Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
There are all sorts of diets these days: Atkins, South Beach, Paleo, No Carb, and the list goes on and on. The different types of food you eat are supposed to help you either lose weight or maybe grow muscle mass, or help with a particular health goal. Growing up watching cartoons, I was very familiar with the Popeye diet, where, if you wanted to grow strong, you downed a can of spinach. I didn’t know what spinach was (we never really ate it at my house), but it seemed to work well for Popeye. I have had spinach in salads and Greek food since, and it’s pretty tasty, but I can’t say that I have become as strong as Popeye when I eat it.
Our first reading, psalm response, and Gospel reading all have to do with eating. So if you’re getting hungry, that’s understandable. In the first reading, an angel tells Elijah to eat, or else “the journey will be too long!” And our psalm and Gospel both speak about tasting the Lord. The Psalm says that we are to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. And Jesus in the Gospel talks about Himself as the Bread of Life, and if we eat of Him we will live for ever.
We need the Eucharist. It is our spiritual diet that gives us strength to live as Christians. Vatican II called the Eucharist the source and summit of our Christian life: the fount from which we gain all of our strength to follow Jesus, and the goal of our life, because heaven in the wedding banquet of the Lamb of God. We tend to talk about the Eucharist as food for our Christian journey with people who are dying, as we give them Viaticum, which literally means “on the way with you,” but in our daily lives, even when we are not dying, we need Jesus to be with us on our way to Him.
The Eucharist is our spiritual life, because it is the life of God, the true flesh and true blood of Jesus. We taste the goodness of God by tasting His Body and Blood in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. And yet, from the very beginning, we have also protected the Eucharist and required preparation for it, since it is not any everyday food. St. Justin Martyr, in the early second century, spoke about how the Eucharist was only for those who were baptized and believed what the Church taught. It wasn’t for everyone. And to this day, we still hold that, unless one is Catholic, one cannot receive the Eucharist in a Catholic church (with very few exceptions). Those who are not Catholics, even if they believe in Jesus, cannot partake of Holy Communion with us, because they don’t have communion with us, and we are never closer to each other in the Body of Christ than we are in the Eucharist.
But even beyond that, sometimes even Catholics lose communion with Jesus and with the Church through grave or mortal sins, sins that separate us from the saving grace of God given to us in baptism. And so the Church requires us to have that communion restored, to be healed of our grave or mortal sins before we present ourselves for Holy Communion, for, how can we have communion with Jesus in Holy Communion if we have separated ourselves from Him through sin? Now perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “Well, I’m not aware of any grave or mortal sins, nor have I been in some time, so you’re losing me, Father.” Praise God that you have been sustained in grace. But others may struggle more, and, as a good shepherd, I need to warn the sheep about pitfalls. If we have skipped Mass through laziness, if we are guilty of adultery or fornication, if we have taken God’s Name in vain, or any other grave sin, then we need to go to confession first before we present ourselves for Holy Communion. Otherwise, our unworthy reception of the Eucharist does not help us on our way, but becomes another obstacle to having God’s grace and life within us through the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ.
But beyond what we shouldn’t do, what does the Eucharist do for us? If it is the food for our Christian journey, how does it give us strength? For one, the Eucharist unites us to Christ more closely than we could ever be with anyone else on earth. We often think of marriage as the greatest exchange of love between two persons, but infinitely greater than that is receiving the Eucharist, because we receive the love of Jesus which was made manifest for us when He died on the cross for you. If no one else existed on earth, Jesus would have still died for you; that’s how much he loves you, and that love is consumed when receive the Eucharist worthily.
A second effect is that our venial sins, the small ways that we have said no to God, are wiped clean. All those little things that we do, and we know what they are, that are not what we should be doing as followers of Jesus, those things are washed clean in our souls. The Eucharist is a great way to find forgiveness for our small sins (not our mortal or big sins, but our small ones).
A third effect is that we get to taste heaven. We often talk about being so close to something that we can almost taste it. In the Eucharist, we can taste heaven, because we receive Jesus who is in heaven. When we receive the Eucharist, heaven exists within us, and the more that we live the life of heaven here on earth, the more we’ll be ready for it for ever at the end of our lives. The more we practice for heaven, the more we’ll be ready for it at game time. Through the Eucharist, the veil that separates heaven from earth is pulled back, and Jesus gives us Himself so that we can experience it in a small way. What a great blessing the Eucharist is for us! There is nothing more valuable on earth, because nothing is more valuable than Christ, and the Eucharist is His Body and Blood.
O Sacred Banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of his Passion is recalled, the soul is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given us. Amen.
