11June 2012: The Bread of Life

“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the desert and yet they died. The bread which comes down from heaven is such that he who eats it never dies.” (Jn 6:48-50) Jesus made this marvellous announcement in the synagogue at Capernaum. Our Lord continued: “I myself am the living bread which has come down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever; and the bread which I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (Jn 6:52) Jesus reveals the great mystery of the Blessed Eucharist. His words are so realistic they exclude any other interpretation. Without faith, his words are meaningless. If the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is accepted by faith, then the revelation of Jesus is clear and unmistakable; and he shows us what God’s infinite love has for us. ‘Adoro te devote, latens deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas’: “Godhead here in hiding, whom do I adore, Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more”, we say with St Thomas Aquinas in that hymn adopted by the Church’s Liturgy many centuries ago. It is an expression of faith and of piety that can help us express our love, because it forms a summary of the principal points of catholic doctrine on this sacred Mystery. Our faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist has to be firm: “We believe that as the bread and wine consecrated by Christ at the Last Supper were converted into his Body and his Blood, which were immediately offered for us on the Cross, thus also the bread and wine consecrated by the priest are converted into the Body and Blood of Christ, sitting gloriously in heaven. We believe that the mysterious presence of Our Lord, under the appearance of those elements, which continue appearing to our senses in the same fashion as before, is a true, real and substantial presence.” (Paul VI, “The Creed of the People of God”, 24) Ref: Cf F Fernandez, “In Conversation with God”, 2:405-7 The mystery of Faith Our Lord’s words cannot be watered down: ‘the bread which I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. This is the mystery of Faith’, we proclaim immediately after Consecration at Mass: the touchstone of the Catholic faith. By transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine “are no longer common bread and common drink, but the sign of something sacred and the sign of spiritual food. But they take on a new expressiveness and a new purpose for the very reason that they contain a new ‘reality’, which we are right to call ‘ontological’. “For beneath these appearances there is no longer what was there before but something quite different ... since on the conversion of the bread and wine’s substance, or nature, into the Body and Blood of Christ, nothing is left of the bread and wine but the appearances alone. Beneath these appearances Christ is present whole and entire, bodily present too, in his physical ‘reality’, although not in the manner in which bodies are present in a place.” (Paul VI, “Mysterium Fidei”, 3 September 1965) In Holy Communion Christ himself, mysteriously hidden perfect God and perfect man, wishes to communicate divine life to us. When we receive him in this sacrament, his Divinity acts on our soul by means of his glorious Humanity, with a far greater intensity than when he was on earth. Hidden under the sacramental species, Jesus awaits us in the Tabernacle so we can receive him and be strengthened in his love. Let us ask ourselves what our love is like: How do we prepare ourselves for Communion, when so many people neglect Our Lord entirely, receiving him routinely? We must say with Peter: “... we have known and believed that you are the Christ” (Jn 6:70); our ‘raison d’etre’. Ref: Cf F Fernandez, “In Conversation with God”, 2:407-8 The Church Appeals to the Mercy of God The Church proclaims the truth of God’s mercy revealed in the crucified and Risen Christ. She seeks to practise mercy towards people through people, an indispensable condition for solicitude for a ‘more human’ world, today and tomorrow. However, in no historical period, especially at the moment as critical as our own, can the Church forget ‘the prayer that is a cry for the mercy of God’ amid the many forms of evil which threaten humanity ... The more the human conscience loses its sense of the very meaning of the word ‘mercy’, moves away from God and distances itself from the mystery of mercy, the more ‘the Church has the right and the duty’ to appeal to the God of Mercy ‘with loud cries’ (cf Heb 5:7). These ‘loud cries’ should be the mark of the Church of our times; cries uttered to God to implore his mercy, the certain manifestation of which she professes and proclaims as having already come in Jesus crucified and risen. This Paschal Mystery bears within itself the most complete revelation of mercy, of that love which is more powerful than death, more powerful than sin and every evil, the love which lifts man when he falls into the abyss and frees him from greatest threats. Modern man feels these threats ... anxiously wonders about the solution to the terrible tensions which have built up in the world and which entangles humanity. If at times he “lacks the courage to utter the word ‘mercy’”, or if in his conscience he does not find the equivalent, ‘so much greater is the need for the Church to utter this word’, not only in her own name but also in the name of all the men and women of our time. ... Let us have recourse to that fatherly love revealed to us by Christ, a love which reached its culmination in his Cross, in his death and Resurrection. Let us have recourse to God through Christ, mindful of the words of Mary’s ‘Magnificat’, which proclaims mercy ‘from generation to generation’. Let us implore God’s mercy for our generation. May the Church which also seeks, following the example of Mary, to be the spiritual mother of mankind, express in this prayer her maternal solicitude and confident love, from which is born the most burning need for prayer. Ref: “Dives in Misericordia, Encyclical Letter by Pope John Paul II”, 1980, pp78-9 • St Barnabas, Apostle -- A Cypriot Jew, he introduced St Paul to the other apostles. He was with Paul in the first missionary journey and in the first Council of Jerusalem. Died a martyr during Nero’s reign. (Fr James Socias, et al [Eds], “Daily Roman Missal”, p1545) • Our Lady of Esquernes, half a league from Lille, in Flanders. This image began to work miracles about the year 1162.—(Buzelinus, Annals of Gaul, lib. ii.) “Catholic Gems or Treasures of the Church” Historical Calendar (www.bethlehemobserver.com) • Our Lady of Esquernes. Near Lille, Flanders 1162. (www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/calendar/index.html); (www/divinewill.org/feastsofourlady.htm); (www.iskandar.com/ourlady/ourladyfeasts.html); (www.starharbor.com/santiago/m feasts.html); (MaryLinks Calendar.htm); (http://mariedenazareth.com)