Word to the Wise
Friday, May 9, 2025 - 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 in 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 real 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." [John]
Jesus speaks these words in response to the question, "How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?" The easy answer to that could be, "Because he is God and he can do whatever he wants!" But that would require his audience that day to accept him as the One whom God has sent. And they were not anywhere near that point. So, their understanding was confined to the flesh and blood that was their own and that of any human being. It sounded to them as if Jesus was advocating cannibalism! Nevertheless, the question remained, also, for those who accepted his teaching. The church considered that question for many centuries before St. Thomas Aquinas offered a response in the form of the word "transubstantiation." This explanation is based on the philosophy of Aristotle and has been the one accepted by the church as a sure response to the question.
I don't think most Catholics walk around with an explanation of the big word "transubstantiation" at the tip of their tongues. We take Jesus' word at the Last Supper as his guarantee that the bread we eat and the cup we drink is his Body and Blood. We take this word because of the faithful witness of the saints who preached it from the very beginning. St. Paul, whose conversion is recounted in today's first scripture, gives us the first account in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. The teaching as presented in the Gospel According to John is divorced from the setting in the Upper Room. Some of the disciples in the audience would find it hard to accept. That same is true today. As one young woman, whom I received into the church at Easter, said to me when I asked what was most difficult to accept in Catholicism : "The Eucharist! If you can accept that, the rest is easy!" AMEN
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