Unless You Eat
Ordinary Time
Today's reading · John 6:51-58
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.
Corpus Christi is the feast that refuses to be metaphor.
When the crowd pushes back, Jesus doesn't soften the claim. He sharpens it. 'Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.' Not symbolically. Not approximately. Not in some elevated spiritual sense designed to make everyone comfortable. His flesh is true food. His blood is true drink. He says it twice, then says it again.
The early Church was accused of cannibalism for believing this, which tells you something about how literally they took it. And the Church has always been clear: what happens at Mass is not a symbol pointing to something else. It is the thing itself. The bread and wine become his Body and Blood, soul and divinity, really and truly present. That's not a pious exaggeration. That's the faith.
What's wild is the direction of it. The one who made the universe wants to abide in us. To be received by us. To raise us up on the last day from the inside out. Every Mass is Corpus Christi. Today just makes us stop and stare at what we've been handed.
So stare at it. Let it be strange. Let it be scandalous. Let it be beautiful. Because if Jesus meant what he said, and the Church has always believed he did, then the most ordinary Tuesday morning communion is one of the most extraordinary things a human being can do.
Today's intention
Today I'll receive the Eucharist with fresh eyes, or if I can't make it to Mass, I'll make a sincere act of spiritual communion and actually mean every word.