Sunday, August 16, 2009AD
Twentieth Sunday in Greentime
What Are We Eating?
The Jesus Movement in Ephesus, the recipients of our second reading today, were men and women who walked a fine line, living in Christ Jesus. On the one hand, they wanted to be good neighbors because, then, they would live peaceful lives and win further followers to the Faith. On the other hand, they knew that living in Christ Jesus sometimes would make them walk to a different drumbeat as they tried to implement the values of Jesus’ New World Order in their lives. This might cause eyebrows and blood pressures to be raised by non-Christian neighbors.
We know that St Paul’s “audio-visual communities” known as Churches sometimes caused good folks to wonder. What was all this talk about “in Christ Jesus there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus?”
Some of their pagan fellow citizens might legitimately have wondered about a group of men and women who met regularly on a Saturday evening or early Sunday morning in memory of a leader that had been crucified by a Roman governor for claiming to be “King of the Jews”. Their motto was “Jesus is Lord”. All good citizens, then and now, knew that Caesar was Lord. One cannot have two Lords. They also believed that this Lord, Christ Jesus, was present in their gatherings. Strange, isn’t it? In addition, what was it with their values that were so different that people would legitimately comment, “See how they love one another”. Finally, they might also have wondered about the charge of cannibalism that circulated among their detractors. They eat Someone’s Body and drink Someone’s Blood. What’s up with that?
How can anyone attempt to explain adequately the meaning of our Eucharist? When Jesus focuses specifically on His Gift of the Eucharist, as He does today in our Gospel, words fail us. Still, with God’s Help, we try to fathom the Mystery, viz., the infinitely knowable and unknowable Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
In 107AD, St Ignatius of Antioch decribed the Eucharist as the “Medicine of Immortality”. In 202 AD, St Irenaeus said that our union with Christ Jesus in the Eucharist was such that a Christian never had to fear death, because ”the God of Life would not allow our bodies, dwelling places or tabernacles of the Eucharistic Lord to be condemned to oblivion”. In the twentieth century, Mohandas Gandhi, who believed in Christ Jesus but never was baptized because he was scandalized by how so many baptized people were nonchalant and blasé about our faith. Still, he said that ”if God wanted to be united with humanity, the most marvelous solution would be to become humanity’s food.” Also, in the twentieth century, CP Schulz of Peanuts fame said, paraphrasing St Augustine’s thought, “You are what you eat.” We are and become the Body of Christ when we eat the Body of Christ. As St Thomas Aquinas wrote in the Tantum Ergo, “Faith believes nor questions how.”
Science confirms what Catholics suspected all along, viz., God is still creating the Universe, still creating me as a child of the universe. (Even now, the stardust from the Perseus Meteorite phenomenon these past few days provide stardust for our salads in our diet.) As members of the Jesus Movement, each of us and all of us should realize the ineffable truth: God is still creating me; God is still blessing me with lots of good things; we are still taking God’s blessings for granted and/or misusing them; God is still sending Christ Jesus into our incarnate lives; God is still forgiving us in Christ Jesus; God is still challenging us to proclaim in word and deed that we are not special, but sent to let everyone know that everyone is special
In their efforts to be good neighbors who tried, with God’s Help, to edify others as well as sharing the Vision of Christ Jesus, the Church, the Jesus Movement at Ephesus and at New York, tries to gather and refocus that Vision weekly.
The term “Viatecum, viz. food for the journey” was understood as the final Holy Communion of a person’s life. It is just as appropriate to use the term for one’s First Holy Communion. Each Catholic is always on a journey. We are missioned to let everyone else know that everyone of them is on a journey also. We need food for the journey throughout its days. (The difference is that Catholics are supposed to believe and act thusly, in that consciousness to rub off on others.)
