Friday, May 5, 2017
3rd Week of Easter
1st Reading: Acts 9:1–20
Gospel: Jn 6:52–59
The Jews were arguing among themselves, “How can this man give us flesh to eat?” So Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood live with eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.
“My flesh is really food and my blood is drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, live in me and I in them. Just as the Father, who is life, sent me and I have life from the Father, so whoever eats me will have life from me. This is the bread which came from heaven; unlike that of your ancestors, who ate and later died. Those who eat this bread will live forever.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Those who heard Jesus talk about his body as real food and his blood as real drink walked away shaking their heads in disbelief. Jesus’ offer of his body as food was too disgusting to a culture that considers contact with blood a taboo making a person unclean. Despite the big walk out, Jesus stood by the literal meaning of his words and even challenged those remaining to do the same if they too found the teaching unacceptable.
In this teaching we find solid basis of our devotion to the Holy Eucharist. We believe that at the words of consecration pronounced by the priest, the bread becomes Christ’s body and the wine becomes Christ’s blood. How’s the change from bread to body and from wine to blood possible without the corresponding changes in appearance?
There are two facets of change that can happen to earthly realities, namely the substantial and accidental change. We have more experiences of accidental change. When we were small, for example, we must have been so cute and likeable. As a grown up person we have become “acute” and “like-a-ball”. But this is no cause for alarm. We are still substantially the same person then and now.
The change that happens at Mass is substantial. The process involves no change in appearance. There is wisdom in the retention of the accidental features of bread after consecration. I couldn’t imagine anybody lining up for raw flesh at Holy Communion. As the Jews did, we too would be falling away from the communion line one by one. God has spared us the unnecessary test of faith so we can concentrate on the greater challenge to our faith in the Holy Eucharist. And what is the greater challenge? Our problem is not staying in the line to receive communion but falling away from the communion line when we should not be there because our hands still smell the odor of sin. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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