of adolescence. Each day I would stop in front of Saint Brigid’s Church and sit in front of the tabernacle. Somehow, just staring at that little red light and the tabernacle beside it was enough to reassure me that I was not alone and that God would make sense of it all.
And he has. Jesus has kept his promise that “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”34 The Lord has promised it, as he promised that “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”35
I find myself wondering, more frequently as I grow older, what that Last Communion will be like on the day I will die. The Church calls it viaticum, the food for the journey home to the Lord who has never left me, but comes to live in my heart in Holy Communion.
As a priest, I have been frequently overwhelmed by the faith of those who receive the consecrated host a short time before they die. You can see it in their eyes, the same eyes that as a little kid gazed upon Christ’s Body the first time. There’s a trust in those eyes, and a faith that God, who has been with them at every Mass throughout their lives, will not abandon them in their final moments.
Rather, you can imagine them seeing him face-to-face whom they have received so many times at every age of their lives. Then they will see clearly, the one whom they have believed is present, Body, Blood Soul and Divinity” in each Holy Communion.
This is why the celebration of the Mass is the source and summit of the Christian life, by which we take part in the holy and living sacrifice offered by Christ upon the altar of the Cross.
For every day of our lives, from the beginning to the end, God feeds us, sustains us and calls us to himself.
How blessed we are to be called to the Supper of the Lamb!
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1 - Ecclesia de Eucharistia, no. 1.
2 - Order for Celebrating Matrimony, no. 3.
3 - Cf. Gaudium et spes [GS], no. 48.
4 - GS, no. 4.
5 - Luke 2:10-11.
6 - cf. John 16:21.
7 - Luke 2:6f.
8 - Pope Saint John Paul II, Letter to Families, no. 11.
9 - Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886.
10 - Pope Francis, The Blessing of Family: Inspiring Words from Pope Francis, Franciscan Media.
11 - John 10:10.
12 - cf. John 6:51, 54.
13 - John 6:66.
14 - John 6:67.
15 - John 6:68-69.
16 - Cf. In Evangelium Johannis tractatus, 27, 9.
17 - John 6:35, 48.
18 - John 6:51.
19 - Collect XXVI Sunday in Ordinary Time.
20 - Collect XXVI Sunday in Ordinary Time.
21 - Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 283.
22 - Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 282.
23 - Communion Antiphon for XXVI Sunday in Ordinary Time.
24 - Prayer after Communion for XXVI Sunday in Ordinary Time.
25 - Eucharistic Prayer II.
26 - Genesis 4:10.
27 - Hebrews 12:22, 24.
28 - Matthew 26:28.
29 - cf. John 19:34.
30 - Ecclesia de Eucharistia, no. 25.
31 - cf. John 13:1.
32 - Rev 21:4.
33 - Pope Benedict XVI, 15 October, 2005.
34 - John 6: 56.
35 - John 6: 54.
