BREAD FOR LIFE

The Christian cannot live without the Eucharist,
and the Eucharist without the Christian.

Saturninus and companions (305 AD)

Why does Jesus invite us to “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood”? We must not forget that, in the economy of John’s discourse, he is the paschal lamb. If in the ancient exodus, the flesh of the lamb was nourishment as the people went out from slavery in Egypt, and its blood freed from death, sonow, in the new exodus, its flesh not only nourishes but is a permanent gift of love; and his blood not only liberates but offers definitive salvation. However, one must eat and drink the flesh and blood, that is, assimilate Christ, so that it becomes the substance of one’s life. Is there a place to experience this power of new life? Certainly, it is the Eucharist. Tertullian saw in the Eucharist the ad osculum (holy kiss), meaning, the communion that comes to be established with Christ and his Body, that is, the brothers and sisters in the faith. In today’s passage (cf. Jn 6.51-58), Jesus states that he who eats of him will live through him (cf. Jn 6.57). The preposition per (dià) has a double value: causative and final. In a word, whoever eats the body of Christ lives thanks to him and in view of him. Therefore the incorruptible flesh of Christ becomes my flesh but my humanity also becomes Christ, made his own by him. Saint Hilary writes: Eius tantum in se adsumptam habens carnem, qui suam sumpserit (Christ takes on the flesh of him who takes on his flesh). And in this regard, in the collection of poems entitled Song of the Hidden God, Karol Wojtyla calls this new subject, whose life participates in the life of Christ, the Eucharistic self (it is the man who speaks of Christ here, not the other way around) :

Then the miracle will happen
of the transformation:
behold, you will become me –
Eucharistic Me.

There is nothing that is ours that does not now belong to Christ. Elizabeth of the Trinity understood this well when, writing to her mother, she said: “ The bride belongs to the groom. My groom got me. He wants her to be an added humanity for him “.

Commento a cura di d. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey