Food of the Covenant

Fourth Sunday in Lent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Growing up I never liked cooked broccoli.  I would eat raw broccoli, like on a vegetable platter, but for some reason the smell or look of cooked broccoli just didn’t do it for me.  At some point in seminary, there was a formal dinner with cooked broccoli.  I didn’t want to pull a George Bush, but I also didn’t want to leave food on my plate.  So I took a bite.  It was actually good.  Granted, it was dripping with butter, but it was really good.  Since then, I have been able to eat cooked broccoli, (as long as it doesn’t have melted cheese on it).
    Today’s Gospel, the multiplication of the loaves, points to the Eucharist.  Indeed, this passage forms the beginning of John chapter 6, what we commonly refer to as the Bread of Life discourse.  Our Lord reveals that He is the Bread of Life, and that whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life within him.  John is known for not including the institution narrative of the Eucharist, as the three other Gospel writers did.  But the entirety of John chapter 6 provides its own magnificent exposition on the Eucharist as the flesh and blood of Christ.
    But this heavenly food, this Bread of Angels, is not for everyone.  Christ provides His Body and Blood for those who are part of the covenant, the new covenant sealed in His Blood.  The Eucharist is for the children of the Jerusalem from above, those born of the free-woman.  It is for those who have been set free by Holy Baptism from slavery to sin; those who live in the freedom of the children of God.
    But why focus on the Eucharist now?  In a few short weeks we will be celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, and entering into the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday, to which the Last Supper and every Eucharist points.  But, if you listened at the beginning of the Gospel passage, it said that the Passover was near, just as our celebration of Christ’s Passover is near for us.
    Every Mass celebrates what Lent prepares us for: the Passion of the Lord.  At each Mass we enter into that one Friday that allowed us to be good with God.  Each Mass we are given the opportunity to enter into the offering of Christ to His eternal Father, and celebrate in an unbloody way the very bloody sacrifice of the Savior on the altar of the cross.  
    The bread we use is offered by us, but is received by Christ and miraculously changed to be enough for all.  We don’t have much, but our Lord makes it “super-substantial” (what the Greek word in the Our Father literally means while we say “daily” bread).  He makes it–by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the ministry of a priest who acts in His Name and Person–a way that we grow in grace, a way that we have our very God inside of us.
    And just as we prepare to celebrate the Passion of the Lord, so we should prepare to receive the fruit of the Passion of the Lord which is the Eucharist.  How do we prepare?  For Lent we fast and abstain.  And so the Church asks us (tells us) that we are to abstain from all other food except water and medicine for one hour before we receive Holy Communion (unless our health requires some other sustenance).  As we give alms during Lent, so during this Mass God asks us to give of the blessings He has given us for the benefit of the Church, and for this parish particularly, to support the spreading of the Gospel right here in Flint.  Lent invites us to enter more deeply into prayer, and so, as we’re able, we should seek to pray before Mass to prepare our minds to focus on the holy things which are present before us, as the veil which separates heaven and earth is pulled back and we join with the angels and saints in worshipping the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  For some, especially parents of young children, praying before Mass may be very difficult or seem nearly impossible.  But even as parents seek to keep their children from crawling or running away, or walk in the back to try to calm their child down, there is the chance to offer that desire to focus on the Mass as a prayer to God, the sacrifice which is proper to parents in their vocation when the children are young and don’t understand the greatness of what takes place each Mass.

    Later in John chapter 6, our Lord teaches that unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we do not have life within us.  Receiving the Eucharist in a state of grace imparts to us the new life of Christ to which the Passion points.  Lent is not an end to itself.  It always points to Easter, just as the Passion always points to the Resurrection.  Christ wants us to share in His new life, which prepares us for the new life that never ends as we worship God with the angels and saints in heaven.  We usually think backwards when we think about the Eucharist, as we think of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.  But the Eucharist also points forward to the end of time, when God will be all in all.  And so, as we receive the Eucharist in the present, we become partakers in the past, present, and future salvation accomplished by our God.  That is why we can pray with St. Thomas Aquinas:
 

O sacrum convivium!
in quo Christus sumitur:
recolitur memoria passioni eius:
mens impletur gratia:
et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.

Or, as one Dominican translation renders it:

O Sacred Banquet
in which Christ becomes our food,
the memory of His passion is celebrated,
the soul is filled with grace,
and a pledge of future glory is given to us.  

Let us pray:

O God,
in this wonderful sacrament
you have left us a memorial of your passion.
Help us, we beg you,
so to reverence the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may constantly feel in our lives
the effects of your redemption.
Who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.  Amen.