June Trinity
John 6: 53-69
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| Mary Mcinnis |
Jesus answered, ‘Yes I tell you,
if you do not eat the earthly body of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you
have no life in you. Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has life beyond
the cycles of time, and I give him the power of resurrection at the end of
time. For my flesh is the true sustenance, and my blood is the true draught.
Whoever truly eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. As
the life-bearing Father sent me, and as I bear the life of the world by the
will of the Father, so also he who makes me his sustenance will have life
within him through me. This is the bread which descends from heaven. It will no
longer be as it was with the fathers who ate of it and died. Whoever eats this bread
will live through the whole cycle of time.’ He said this in his teaching in the
synagogue in Capernaum.
Many
of his disciples who heard this said, ‘These are hard and difficult words; who
can bear to hear them?’ Jesus was aware that his disciples could not come to
terms with this and he said to them, ‘Do you take offence at this? What will
you say when you see the Son of Man ascending again to where he was before? It
is the Spirit that gives life; the physical by itself is of no avail. The words
that I spoke to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who
have no faith.’ For Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him. And he
went on: ‘This is why I said to you: No one can find the way to me unless it is
given him by the Father’.
3rd
June Trinity
John
6: 53-69
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| O. Shuplyak |
We
are all on a path toward a goal. Sometimes we skip along, progressing rapidly.
Sometimes we encounter obstacles that cause us to stumble, or even fall. The
natural tendency is to look and see what it is. What we do with these obstacles
makes all the difference.
Christ
says, “If you do not eat the earthly body of the Son of Man and drink his
blood, you have no life in you…For my flesh is the true sustenance and my blood
the true draught.” John
6: 53, 55 Hearing these words in a literal, material
way, many were naturally repulsed. The words themselves became an obstacle.
Christ’s
words were prophetic. The possibility of literally taking in His body and blood
would not be fulfilled until the events around Golgatha. At the Last Supper, He
would pour His luminous spirit form and shining life into bread and wine. At
His death He would pour them out into the earth, into everything growing on it.
In so doing He indicates that ongoing spiritual human evolution, ongoing
eternal spiritual life is to be gained here, on the earth, not in some distant
heaven or spirit world.
Unconsciously,
we eat His luminous earthly body and drink His sparkling blood in every meal
that we eat. For all bread is his body; all fluid is his blood. One of our goals on the path is to make our eating less
thoughtless; to make our eating more sacred, more aware of the element of the
divine in it. The Act of Consecration of Man is the archetype, the model of how
we do this. In it, we raise the act of earthly eating and drinking into a
consciously grateful and intentional sacred act, as He showed us how to do at
the Last Supper. In Communion we take in His living light body.
The
poet writes:
Like a great starving
beast
My body is quivering
Fixed
On the scent
Of light.[1]
We
who stumble on the path look back to see what trips us up. Sometimes it is just
a stone. But sometimes it is a luminous treasure, a treasure that meets our
deepest hunger, the thirst of our yearning.
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