PREAMBLE:
One phrase
of Jesus in the Gospel in John’s Eucharistic Chapter may well be sufficient for
lasting thought, as today’s Reading, “I have come down from heaven.” , re-echoing the Jews and missing the mark.
After
pausing and silent, the dramatic expressions from the DAY BY DAY reflection, ”That
eating human flesh is the deepest, darkest, most unmentionable of taboos. ...” - enters more deeply as below.
Nineteenth Sunday in
Ordinary Time - Year B
Saint John 6:41-51.
The
Jews murmured about him because he said, "I
am the bread that came down from heaven," ...
PRAYER
AFTER COMMUNION
May
the communion in your
Sacrament
that
we have consumed, save us, 0 Lord,
and
confirm us in the light of your truth.
Through
Christ our Lord.
Magnificat
DAY
BY DAY
Heather King
From Redeemed:
A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding. 2008, Viking Publishing, Penguin Group,
Inc .• New York, NY.
"I am the living
bread"
The mystery of the
Eucharist alone - that Christ left his Body and Blood for us to eat and drink -
I could ponder forever and not fully plumb its depths. That it's his actual (real)
Body and Blood - not "virtually real", not a symbol. That he
literally becomes part of us and we become part of him. That by leaving us "food"
eat and drink, he acknowledges and appeases our ravenous spiritual hunger. That
eating human flesh is the deepest, darkest, most unmentionable of taboos. The
very worst thing a human being could do - butcher a man, torture to death a
person who's completely innocent, and eat him - Christ says, I'm going to let
you do it: I'm going to offer myself up. I'm in solidarity not only with
your humanity, your brokenness, your sins; I'm in solidarity with your
pathologies. And in offering up my very flesh, I am going to transform the
consciousness of all humanity, for all time. I'm going to descend to the depths
and ascend to the heights of the human spirit and, to all who want to avail
themselves, open up the possibility of becoming truly awake and alive to
reality.
While I could never
plumb the depths of the Eucharist - yet a simple fisherman would understand all
that needs to and probably can be understood about it: it's a gift, and it's
holy. Someone sacrificed himself and left his very Body and Blood to us as a
gift, an offering, the answer to our deepest prayer: Oh, please let there be
something beyond me and my sadly, pathetically limited powers. Let there
still be something holy in the world, let there be something we haven't wrecked
with our greed, our fear, our lust. Let the terrible, terrible suffering of me
and every other human being on earth have meaning. The Mass is a
celebration and re-enactment of the sacrifice: the consecration of the Host,
the bridging of the gap between life and death, light and dark, heaven and
earth, the material and spiritual. The Eucharist is the eternal coming-into-being
of the power that on the one hand has the ability to shake the foundations of
the universe, and on the other, perpetually, gently assures us that we are
known, seen, cherished; that God hungers for us, thirsts for us.
HEATHER
KING
Heather
King is a convert to Catholicism and
a writer from California.
