First Reading: Proverbs 9:1-6
"...Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed! Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding."
Gospel Reading: John 6:51-58
"Jesus said to the crowds: 'I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.' The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' Jesus said to them, 'Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.'"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I remember my mother saying to my father more than once growing up, “Michael, you must stop drinking. For every time you drink it puts a change on you.” My father always answered, “If it didn’t put a change on me, I wouldn’t drink.” My father had a problem with alcohol; he couldn’t get enough of it was his problem. Thank God I had a very strong mother and he was more afraid of her than he was of sobriety. We had a fairly peaceful time. There was the occasional Christmas party that got out of hand, but thank God, my father was a very good man. That was a weakness that he had - that alcohol put a change on him. But of course, it does put a change on you. It comes into your body and it puts a change on you. Dietitians tell us you are what you eat, and I’m not being too cute here. I think you can see where I’m going with this.
The Eucharist, the Body and Blood, Sole and Divinity of Jesus Christ, if we eat it, must put a change on us. It must change who we are. It must change how we act. That’s what the Scriptures are all about today, even the reading from the Book of Proverbs: “Come, eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed. Forsake foolishness that you may live. Advance in the way of understanding.” Jesus said, and we hear this in the Gospel Acclamation, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.” So when you receive communion, if you receive today, when you say, “Amen”, you’re saying a couple of things. First, you’re saying, “I believe this is Jesus Christ.” And when you say Amen, you’re saying, “I want Christ to change me.” You say, “I want to become like Christ.” St. Paul said, “It is no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me.” So when you say Amen, you are saying I agree to be like Christ. So you have to be a person of forgiveness. We can’t be carrying around grudges. Of course the truth is, if you carry around a grudge, you’re the one who has got sore shoulders, not the person who hurt you. And yet, we’re like everyone else, we Christians…we carry those grudges for all our lives, and it does us no good. We have to be selfless if we are to be like Christ. We can’t be greedy or selfish. We have to be generous.
An important thing, I think, about Jesus when he walked this earth was that he wasn’t petty. So many people are so petty, making big things out of little things, and mountains out of molehills. Christ is not petty and we must not be petty. We must have concern for the poor. St. John Chrysostom said, “Do not receive my body in church dressed in your finest and then encounter me on the street disguised as the poor and take no notice of me.” We need to let the Lord change us. Frank Sheet, the English evangelist and apologist said, “Before communion, the sacred bread does not look like Christ is present in it. After communion, we Christians do not always look as if Christ is present in us.” We have to let God change us in the Eucharist. Why else do we receive Holy Communion? It is not just a private act of piety; it is to become Christ. It’s to become another Christ. That’s what Christian means, another Christ. We need to take that seriously and be Christ today, and tomorrow, and Monday, and Tuesday.
You know Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Charity will go anywhere they’re needed. By the way, her order is just growing in leaps and bounds. Women from throughout the world are following her charism. She doesn’t ask much. She makes a deal with the local Bishop. Her deal is this: They get a very minimum amount of facilities. They don’t require beds; they sleep on the floor. I heard a 60 Minutes piece about her several years ago and the Bishop of New York, Cardinal O’Connor, gave her a building and so she and her sisters were moving in and you could see them throwing mattresses out the window. “We don’t need these,” they were saying. They just needed a bare place. They only needed two saris, one they wear while they wash and dry the other to wear the next day. But what she does demand is a priest and a worthy place to celebrate Mass every morning. Because she says, “We become what we eat and so we take Holy Communion and we become Christ and take Christ to those who are hurt.” She is quoted as she was talking to this young sister who had just joined the order, “You saw with what love and care the priest touched Jesus, in the host during Mass. Now go to the home of the dying and do the same, because it is the same Jesus you will find there in the broken bodies of the poor.” The Eucharist changes us.
I hope someone says to you, maybe today, “You know, every time you take communion, it puts a change on you.” We say the words of St. Patrick, “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me. Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me. Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me. Christ in every eye that sees me. Christ in every ear that hears me.”