Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a 1^st Corinthians 10:16-17 John 6:51-58

Today’s feast is a doctrinal feast, an echo perhaps of Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, the Paschal Triduum, Easter and it’s Season, the Ascension and Pentecost all remember and celebrate the Divine Mysteries of God’s profound and powerful engagement with the Chosen People, both the Old Israel and the New Israel, to whom and through whom these mysteries were revealed. Original revelation was and still is not so much doctrinal content as it is profound religious experience of the Goodness and Mystery of God. As succeeding generations of Christian believers took time to reflect on and think upon the profound and even indescribable religious experiences had by their (our) ancestors in faith, those succeeding generations began to put their experiences into words. There are two particular challenges to this activity (known as theological reflection). First, those succeeding generations of believers frequently did not personally have those original profound experiences. That is, later Christians had not met the earthly Jesus; neither had they encountered the Risen Jesus. Relatively few were eye witnesses, and fewer still experienced Pentecost and those other Pentecostal events. Thus, later Christians were very dependent on the memories and descriptions of those original Christians who had experienced God’s Grace and the Divine Mystery, and who had been remarkably changed by those experiences. Those original experiences were generally impossible to reclaim by others, except through later individual mystical experiences throughout Christian history. The second problem was and is that human language is always inadequate when describing the Mysterious Reality of God’s Presence. Language deals most effectively with mystery when enlisting metaphor and the dynamic equivalency of poetry to help believers remember and memorialize God’s Gracious presence. To reduce the mystical experience (which is what Abraham and Moses and the prophets had, and which is what all the New Testament Post-Resurrection experiences were) to mere actions or simplistic description might be somewhat necessary, but it is never enough! There is always more to appreciate! Jesus’ empty tomb does not prove his resurrection, but it is easily described by human language. Personal and communal encounters with the Risen Jesus (as did Mary Magdalene and some 500 other disciples according to St. Paul) certainly convinced those early believers of his resurrection, but their report language always fell short. It is the lived experience of the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit which makes up for the inadequacy of words! The Spirit-filled Gospel community (aka the Church) focuses regularly around the Eucharistic Mystery. It is both the Word and the Sacrament through which the Spirit of God nourishes and enlivens this Church of ours today.

The Deuteronomy text for today begins with Moses’ imperative, “Remember!” The passage is important for Eucharistic Christians because of the reference to God’s patient efforts at saving the Israelites from Egyptian servitude particularly including the divine gift of “manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.” This line was quoted by Jesus during his temptation during 40 days in the desert just after his baptism and anointing by God’s Spirit in the Jordan River (Matt 4:1-11 on the 1^st Sunday of Lent, Lectionary Cycle A). The speech Moses makes in the first lesson is set at the end of the Israelites’ 40-year pilgrimage in the desert. The desert pilgrimage was experienced after the whole Chosen People’s passing through the waters of the Red Sea which marked the end of their former lives as slaves to sin in Egypt and the beginning of their new lives as God’s free, priestly and holy people. The Israelites received the Torah, the Law of Moses, and manna from heaven by which to be nourished and to survive the long desert journey. Parallel to the Exodus experiences, Jesus provided the Gospel and the Spirit of God, and went on to make it all extraordinarily personal as well as communal in the Eucharist and Gospel fellowship. When we celebrate the Eucharist, we are not merely capturing a miraculous piece of the Risen Lord Jesus in the form of bread and wine. We are rather engaging the Gospel as the New Israel, i.e., God’s Spirit-filled community. Ours is a commitment to live lives of hope, justice, truth, and peace. Eucharist means “thanksgiving” and we must be genuinely thankful first, or we receive the Sacrament of Eucharist without proper disposition.

Our participation in the gratitude of Gospel fellowship is the point of the succinct passage we hear today from 1^st Corinthians. Paul reminds and emphasizes the necessity of our “participation in the blood of Christ” and of our “participation in the body of Christ.” Participation! Not observation! The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council described the only proper attitude and means of engaging the Sacraments of the Church as the attitude and disposition of “full, conscious and active participation.” This description was not accidental. This is the deliberate mind of the Church and it has the force of law in the Gospel sense of law. “Full, conscious and active” is the disposition we ought to strive to make our daily engagement of the Gospel.

The Gospel text from John 6 is a Eucharistic narrative in theological terms, with great emphasis on engaging Jesus and his Gospel by full, conscious and active participation in his message. His Gospel narrative opponents were not given the gift of faith by which to see the importance of this engagement. They are described as believers for whom the mere thoughtless performance of religious actions and uttering of prayers has become both habitual and sufficient. Jesus had been suggesting by his life and ministry that mere religious rites, actions, words, and even some religious values were (and are still today!) not enough! The Gospel is all about making life “new” and about having it “more abundantly.” Jesus’ death and resurrection was not about simply being pronounced dead and then being “brought back to life” merely to the life he had lived before. No! His death was a genuinely sacrificial self-donation to the worst of human power: cruelty, lying, selfishness, fear, shallowness, hatred, cheapness, and injustice! He worked against these evils and argued against them. He finally surrendered himself to their power in order to demonstrate that his love could not be killed or stopped, and that the power of all such evils was (and is) short-lived. He loved them and us; he even loved his persecutors! And the power that was his was nothing less than the very power of God! God’s power, that divine love, raised Jesus up to “new life!” not to the old. He was raised up forward to “new life,” not backwards to the old life. Thus, he could never again be made to die. Death had no more power over him. And neither did any of those evil human powers: (to reiterate) cruelty, lying, selfishness, fear, shallowness, hatred, cheapness, and injustice! Upon Jesus’ rising, the divine power could be bestowed fully and graciously upon human believers: wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude and reverence for God! Those “gifts” (see Isaiah 11:2-3a) would produce “fruit” (see Galatians 5:22-23): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, mildness, self-control! Engaging Jesus and his Gospel is truly being Eucharistic. Today’s liturgical festival celebrates not merely the appearance of the Risen Christ under the form of bread and wine, but the profound dynamic engagement which we are privileged to have with the Risen Christ! “Form” tends to indicate merely a similar and superficial shape. “Dynamic” indicates profound power and active engagement. The Second Vatican Council exhorted us to live lives of dynamic equivalency by means of attitudes of “full, conscious, and active participation.” Anything less is unworthy of the Sacrament!

Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!