In the Gospel today, we hear of how our Lord fed the five thousand, and did so in a miraculous way, by multiplying a very small and finite resource, to create something that was capable of sustaining far more than what it should have been able to. He took a very few fish and loaves of bread, basic earthly sustenance suitable for perhaps a few persons if they were frugal and manifested it in such a way as to sustain a multitude. This was in some respects a foretelling of what was to come, for He was to give us a gift of sustenance that no one could possibly have imagined at that point.
Our human form needs food and drink in order to survive and to remain strong, we take in the nourishment that this world provides to feed our physical bodies, yet this is only half the equation. Our selves are more than physical beings, we are also beings of spirit, and our spiritual selves require a nourishment that can only come from our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to receive his body and blood in order to have that life within us, a life in the spirit. Our Lord was very explicit about this, so much so, that many of his original followers could not handle the message – “If you do not eat my flesh, and drink my blood, you do not have life within you”. This plain language in a rather graphic manner, especially if you consider the specific language used in the original Greek. This was a message to us that would be of the utmost importance to a proper understanding of the Eucharist but would also be a difficult message for us to understand even to this day. When we receive what appears to be the bread and the wine in the Eucharist we celebrate each Sunday, it is far more than what Melchizedek could provide Abram. What we receive now in the appearance of bread and wine, is the actual body and blood of Christ, so that we may indeed have life within us. This was instituted by Jesus himself at the last supper and was commanded that it be continued by His disciples. To this day, through the unbroken apostolic succession that is unique to the Catholic Church, we continue to celebrate the Eucharist as He commanded, with the full understanding, that just as He said – we are consuming his flesh and blood, so that we have the true body and blood of Christ in its divinity within ourselves, and so are in as close a physical as well as spiritual union as is possible in this life with our Lord. With His body within us, we are strengthened to take on the spiritual challenges that we are faced with.
I think that this is perhaps more important now than it ever has been because we are constantly challenged by a world that wants to negate, and trivialize God, as Creator, Redeemer, and Savior. It is world that seeks its own ends, and leaves no room for our Lord, it pushes Him out at every turn, and tries to indoctrinate as many as possible into this way of thinking. It is only through the Eucharist that we will have the strength to push back against this, and to maintain our footing upon the rock that is our Church foundation. We could not hope to go out and to work or play for very long without taking in nourishment, and these are comparatively trivial undertakings compared to the battle of maintaining our spiritual selves against the onslaught of worldly influence that we are exposed to each day. We need to take our Lord at His word, and to truly recognize the need we have for the spiritual food that can only come from His most holy body and blood.
The Deacons Bench 