Food for Eternal Life
My dear bothers and sister,
Without a doubt, a basic
necessity of natural life is food. Our world today seems to be concerned only
with the things of the flesh especially physical food. We know that we are
composites of spiritual and material elements and so desire both, but hardly do
we look for those spiritual elements that sustain life and make it worth
living. The physical food we consume is only to keep the flesh going and we do
our best to consume enough of that but what efforts have we made to sustain the
life of our souls?
For this reason, wisdom in
the first reading (Proverbs 9:1-6) invites us to “come and eat bread and drink
wine”. This invitation is not to satisfy a physical need but to take care of a
spiritual need. It is not a physical food but a spiritual food though it comes
in physical form. This invitation is an invitation to the Holy Sacrifice of the
mass, and the bread we are invited to eat is the body of Christ and the wine is
the blood of Christ, all contained in the Holy Eucharist, the food for eternal
life. It is also for this reason that it is said “happy are those who are
invited to the banquet of the Lord”.
Truly, the body of Christ is real food for our souls and his blood
is real drink. Whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood lives in Christ and
Christ lives in him. The Church teaches us that Jesus Christ alone can satisfy
our hunger. We cannot have life unless we eat his body and drink his blood. He
alone is the food that corresponds to our deepest hunger. The Eucharist is the
final guarantee of God’s unending concern for the whole man and the whole human
family in all our needs, both earthly and heavenly. In the Gospel of today,
Jesus reminds us that “I
tell you most
solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood
has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day”. This is the New Testament, the
word of life, but the Jews receive Jesus’ words as harmful and rise up in
anger. Today, how do we respond to this divine invitation to come and eat of
the bread that came down from heaven? How can we eat Christ? What does the Holy
Mass mean to us?
We
need to recognize that the Holy mass is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and as the
second reading of today (Eph. 5:15-20) exhorts us, we have to be filled with
the Spirit, sing the words and tunes of psalms and hymns when we are together,
so that always and everywhere we are giving thanks to God who is our father in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. But there is more, the Holy Mass is an
opportunity for us to meet and encounter our God; a chance for us to worship
our Father and Creator; a opportunity to be filled by the Holy Spirit. Our God,
the blessed Trinity, is fully present in the Holy Mass.
Let us live in the state of grace, to receive the Body and Blood
of the Lord every time celebrating the Holy Mass. Do not forget that, when we
come to handle the bread and wine on the Lord's Table we make our request in
confidence because we have been told that we should ask for this food of
eternal life. We receive the gracious gifts in faith, looking to eternal life,
remembering that Jesus said to men in flesh that his life would be shared with
them in the material stuff of life in this world, which is God's special
provision for us earthly believers as we travel on our journey of faith towards
the Kingdom of God. Amen.
Fr.
Joseph Pham Quoc Van, O.P.
