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| Byzantine Paten and Chalice. Wikimedia / Public Domain. |
The night Jesus first
gave us to eat and drink Holy Communion in his Body and Blood, he himself ate
and drank a holy communion of agony and death.
He agonized that night
in prayer over holy communion with his Father’s will.
The next day he agonized
unto death in holy communion with sinners.
True prayer and
communion can be an agony of sadness, fear, pain, suffering and death, not
always peace and joy.
True prayer and
communion can kill before they come to new life.
In agonized prayer in
the Gethsemane garden, in communion with the Father’s will and in communion
with sinners, Jesus suffered and died.
Saul of Tarsus had known
of the agony of Jesus on the cross; but Saul looked on Jesus and the followers
of Jesus as blasphemous enemies of the living, true God.
Near the city of
Damascus, Jesus, God the Son, fell upon Saul with light from heaven, demanding,
accusing, commanding and leaving Saul blind.
After Jesus stormed him
that day, Saul agonized for three days without sight, food or drink.
Did he fear he would
never see again?
Did he tell himself,
“This is my punishment for helping at the killing of Stephen, for hunting down
the followers of Jesus, my punishment for persecuting Jesus who is the Son of
God, Jesus who has left me blind.”
As if such agony were
not enough, one of the Damascus Christians heard Jesus say of Saul, “I will
show him what he will have to suffer for my name.”
On the road to Damascus,
Saul suffered in light of Jesus, and would suffer even more for the name of
Jesus.
Communion, prayer, agony,
suffering, conversion, more suffering and finally death— the combination is not
what we would like to have from the hands of Jesus.
Yet, Jesus himself
accepted it from the hands of the Father.
Jesus willingly ate and
drank it, and he dished out the same for Saul of Tarsus.
In his Gospel today,
Jesus also dishes out something that can be tolerated only by conversion: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh
of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you DO NOT HAVE LIFE within you.
Were it not for eating
and drinking the Flesh and Blood of Jesus, his first followers would have just
faded out, and Saul of Tarsus would not have needed to hunt them down for their
blasphemy.
Without the Eucharistic
Body and Blood of Jesus, all of Christianity would just have died out at the
beginning.
Because of the
Eucharistic Body and Blood of Jesus, Christianity is possible.
Amen,
amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his
Blood, you DO NOT HAVE LIFE within you.”
We know this Gospel, and
we know that many of the disciples who heard it chose to give up on Jesus.
About two thousand years
later, you and I are here, struggling to follow Jesus.
Not all who call
themselves disciples of Jesus believe, as we do, that we really eat the real
Flesh of Jesus and that we really drink the real Blood of Jesus.
Amen,
amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his
Blood, you DO NOT HAVE LIFE within you.”
The Church has said the
same in our time, at Vatican Council II [Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10]:
the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church
is directed; it is also the fount from which all her power flows.
From the liturgy, therefore, and especially from the Eucharist, grace
is poured forth upon us as from a fountain, and the sanctification of men in
Christ and the glorification of God ... are achieved....
Because we eat the Flesh
and drink the Blood of the Son of God, we have life within us, but we have it
not merely for ourselves.
We have the life within
us for the sake of God’s glory and the good of others.
That is why the Church
is still here two thousand years later.
That is why the Church
continues to be able to win converts for Jesus.
It is because Jesus lives
in those who eat and drink his Flesh and Blood.
In spite of sickness,
stupidity and sin in the Church, the Flesh and Blood life of Jesus is in the
Church.
Jesus blasted Saul with
that truth on the road to Damascus: Saul, why are you persecuting ME?
Saul was persecuting men
and women whom Jesus counted as his own personal Flesh and Blood.
Saul, why
are you persecuting ME?”
We are sinners, and many
see us as liars and fools.
Yet we are the Flesh and
Blood of Jesus.
We eat and drink what
look like wine and a thin wafer, yet we acknowledge them to be truly the Flesh
and Blood of Jesus.
Things are not as they
appear.
Agony, suffering, more
suffering, death— they can all be the stuff of real conversion, real prayer,
real communion with God.
Ask Saul at Damascus.
Ask Jesus and listen to
him pray in the Gethsemane garden.
The agonies of
Gethsemane and Golgotha opened the way for the ecstasies of rising from the
dead.
Just as
the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the
one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
Turn.
Love. Repeat.
