485. Tuesday after Corpus Christi

Meditations no. 228 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

In the Eucharist, Jesus Christ offers himself as spiritual food and the pledge of eternal life.

The Eucharist, says St Ignatius of Antioch, is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, the same flesh that suffered for our sins, the same that God the Father in his goodness raised to life again. And this, our Lord’s own flesh, is the food of our souls. My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. In Communion, our Lord gives himself as nourishment for our souls, to make us grow, and bring us to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

There is a close parallel between physical life and spiritual life. St Thomas explains: Just as the life of the body requires generation, in order to come into being; growth, to come to its fullness; and food, to sustain it; so the spiritual life requires Baptism, which is spiritual birth; Confirmation, which is spiritual growth; and the Eucharist, which is spiritual food. Accordingly, what material food and drink do - that is, give sustenance, provide the means for growth, and give enjoyment - this sacrament does in the spiritual life.

Food keeps the body alive and strengthens it. So too the Eucharist sustains the soul, and gives it the strength to avoid sin. Through daily Communion, the soul grows in holiness and becomes more Christ-like; and when our wretchedness blurs our Lord’s image in us, this bread, in St Anselm’s words, is the remission of sins: it cleans away the faults we may have committed, the small skirmishes of our daily struggle, and gives us the strength to turn back to the beautiful war of peace more vigorously than before. The Eucharist also brings joy, because it immerses our soul in the torrent of God’s love. It is not necessarily a “feeling” (though our Lord may sometimes allow us to experience this), but rather a serene joy that has its roots in faith, and in the knowledge that we are “living temples of God” and tabernacles of Christ’s sacred Humanity.

However, there is a great difference between the Eucharist and material food. The effect of material food is temporary and transient; it prolongs our life but does not prevent death. The food of the Eucharist, by contrast, is what St Ignatius calls the medicine of immortality, the remedy for death, and the food of eternal life in Jesus Christ. And so it fulfils the promise our Lord made to the Jews at Capharnaum: he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

For Holy Communion to be truly the pledge of eternal life for us and the guarantee of our resurrection, we have to receive it worthily, because whoever … eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. So let us examine our own daily encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist: how we prepare to receive him, and the way we treat him during the time of thanksgiving.

In Communion we are identified with Christ.

Almighty God, you created all things for your name’s sake, and gave mankind food and drink to enjoy. But on us you have bestowed spiritual food and drink, and everlasting life, by means of your Son. The Eucharist is our food, but of an infinitely nobler kind than material food. When corporal pleasures are lacking, says St Gregory, we feel an intense hunger for them, but as soon as we have satisfied our needs they produce a sense of surfeit. The body of Christ, in contrast, satisfies us without ever satiating, and gives sweetness without sickliness. Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more. We will never get tired of this food, even though we receive it every day. Every Communion means meeting Christ afresh, the spring of water welling up to eternal life.

But there is even more to it than that. St Cyril teaches that if we eat the flesh of Christ, who is the Saviour of us all, and drink his precious blood, we have life within us, we become one single thing with him, and at the same time we have him present with us. When we receive Communion with the due dispositions - having no mortal sin on our conscience, and keeping to the norms laid down by the Church -we model our soul on Christ himself; our Lord’s image is engraved on us. As St Thomas teaches, this is the greatest difference between spiritual and material food: the food of the body is turned into the substance of the one who eats it, and man cannot survive without it. But the spiritual food transforms man into itself as St Augustine put it, when he heard Christ’s voice saying to him, “But you shall not change me into your own substance, as you do with the food of your body. Instead you shall be changed into me.”

Our soul needs to receive the Lord’s Body and Blood. St Thomas states that the power of the Sacrament is so effective that simply by desiring it, we receive grace, which is the life of our spirit. The food of the Eucharist is indispensable to our life as apostles; hence our Father told us that we have to find our sustenance in the Mass, which is the centre of our interior life; in our encounter with Christ in the Gospel and the Holy Eucharist.

Care in the thanksgiving after Holy Mass.

If we love Christ, who gives himself up for us, we will feel compelled to find a few minutes after Mass for a personal, intimate thanksgiving, so as to prolong the Eucharist, which is itself an act of thanksgiving, in the silence of our own hearts. How are we going to approach him? What are we to say? How should we behave?

Christian life is not made up of rigid norms, because the Holy Spirit does not guide souls collectively, but inspires each individual soul with the resolutions, inspirations, and affections that he or she needs in order to see and fulfil the Will of God the Father. Still, I feel that, very often, the central theme of our conversation with Christ in our thanksgiving after Holy Mass can be the consideration that our Lord is our king, doctor, teacher and friend.

He is our king. He ardently desires to rule our hearts, because we are God’s children. But we should not try to imagine a human sort of rule. Christ does not dominate, or seek to impose himself, because he “has not come to be served, but to serve.”

His kingdom is one of peace, joy, and justice. Christ our king does not want wordy speeches from us, but deeds, because “not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does the will of my Father in heaven shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven”.

He is our doctor, and he heals our selfishness, if we let his grace penetrate to the depths of our soul. Jesus has taught us that the worst sickness is hypocrisy, the pride that leads us to cover up our own sins. We have to be totally sincere with him. We have to tell the whole truth, and then say, Domine, si vis, potes me mundare. Lord, if you will - and you are always willing - you can make me clean. You know how weak I am; I get these symptoms, and I suffer from these failings. We show him the wound quite simply, and if it is infected we show him that too. Lord, you have healed so many souls: when I have you within me, or contemplate you in the tabernacle, help me to see you as the divine doctor.

He is the teacher of a subject only he can teach: boundless love for God, and, with God, for all mankind. In Christ’s classes we learn that our existence doesn’t belong to us. He gave up his life for all, and to follow him we must understand that we can’t keep a selfish grasp on our own lives either: we have to share other people’s sufferings. Our life belongs to God. We are here to spend it in his service, by concerning ourselves generously with other people and so showing, in word and deed alike, what deep demands Christianity really makes.

Jesus wants us to nourish the desire to acquire this knowledge, so that he can repeat to us, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. And we answer: teach us to forget ourselves, so as to concern ourselves with you and with all souls. In this way, our Lord will lead us forward with his grace, just as if we were children learning to write. Do you remember that childish scrawl, guided by the teacher’s hand? And we will begin to taste the joy of showing our faith, which is yet another gift from God, and showing it with clear strokes of Christian conduct, in which everyone will be able to read the wonders of God.

He is our Friend, the Friend: Vos autem dixi amicos, he says. He calls us his friends; and he is the one who took the first step, because he loved us first. Still, he does not impose his love - he offers it. He shows it with the clearest possible sign: “Greater love than this no one has, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” He was Lazarus’ friend. He wept for him when he saw him dead, and he raised him from the dead. If he sees us cold, unwilling, rigid perhaps with the stiffness of a dying interior life, his tears will be our life. “I say to you, my friend, arise and walk” - leave that narrow life which is no life at all.

Our desire for union with Jesus should know no bounds. And so we ask him, through his blessed Mother’s mediation, that our daily meeting with him in the Sacred Host may be the prelude of that other total, definitive union in heaven. Jesus, whom I look on shrouded here below, / Grant me, I beseech you, what I long for so: / One day to gaze on you face to face in light, / And be blessed for ever with your glory’s sight.