For the last few Sundays, we have heard Christ’s bread of life discourse. Throughout this discourse, Christ reveals to us a great and beautiful mystery: His Eucharistic love for us. Here are Christ’s words:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life” (Jn 6:47).
And, again:
“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” (Jn 6:53).
| August 25 – Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time |
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Jos 24:1-2, 15-17, 18 Ps 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21 Eph 5:21-32, 25-32 Jn 6:60-69 |
This Sunday, the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, we hear the disciples’ response:
“This saying is hard. Who can accept it?”
Yes, this saying “is” hard! Christ’s bread of life discourse carries a revelation greater than anything our minds could imagine on their own. And thus, our response to Christ’s discourse can only be the response of faith. Christ tells us as much, again and again:
“The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.”
“[W]hoever believes has eternal life” (Jn 6:47).
“But there are some of you who do not believe.”
Many of those who listened to Christ’s discourse did not believe. They found the saying too hard and could not accept it. And we may find that as we have listened to the discourse ourselves these past Sundays, we, too, have found it hard. Confronted with this great mystery ourselves, the disciples’ question, “Who can accept it?”, might just ring in our own ears a little too loudly.
Marriage and Eucharistic love
But this is why we also have St. Paul’s witness offered to us from the table of the word at Mass this Sunday. Paul speaks to us of what is so hard to accept, of what is hard to believe: God’s love for us.
Paul chooses marriage as a way to explain Christ’s Eucharistic love for us. Indeed, Ephesians 5 could be read as a catechesis on the bread of life discourse. In marriage, Paul reminds us, “The two shall become one flesh.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife.” From this reminder, Paul moves directly to unveil his greater meaning: “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.”
Christ, Paul shows, leaves his father and comes to the Church as to his wife. The two, he says, shall become one flesh: Christ joins himself to us, loving us, handing himself over for us, and sanctifying us. In all of this, Christ “nourishes and cherishes” us as his own divine self!
This is the Eucharistic love that Christ reveals to us in the bread of life discourse. In the Eucharist, Christ hands himself over to us, and when we accept such a gift of love in faith, trusting in the one who gives, we are joined to him as his spouse, “as his body.”
And so, no, we will not understand the great and beautiful Mystery of the Eucharist without faith. Faith alone receives all revelations of love, divine and human, for love is always something unexpected and unimagined until it is revealed. But also because, if it is love, it is always a gift, freely given and never taken back. Christ offers this gift to us in words that are “Spirit and life” and in every Eucharist.
Thus, thinking about the discourse we have heard over the last few Sundays, and confronted with the disciples response this Sunday — “This saying is hard. Who can accept it?” — St. Paul might encourage us to hear Christ’s discourse this way:
“I love you. I give my life for you and to you. Believe in my love and accept this gift that is nothing other than myself offered to you always.”
