The Holy Prophet Jeremiah (625-585 BC); Coronation of Pochaiv Icon of the Mother of God (1773); Passing into Eternal Life (1951) of Blessed Klymentii (Clement) Sheptytsky, Archimandrite of the Studites and Confessor
Acts 10:1-16; John 6:56-69.
Read John 6:56-69
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
Today’s Gospel declares in a way that the Word really became flesh. Why has the Incarnation been resisted from the very beginning? Why is the extension of the Incarnation, which is the Eucharist, still such a source of division?
I think it has to do with the flesh. God became one of us, as close to us as blood and muscle and bone. It is no longer correct to say simply that God is in his heaven and we are on the earth. It is not correct to say simply that God is spirit and we are matter. Matter has been invaded by spirit. In Jesus, God became flesh, and, more to the point, he invites us to eat his Body and drink his Blood. But that means that he wants us to take him into ourselves.
Those who heard it were not only repulsed intellectually; they were disgusted, viscerally. So what does Jesus do? Does he soften his rhetoric? Does he offer a metaphorical or symbolic interpretation? Does he back off? On the contrary, he intensifies what he just said: “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.”
So what do we do? If we stand in the great Catholic tradition, we honour these mysterious and wonderful words of Jesus. We resist all attempts to soften them or explain them away or make them easier to swallow. We affirm, with all of our hearts, the doctrine of the Real Presence, that in Holy Communion we indeed receive the Body and Blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ.