Word to the Wise
Friday, April 23, 2021 - 3rd Week of Easter - Fri
[Acts 9:1-20 and John 6:52-59]"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. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever." [John]
The gospel portraits of Jesus are not meant to be history or journalism in the sense that we know these things today. They are documents of faith in Jesus. They reflect that state of faith of the community for which they were written. The evangelists took whatever resources they had in terms of written or oral traditions about Jesus and his teachings and about his death and resurrection and shaped them according to the way they (the evangelists) had come to believe. The Gospel According to John was the last of the four gospels to be composed and reflects the state of faith in the Eucharist which had developed over 60 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is interesting to compare this with St. Paul's statements (the earliest we have in writing) in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 and 12:23-29 which place this subject in a community context. The dramatic statements of Jesus in the synagogue at Capernaum also contrast with the somber and solemn accounts of the Last Supper in which Jesus presents the bread and cup as his Body and Blood to become a perpetual reminder of his presence. What we have in the Gospel According to John is a dramatic and stark challenge to the individual faith of the believer.
The eucharistic faith of the community in this gospel was being challenged and rejected by fellow Jews. To this very day, the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist is challenged or misunderstood, even by devout Catholics.! The theology of the priesthood reflects a development of how the worship of the community went from small home celebrations to large basilicas. What we learn in today's words from the Gospel According to John must be integrated into what the other New Testament witnesses tell us. The celebration of the Eucharist is about more than the change that takes place at the altar with the words of consecration. It is about the whole Catholic Christian way of life. AMEN