Read­ing Time: 3 minutes

Preamble

God loves the entire Cre­ated Order that He takes care of the mater­i­al and spir­itu­al life of His entire cre­ation, espe­cially of human beings. Jesus recalled the atten­tion of the dis­ciples, when they wanted to bypass this divine dic­tate (Luke 9:11–17. Cf. also Mark 6:30–44). The dog­mat­ic theo­logy schol­ars can­not for­get the long heated debates con­cern­ing the nature of the con­sec­rated bread and wine – Con­sub­stan­ti­ation (also called impana­tion) and Tran­sub­stan­ti­ation. In as much as we appre­ci­ate the effort to provide a dog­mat­ic found­a­tion to and for the Sac­ra­ment of the Euchar­ist, we must ensure that such debates do not empty the Euchar­ist of its essen­tial and scrip­tur­al (salvif­ic and com­mun­al) effects. The Euchar­ist is “the source and sum­mit of the Chris­ti­an life.” It is scrip­tur­ally and theo­lo­gic­ally foun

The bread of eternal life

“I am the liv­ing bread that came down from heav­en; who­ever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (John 6:51). In ref­er­ence to his death on the cross, Jesus uses the meta­phor of bread, describ­ing him­self as a liv­ing bread from heav­en. For one to live, then, the per­son must eat this bread. Fur­ther­more, Jesus describes his flesh as that bread giv­en for the sake of the world. This say­ing soun­ded strange to the Jews. In fact, they wondered “how can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52). Such inter­rog­a­tion offered Jesus the chance for fur­ther cla­ri­fic­a­tion “Amen, amen, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…” (John 6:53–56). Because Jesus came from above, where­as the Jews were from below (cf. John 8:23), they could not under­stand heav­enly and theo­lo­gic­al say­ings (cf. also John 3:4; 4:15). That marked their spir­itu­al lim­it and poverty. By describ­ing him­self and his flesh as bread, Jesus was not refer­ring to mater­i­al or phys­ic­al bread. It is not bread in the lit­er­al sense. He is the liv­ing bread in so far as people believe in him and in his Fath­er who sent him. Just as mater­i­al bread sat­is­fies mater­i­al hun­ger, so will this spir­itu­al bread sat­is­fy the spir­itu­al hun­ger of who­ever eats it. That is, of who­ever believes in him and in God. 

Conclusion

Today’s feast puts before us an import­ant theo­lo­gic­al and eccle­si­olo­gic­al concept: koinōnia. Since God is light (Greek: phōs [cf. 1John 1:5]), it is not pos­sible for us to have fel­low­ship with Him if we are walk­ing and oper­at­ing in dark­ness (Greek: sko­tia [cf. 1John 1:6]). It is a logic­al impossib­il­ity. For John, issues of spir­itu­al import­ance are all black and white. Address­ing the Curia, the admin­is­trat­ive appar­at­us of Vat­ic­an, dur­ing the annu­al Christ­mas greet­ings in 2014, Pope Fran­cis lis­ted what he termed the “fif­teen ail­ments” of the Vat­ic­an Curia. In the fifth sick­ness tagged Sick­ness of poor coordin­a­tion, the Pope notes that this sick­ness devel­ops when the com­mu­nion ‎between mem­bers is lost, and the body loses its har­mo­ni­ous func­tion­al­ity ‎and its tem­per­ance, becom­ing an orches­tra of caco­phony (Itali­an: chi­asso) because the ‎mem­bers do not col­lab­or­ate and do not work with a spir­it of com­mu­nion or ‎as a team.[i]‎ We can ima­gine the coun­ten­ance of the Curia mem­bers at the pro­nounce­ment of those words by the pope. But the truth is that such sick­ness is a canker­worm that has eaten and con­tin­ues to eat deep into the fab­rics of the eccle­si­ast­ic­al com­munit­ies. How do we dia­gnose it? What are our own ailments? 

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the Des­cent of Cor­pus Christi is found in The Word of Life, vol. III, pages 306–312. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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