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Today is one of my favorite church feasts of the year. Corpus Christi is all about the most holy body and blood of Jesus. This is really the reason I am still Catholic, and a huge reason why I am a priest.
In fact, this Gospel passage is my favorite of the whole bible. Oftentimes people will ask me what my favorite passage of scripture is and I always say John chapter 6, mostly for the Bread of Life discourse which we read from today, but really the whole chapter is good.
The chapter starts with Jesus feeding 5,000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish. And then that night Jesus walks on water. After He proves He is God through His control of the earth and its elements, He gives this teaching where He promises us the Eucharist, He promises to give us His body and blood to eat.
So that is where we pick up in the chapter today, with Jesus saying, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
This is a rather shocking statement. If anyone here said this, if any one of our friends and family or fellow parishioners were to say this, we would be shocked. But then again, Jesus had just fed 5,000 and walked on water, God can say this kind of thing because He is God and He can back it up, right?
I imagine that is what the Apostles were thinking, they didn’t quite understand it, but they had just witnessed two seemingly impossible miracles in the last 12 hours, let alone all of the miracles that came before then.
The Jews, the religious leaders, on the other hand, were more skeptical. In fact, it says, they “quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
It’s a fair question really. It seems impossible. But nothing is impossible with God. Besides the question of “why is that even necessary?” And now the Jews are literally fighting over Jesus’ words.
So “Jesus said to them "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink."”
Jesus didn’t back down from His statement. It would have been very easy for him to retract it to keep the Jews from fighting, but instead he amplified His teaching in several ways.
He starts by saying “Amen, Amen” which is like saying, “Hey, everyone, listen up!”, He adds words like true, so “true food” and “true drink,” and then He changes words which are completely lost from the Greek to the English.
This is what amazed me the most, this change in the wording. Mind you, it would have been easy for Jesus to soften His teaching, to say this was only symbolic or something easier, but he didn’t, He made it more challenging.
Well, in today’s Gospel, we have the word Eat used six times, but the first two times, it is the common, socially acceptable use, the Greek word, phago. That’s spelled P-H-A-G-O, phago.
The last four times, after the Jews begin to fight, Jesus changes the verb and says, you must trogo the flesh of the son of man. That’s spelled T-R-O-G-O, trogo. In the dictionary, phago is just simple eating, I imagine it is polite, like eating with a fork and a spoon. But this word trogo is defined as to gnaw, crunch or chew.
Now, when I hear the word “gnaw,” there is only one thing that comes to mind, and that is gnawing on a giant smoked turkey leg at the Iowa State Fair. Which I heard got cancelled on Wednesday and I was super bummed.
But anyway, this word, trogo, was used for eating flesh, and that was the word that Jesus began to use to intensify his teaching and he did it so that to emphasize the reality of physically consuming the Bread that he was promising to give, his flesh.
Furthermore, Jesus had at least two options for the word “flesh” also, but He used the Greek word sarx which could mean nothing other than the physical corporeal reality of His very body, as opposed to using the word soma, which could be interpreted symbolically.
Jesus wanted to be very clear that the Eucharist was not just a symbol, it is His true flesh and true blood, given to us mystically as only God could.
Now when I first heard this, I was completely blown away, it was something I had missed for the first twenty-five years of my life.
The belief in the real, true presence of Jesus is such a uniquely Catholic belief and I was so shocked because I had almost walked away from my Catholic faith, and almost walked away from the pure gift and grace that it is to receive the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, to receive His body, blood, soul and divinity, where we remain with Him and He remains with us.
And that is the beauty of this, is this is one of the most tangible ways He chooses to remain with us. Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”
So, when we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, it is like we become the tabernacle, Jesus remains physically inside of us. At the beginning of Mass we receive His Word, that remains spiritually inside of us, but then we also receive Him physically, and He remains with us both ways.
That was a difficult thing for many people during this church shutdown was (is) not being able to receive Him. Watching Mass or listening on KDTH is not the same, it is good because at least we receive the Word, but receiving Jesus physically is of course the best, it is the way Jesus wanted to remain with us.
Historically, one of the features of Corpus Christi is a procession where Jesus is taken out into the streets in the monstrance. It’s like a smaller, beautiful gold tabernacle that allows you to look at and adore Jesus in the consecrated host. I didn’t feel comfortable doing that procession this year, but the point is to take Jesus out to the world.
When we leave here, each of us should be mindful of the fact that we are taking Jesus out into the world, in His Word, and in His true presence in the Eucharist, we make Jesus present for those who don’t yet know His love.
Because He remains with us in His sacrament of His love, we are called to go out to the world and share Jesus’ love. That’s why I say at the end of Mass “Go in peace…” - the Church wants you to take Jesus to the world, one family member, one friend, one neighbor at a time.
So remember, when you worthily receive Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, you become a living tabernacle. One that can go out and interact with God’s children in the world. Ask yourself, how am I allowing Jesus to live inside me in every single moment?
May God bless you as you take Jesus out into the world that needs His love so badly right now.
-Fr. Andy Upah, Pastor