Friday, 10 May 2019
3rd Week of Easter
1st Reading: Acts 9:1-20
Gospel: John 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 lives 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.”
Jesus spoke in this way in Capernaum when he taught them in the synagogue.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
The last time Jesus used the terms “flesh and blood” was when he told Peter, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (Mt 16:17). When Jesus used these terms again in his long discourse on the Bread of Life, people got scandalized because by asking them to eat his flesh and drink his blood he was effectively treating them like cannibals.
The Jews were not ignorant of this passage from Isaiah: “I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine” (Is 49:26). While they loved to see this passage fulfilled to the letter on their oppressors, they wished Jesus were joking or speaking figuratively when he asked them to eat his flesh and drink his blood. But if Jesus were only talking figuratively, why didn’t he declare so when the people started leaving? Instead he repeated his message in no clearer terms: “My flesh is real food and my blood real drink”.
The institution of the Holy Eucharist before he died settled the controversial aspect of the mandate. The transubstantiation happening during consecration at Mass settles the issue on cannibalism because what one eats at the Eucharistic table doesn’t have the appearance of human flesh. Nonetheless a communicant truly eats the flesh of Christ because after consecration the substance of bread turns into the body of Christ even though its accidents remain that of bread.
By addressing major issues about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, Jesus has paved an easier way for us to eternal life. Let us intensify our devotion to the Holy Eucharist as we strive to become better persons by becoming bread, broken and shared to those in need. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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