The image which stands out in the teaching in this Sunday’s Gospel – St.John,6:51-58 – is “Eating”. Eating is something we all love to do. It is an intimate action where we take something that is not us and make it part of us. I often joke that I am fifty percent chocolate! On a more serious note, eating should also help us to remember how we depend on the world and cannot thrive if we are separated from it. Jesus uses this human activity for spiritual purposes. We eat a piece of bread and ‘it’ becomes part of us. But when we eat Him; when we take in the spiritual nourishment He offers, we become Him.
His audience focus on the word ‘flesh’ and you can see them struggling with a possible invitation to cannibalism! But Jesus presses on. The division of flesh and blood symbolises his death and reveals the way He is going to make His awareness our own. How Jesus understands his own death is something every disciple should know by heart. Seriously! Jesus uses many images; seeing His own death as a movement from ‘a grain of wheat’ into ‘much fruit’. Far from being an experience of loss, He will be more. He will also be more accessible and available as the Risen Lord than He is as The Jesus of history.
We enter His Sacred Heart whenever we take part in the Eucharist. In this Sacred act, the meaning of His death will be revealed to those who eat and drink. Each time we do this we will deepen our understanding of the divine love that transforms death into new life.
So while it is true that we can eat good food and make it our own without paying any attention to the process, we cannot do that with a new mind. Disciples have to eat and drink in a certain way. The original word Jesus uses for this kind of eating is literally translated as ‘munching’. A far cry from the days when we were not allowed to let the host touch our teeth! Bob Noznick’s description of what munching looks like is thoroughly described in his book, ‘The Examined Life’.
” We meet the food in the anteroom of the mouth and greet it there. We probe and explore it, surround it, permeate it with juices, press it with our tongues against the roof of the mouth along that hard ridge directly above the teeth, place it under suction and pressure, move it around. We know it’s texture fully; it holds no secrets or hidden parts”. (p.56).
A priest was serving on a World War 1 battlefield in France. He carried the Eucharist in a pyx next to his heart. He suddenly realised just how disappointing it was to be thus holding so close to himself the wealth of the world and the very source of life without being able to possess it inwardly, without being able to either penetrate it or assimilate it. This is the true meaning of the Gospel text. There is only one way to have His life within us, we have to receive this most precious gift. We have to eat His Body. We have to drink His Blood. And if we do this regularly, or even every day, it is good from time to time to pause and to contemplate the infinite preciousness of the Eucharist. And having renewed our mind to His we discover how awesome He really is.
