Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 23 of Season 6 for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ - Corpus Christi: June 11, 2023. Our Gospel reading is from John, Chapter 6, verses 51-58

Jesus said to the Jewish 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."

The Gospel of the Lord. 

“Jesus: Food For Others,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

In 2019, a Pew research study was conducted amongst self-proclaimed Catholics that revealed that 69% of people who consider themselves Catholic do not believe that anything real happens here. 69% of people who say that they are Catholic do not believe that anything real happens on this altar, that our celebration of the Eucharist is simply a symbol, a remembrance. So something that happened a long time ago. 69%. 

Doing the math and looking at all of us gathered here today to look at a statistical analysis that would mean everybody in this part of the church and half of the South Wing do not believe that what we do here on this altar is real. That it is the body and blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ himself coming to us in the Eucharist.

Who is this man who can give us his flesh to eat? Who is this man who can give us his flesh to eat? I love that question found in today's Gospel, because anyone coming to faith, at some point or another in their lives, will ask that question of themselves. Who is this man who's going to give us his flesh to eat?

Let's take a moment to look at that very profound, pivotal question, which is at the heart of coming to a Eucharistic faith. Well, the first thing we have to clarify is one of the words in the question, and it's the word "man." Who is this "man" who can give us his flesh to eat? Clarifying that word is important because it has a lot to do with who Jesus is for us.

When we look at Jesus, who is he? If he's just a man, then it's a logical conclusion to be drawn. He can't give us his flesh and blood to eat. Men can't do that. People can't do that. So if you look at Jesus just as a prophet, as a wisdom figure, as someone who did great things at some point in time in history, and we don't see him as anything more, then we're not going to come to a full belief in the Eucharist. So until we're able to see Jesus as both God and man, then we cannot fully open our eyes to see what is happening here on this altar. 

You see, when we look at Jesus and we, with our whole heart, mind, and soul, proclaim him as God and man, it's like going to the optometrist and finding that right prescription for glasses where everything becomes clear, and I can see. Having that clear in our minds and in our hearts is pivotal. It's pivotal. You know, what's interesting, when you look at history, the early church had no problem believing that Jesus Christ was flesh and blood in the Eucharist. No problem. They took it as a consequence of faith because they understood something else, and it's a foundational truth of our faith as well, that God became man in Jesus Christ. That God became a human being in Jesus Christ. That incarnational mystery, that God broke into human nature, and, in the very simple action of a birth, gave birth to himself. That incarnational mystery is at the heart of what we celebrate here. That God chose, in time, to enter the very flesh and blood of human existence itself. Not in a very dramatic way by opening the heavens and shattering the earth, but in a very ordinary way through the birth of a child. And that incarnational mystery reminds us that God comes to us in very ordinary ways. 

And if God can become a human being in Jesus Christ, why can't God take the simple elements of bread and wine and transform them into his sacred body and blood? If God can make a human being divine, why can't God take the simple elements of bread and wine and make those divine as well in the action of the Eucharist?

It makes logical sense. St. Justin Martyr, who was born in the year 100 A.D., so we're talking about someone who was very close to the actual Christ event and very much a part of that early church, and his writings have been preserved to our day. St. Justin Martyr said, "The food consecrated by the word of prayer is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus."

The food consecrated by the word of prayer is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus. Period. Not a symbol, not a symbol. God comes to us as food. What a wonderful mystery to behold. God came in the form of our own flesh and blood and journeyed with us here on Earth. Why would he not want to remain to nourish us and sustain us, not only spiritually but also materially, in terms of our own hunger for food?

And so as we begin to journey through this eucharistic experience, we begin to see that if we truly believe that Christ is present here when we receive the Eucharist, we become what we eat. We become transformed into the very image of Christ himself, so that we can go out and feed others, not only spiritually but materially, too. God wants to feed us. God wants to feed us. And he comes to us in the form of food so that we can be food for others; food for others. 

 This incredible mystery of our faith, over the centuries, we have done a lot of arguing about how the Eucharist is the Eucharist and if the Eucharist is the Eucharist. The early church didn't have the doctrine on trans substantiation that we have today. It was simply a belief that was accepted because they knew. They were able to be present and feel that real presence of Christ. 

You and I struggle with our brains. We often get too caught up in our heads. We wanna figure out the whys and the hows, the ifs, and the whens, and we get so caught up in our own particular lives that it's hard for us to even be present in a given space, let alone present to the real presence.

And so it takes a lot of training through the habit of prayer to be able to collect ourselves and get out of our brains, our analytical brains, leave the agenda of our lives, let go of our self-obsessions, forget our obsession with self-sufficiency and to allow another into our space, and that other is God. And when we're able to do that and open ourselves by being present, we can experience the real presence. We know it, not here, but here, and it's felt. 

Christ is the bread in search of hunger. In order to see and feel and experience the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, we have to hunger for it. We have to be hungry.

And so, where does that leave us? If we're skeptical about what happens here on this altar if we still struggle with the belief that those elements of bread and wine are truly transformed into the body and blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ are savior, we're still struggling with that, then there could be two possible reasons why.

The first is that we're ultimately struggling with whether Jesus is God or not. That we're still struggling with accepting the fullness of Jesus's divinity in the first place and then having a hard time understanding how this can happen. Or second, we're struggling not only with that but with how God works in our lives in the first place. We struggle with the fact that God doesn't come through the breaking of the clouds and the shaking of a room. But he comes in the very ordinary stuff of our human existence, in the breath that we breathe in, the love that we share, in the work that we do, and yes, in the sacred elements that we consecrate, God comes to us in the ordinary things.

God comes to us as food. Let these thoughts today be something you can chew on for the rest of the week.

Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.