19th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
‘Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.’
In today’s extract from the ‘Bread Section’ of
St. John’s Gospel Jesus makes an extraordinary
promise. If we eat His flesh and drink His blood
we will live with Him forever. There has never
been a greater promise made in the whole of
history. By sharing in the Eucharist we share in
the life of God. As we consume the Eucharist,
the Eucharist is meant to consume us. Our vision
becomes Christ’s vision. Our hopes and dreams
are shaped by His hopes and dreams. Our hearts
become His heart reaching out to all of humanity,
or as Pope St. Leo the Great proclaimed: ‘The
effect of receiving the Body and Blood of
Christ is that we become what we receive’.
We are dealing with mystery when we
contemplate the priceless gift of the Eucharist.
A young boy once asked an electrician: ‘What
exactly is electricity’? The electrician answered:
‘I really do not know, son, but I can make it give
you light’. Likewise, the Church can never fully
explain the stupendous mystery of the Eucharist,
but she can make it give us the life of Jesus. The
Irish people have, through the ages, embraced
the mystery and treasured the gift. When the last
Chief Secretary of Ireland, Augustine Birrell, was
asked by London to report on the level of faith
and practice in Ireland he gave a one sentence
reply: ‘For the Irish it’s the Mass that matters’.
May it always be so.
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