bread of life

Homily for The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
Deacon Douglas McManaman

In the first Reading, we find ourselves back in the desert. Moses calls attention to the experience of the Israelites: “Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction…” (Deut 8, 2). It was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who led them out into and through the desert: a pillar of fire by night, a pillar of cloud by day. And they had to experience the hunger and thirst of living in the desert wilderness because they had to learn to depend on God. And this is a hard lesson to learn. But the Lord leads all of us, at certain points in our lives, out into the desert wilderness in order that we may learn to depend on Him, to allow him to lead.

Many of us, however, have a very real fear that “if I give my finger to God, he’s going to take my whole hand”. And so, we hold back, unwilling to surrender our entire selves. For many of us it takes a lifetime to learn to give God not just our hand, but our entire body. In the meantime, He does allow us to see what happens when we have Him take a back seat while we take the lead. Imagine if the Israelites were to lead themselves out of Egypt and through the desert. Would they have made it to the land of promise, the land of Canaan? No, they would not have. God has to lead because of three important factors: 1) He is all powerful, which means he can do whatever he wants. Nothing limits God; 2) He’s all knowing, so He knows what is best for us and what conditions need to be in place for us to achieve that end; and 3) He wills the best for us, which is what it means to say that God is Love. He wills our greatest good and happiness, and He knows better than we do what constitutes our greatest happiness and precisely how to bring it about, and He has the power to bring it about, but not without our cooperation. He won’t force himself upon us; for love is not love unless it is freely given, and friendship is a two-way street. He offers us His friendship and waits for our response. And God is patient; He will wait our entire lives if He has to.

So, we have to allow Him to lead, but we are creatures of habit, and we are afraid. That is why He allows us to taste the lifelessness and desolation of the wilderness, which is life as it eventually becomes when we choose to take charge. But we cannot lead, because we are not all knowing, and we are profoundly limited and vulnerable, for all of us are just one freak accident from paralysis and becoming completely dependent upon the care of others or from ending up on the street. But for some strange reason, that isn’t obvious to most people. They seem to believe that such things couldn’t happen to them.

The manna with which God fed Israel in the desert is of course a foreshadowing of the Eucharist. The message is simple: If we don’t eat, we die. I remember watching the 2004 film Supersize Me. The director of this film decides to subsist on food from the McDonald’s menu for an entire month. Soon his energy level drops and he begins to experience horrible side effects. I don’t mean to put down McDonald’s–I think they have the best coffee and fast food is very convenient at times. But notice what happens when he goes from a healthy diet to a steady diet of food that is meant only to have occasionally.

For me, the parallel is obvious. We cannot feed sporadically on the Bread of Life. The Eucharist has to be our staple. It is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, in the act of sacrificing himself to God the Father. We are fed on Christ himself. He is our food. If we neglect that food and instead choose to feed on other things in this world that are good, just not Christ, like entertainment, travel, trips to exotic places, fine cuisine, etc., gradually our spiritual energy level plummets. These things cannot sustain us. We were created for the Bread of Life, Christ himself. Without a steady diet of the Eucharist, we slowly die.

The spiritual life must be first; God must be first; Christ must be first; the Bread of Life must be first. God will take care of the rest. He said it himself: “Don’t worry about what you are to eat and what you are to drink and what you are to wear; seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be provided” (Mt 6, 33).

God will lead us through turbulent waters and through the heat of the desert, towards the land of promise. But we must make an act of the will, a commitment to stay the course despite how we feel on certain days, an act of the will to allow him to lead in our married lives, and in our work, so that our work becomes his work, no matter what that is, whether that’s cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors or high finance. It all has dignity because it is work and work is holy.

When we consume the Eucharist, we become what we eat. We become Christ. What this means is that when we leave the parish Church and enter back into our homes and into the world of work, we bring Christ into the home and into the world. A home with Christ in it is a peaceful home, and it is through us that Christ is in the world. And if it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2, 20), then the way others relate to me and you is the way they relate to Christ, and that becomes their salvation, no matter what religion they are (Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, or no religion at all). In relating to you, who have become Christ in consuming his body and blood, they relate to Christ without necessarily being aware of it. And if they love you, they love Christ without even knowing it.