The Holy Eucharist Food For The Souls

The Holy Eucharist is the food for the journey into Eternal Life.

This weekend, the Holy Roman Catholic Church gives us readings that speak to the very core of the existence of the Church. In the first reading the Israelites are grumbling against Moses and Aaron because they felt that they were brought out of captivity, where they had all that they could eat, to a place where they would die. They had not known what it meant to trust in God’s Providence. So God heard their grumbling and he provided for them.  This is the bread that the LORD provided for them to eat.

The Gospel reading is taken from John chapter 6 and it is definitely the chapter that sets the Catholic Church apart from all other Christian denominations. In this reading we hear the crowd that was fed not too long before, following Jesus; not because of who he was, but because he had satisfied their physical need. They sought after him not because he was the Son of God but rather because he had given them more bread and fish than they needed. When Jesus saw them, he challenged them not to work for the food that perishes, but rather for the food that endures to eternal life, the food that the Son of Man gives. Many of us build our worlds around things that in themselves are good, but will not last. Jesus is challenging us to build our world; to base out lives; to place our hopes not in the temporal things that surround us, but rather in that which lasts forever – ETERNAL LIFE.

In the second reading, St. Paul is employing the people of Ephesus to change. He says “brothers and sisters I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futurity of their minds; that is not how you learned from Christ.” He urges them to put away the old way of living; the sinful way that they used to live, and live in the new way in Christ Jesus, a way of righteousness, of holiness and of truth. This new way of living; this revolution and transformation of our minds, our hearts and our lives cannot be willed into being.  If it could, then there will be no need for Jesus Christ, and he would have left Heaven, come to earth, died on the cross then rose from the dead, all for nothing. But His coming and dying and rising was not in vein.  It was so that grace be poured out on us His beloved to conquer sin and death in our lives, so that we can spend eternity with Him. The Holy Eucharist provides this Grace.

What is the connection then between the first reading the Gospel and the second reading? It is that God’s desire is that all of us should have eternal life. He sent Jesus his Son into the world to destroy our number one enemy which is sin, and by extension death. It is through God’s grace – Christ Jesus his Son – that we can enter into this wholeness and the fullness of life. God’s grace is poured out in us in a very powerful way through the Eucharist. When our souls are fed with the body and blood of Christ Jesus, we receive the grace for our spiritual selves to grow strong and to resist the weaknesses of our physical selves. We are therefore able by the grace of God through Christ Jesus his Son in the Holy Eucharist, to resist and conquer sin. This was what St. Paul prayed for in Ephesians 3: 16-19

In the abundance of his glory may he, through his Spirit, enable you to grow firm in power with regard to your inner self, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, with all God’s holy people you will have the strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; so that, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge, you may be filled with the utter fullness of God.

This is what the Holy Eucharist – the Bread from Heaven – does for us!

Let’s look at what the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us in paragraph 1392:

What material food produces in our bodily life, Holy Communion wonderfully achieves in our spiritual life. Communion with the flesh of the risen Christ, a flesh “given life and giving life through the Holy Spirit,” preserves, increases, and renews the life of grace received at Baptism. This growth in Christian life needs the nourishment of Eucharistic Communion, the bread for our pilgrimage until the moment of death, when it will be given to us as viaticum.

This gets even more amazing; more exciting – more like ‘wow’ – in the next paragraph (ccc 1393)

Holy Communion separates us from sin. The body of Christ we receive in Holy Communion is “given up for us,” and the blood we drink “shed for the many for the forgiveness of sins.” For this reason the Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins:

WOW!!  Did you hear that?! Not only does the Holy Eucharist unite us with Christ, but in doing so, it also cleanses us and preserves us from our number one enemy – sin!! Shouldn’t we therefore be running more often than we do to receive Jesus in the Holy Eucharist?  Jesus is calling us to work for food that endures to Eternal Life.  For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

To which we all should with pure and eager hearts,  “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Then we will hear Jesus say,

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”