Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Psalm 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20; I Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58

This Sunday is the solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, and there is a Eucharistic theme in the readings today. In the first reading, Moses reminds the Israelites of the manna with which God fed them when they were hungry in the desert. In a way, feelings of hunger such as those felt by the Israelites are a good thing, because they alert human beings to a real need for nourishment. Far more so are feelings of emptiness and spiritual hunger which we may experience without God a true blessing, because they alert us to a need for God, which only God can fill, and which God does miraculously fill when we receive the gift of Jesus in His full divinity and humanity in the Eucharist. Apart from God life is a desert, and only if God is with us can the desert be made fruitful. When Jesus came to sacrifice Himself for us, and gave us Himself in the Eucharist, He truly gave us "a food unknown to you and your fathers," a food that could never have existed without His infinite generosity. In Moses' speech here in Deuteronomy, we find already language that is almost more accurate in foreshadowing the Eucharist than in referring to manna. Moses tells the people that the Lord gave them this food "in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord." Jesus, of course, is the Word of God, and we live by Him, not by bread alone, even though we receive him under the appearance of bread.

In the responsorial psalm, we see how Israel, insofar as it is the community of those centered on the Lord, is blessed and established in peace and prosperity. The last blessing mentioned for Israel in the responsorial psalm is that the Lord "has proclaimed his word to Jacob, his statutes and his ordinances to Israel." Israel is uniquely blessed because God has made His will known to them. We are similarly blessed by the mission of the Church as teacher of morals and doctrines, proclaiming and interpreting the message of Jesus to us. Notice too that the psalm tells us that what the Lord has done for Israel "He has not done thus for any other nation; his ordinances he has not made known to them." Other nations will have some part of the truth, but only the new Israel, the Church, has the fullness of truth received from God in His Word, Jesus Christ.

The second reading emphasizes that the Church is unified in the Eucharist, as a participation in the body and blood of Christ. Through this participation, "we, though many, are one body." This is why those who are not Catholics cannot be openly invited to receive the Eucharist. This is not a matter of being somehow unfriendly or unwelcoming. Those who are not in fact fully united with the Catholic Church, and particularly those who do not share Catholic beliefs about the Eucharist, should not receive the Eucharist because their reception would falsely indicate a unity with the Catholic Church and a belief in the Real Presence.

The Gospel for this Sunday is from John 6, one of the most important passages in the Bible for purposes of understanding the Real Presence. Indeed, this is famously perhaps the most difficult passage to explain away for those who would claim that Jesus is only present in the Eucharist symbolically or figuratively. At the same time, it should be one of the most powerful passages about the Eucharist for Catholics, attesting to the full wonder of the gift that Jesus offers us at every Mass. It is important to notice and appreciate the reaction of those listening to Jesus when He said: "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." The Jews did not think Jesus was speaking figuratively, for they asked each other "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" If Jesus had wanted to, at this point He could have quieted their fears, and explained that He was not speaking of real flesh. Instead, He responded by making his original statement even stronger and clearer, and insisting that He had been speaking the literal truth: "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. ... For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink."

Later in John 6, after the end of this Sunday's Gospel, we find further evidence that Jesus meant exactly what He said. His disciples called this teaching "a hard saying," and many of them left Him "and returned to their former way of life," but Jesus does not stop them and tell them that they have misunderstood. Instead, He asks those who remain "Do you also want to leave?" In a way this is a question which is constantly asked of all disciples of Jesus, including us today. On this earth we are always free to leave and return to a way of life that does not follow Jesus. We therefore must constantly re-commit ourselves, particularly when we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, to following in our faith and way of life the response of Simon Peter: "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."