Our Eucharistic Lord

Twentieth Sunday of the Year. Fr John Farrell reminds us that the Eucharist is a personal and particular encounter with Christ.

Although Saint John devotes almost a quarter of his Gospel to presenting the actions and teachings of Jesus at the Last Supper, within those five chapters there is no account of the institution of the Eucharist. It seems that at this point John gives us Jesus teaching us how to live eucharistically – how to live out the Eucharist. And so, we have, ‘I am the vine you are the branches’ … You must bear fruit that will abide, he tells us, and without my life flowing through you, you can do nothing.

In the washing of feet, he tells us ‘I have set you an example, that you should also do as I have done to you.’

And throughout there is the theme of the indwelling of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the consecrated, Eucharistic Christian. In the last chapter we are consecrated into the sacrifice of Christ and his final prayer is that ‘the love with which you love me, Heavenly Father, may be in them and that I may be in them.’

And so it is into today’s Gospel, in this long Discourse on the Bread of Life after the Feeding of the Five Thousand, that St John gives us Christ’s exposition of the Eucharist itself. But it begins not with the sacrament but with Jesus himself in his humanity. He has been sent from the Father to draw all humankind to himself.

The crowd that he had fed the day before now present him with a challenge from the time of the Exodus: ‘Moses gave us bread from heaven.” Jesus reinterprets this in all its complexity: it is not Moses, but your Heavenly Father who is giving you now (in the present tense not the past tense) not manna but Living Sustenance which has come down from heaven.

‘As I, who am sent by the Living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me.’

The Blessed Sacrament is not a thing: it is deeply personal, it is a person giving himself to us; the same Jesus, the Good Shepherd who came to lay down his life in order to give us life and give it more abundantly. He gives himself to us under the double aspect of his sacrifice and our sustenance: the broken body and the outpoured blood; the food of life and our spiritual drink. Sacrifice and sustenance.

With other food and drink, they become part of us. With this food and drink we become him, individually and also together as the Body of Christ. We become the embodying of his living presence in the vast communion of the Church. We become the transfusing of his grace in our lives and mission.

It is the same Jesus who encountered and taught the crowd there in Capernaum who encounters us and teaches us now at each particular celebration of the Eucharist. From the vantage point of the upper room at the Last Supper Jesus foresaw our Eucharistic assemblies across the dark waters of his passion: his disciples of every nation, people, and tongue, people called to wash one another’s feet; called to be fruitful branches of that eucharistic vine and drawn by the Heavenly Father into the holy communion and mission of his redeeming love.

Receiving Jesus in the Eucharist is deeply personal. It is right that we say we receive him but perhaps it is even more profound to say that he receives me, he received each one of us. The Good Shepherd receives each unique one of us personally in communion not as we should be, not as we might be, not as we would like to be, but just as we are here and now. As the father receive the prodigal son, so we are embraced by the Good Shepherd who searches for the lost and leads us homeward besides flowing streams.

Readings: Proverbs 9:1-6 | Ephesians 5:15-20 | John 6:51-58

Image: detail from a mosaic in St Salvators Chapel in St Andrews of Christ instituting the Eucharist, photographed by Fr Lawrence Lew OP