Solemnity of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion, it is the source and summit of who we are.  Indeed, the Eucharist makes us a communion, makes us a church.  As Paul tells us, “Just as the loaf has many grains and is one loaf, we are one people in Christ because of Holy Communion.” We are in communion with God and with each other.  From time to time I read reports about what Catholics believe.  I don’t know who takes the polls and I’m not sure of the methods used to gather the data.  It was not long ago that I read a report that said that only 65% of practicing Catholics believe that Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament and I just have to take issue with that.  I don’t know where those 35% are because I don’t see them here.  I see people who believe Jesus is truly present. 

You know that you could fill this church twenty times over with the books, especially books of theology that had been written on the subject of the Eucharist, not to mention the music, the poetry, and the art that’s been dedicated to this Blessed Sacrament.  However, the best source of information about the Blessed Sacrament is from the lips of Jesus himself, in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. I hope when you go home and you look at your Bible that that part of the Bible is a little more worn out than the rest of the Bible. 

I would like to talk to you today about the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel.  It’s called the great Eucharistic discourse, his teaching from his lips to our ears about what we do here Sunday after Sunday.  The chapter begins with the multiplication of the loaves and the feeding of the 5,000.  You know this story.  Jesus is teaching the people.  They said there were 5,000 men so there must have been 25,000 women and kids.  It was getting late in the day and they needed something to eat.  Jesus’ disciples said, “Send them away.  We can’t feed them.  We don’t have the money or the food.” Jesus said, “We will feed them.  Bring me what we have.”  There was a little boy there who had five loaves and two fishes.  It’s important to notice that Jesus took that, that bread and he blessed it and broke it and then had his disciples distribute it to the people.  Everyone was fed.  Everyone had their fill.  He said, “It’s important that none of this be wasted so gather up the fragments.”  There were twelve wicker baskets filled with leftovers.  Twelve is a very important number.  It means completeness or fullness, the twelve months of the year, the twelve tribes of Israel, etc. 

In other words, he fed a great multitude and then ordered the fragments to be collected and there was a completion left over.  There was an abundance left over.  There was fulfillment left over.  The point being, obviously, is that He is the bread of life and that he feeds his people.  The more he feeds them, the more there is to feed.  His love is expanded and his body is expanded in the Eucharist.  Now after that there’s a miracle of walking on water but then a few verses later the crowds follow Jesus and he says to them, “You are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.  Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life which the son of man will give you.”  The people said, “Our ancestors ate manna in the desert as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”  Jesus said to them, “Amen, Amen, I say to you…”  By the way, “Amen, amen I say to you.” means, “Now listen up.  Now hear this.”  That’s how he got their attention.  “Amen, amen I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven.  My father gives you the true bread from heaven for the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 

Now I’m going to read several other verses but I’m not going to repeat myself.  These are all unique verses but you’ll notice that Jesus does repeat himself.  As you learned at home from your mother when she repeated herself she really meant it and she kept saying it and saying it and saying it.  It’s also a very Jewish thing to repeat oneself so here’s Jesus.  Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never hunger and whoever believes in me will never thirst.  I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert but they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and never die.  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.” 

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.” 

Elsewhere, “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.”

Finally, “Just as the Father has sent me and I have life because of the Father so also, the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.

Now is that clear.  It is, isn’t it?  No sign here, no symbol.  It’s either truly his body and blood, soul and divinity or Jesus was not telling the truth and he’s not God.  He’s either God and this is his body and blood, soul and divinity or we’re all wasting a nice hour on this beautiful Sunday morning.  But we’re here because we believe him and we accept this teaching that we don’t understand.  He said, “Take and eat”, not “Take and understand”. 

The question is, “Why?” Why did he do this?  No purely human imagination could come up with such an idea, that “I’m going to make bread me?”  Why did he do this?  He did it because he knows us and he knows that the human person is born with a basic need of intimacy.  We need to be connected to another, to be completed and to be fulfilled.  Marriage is a participation in that beauty of human intimacy.  We need to be connected to another but all of us ultimately need to have an intimate relationship with God and until that occurs then we will never be truly satisfied or happy.  Many people come to see me and say, “I’m not fulfilled in life.  I’m not happy.”  Well, of course you’re not.  You’re still here.  Whole happiness, complete happiness will occur in the next life.  We can get a taste of it here but the complete happiness that we seek, that is hard-wired into us, will only occur when we are truly and fully united with Christ and until then he feeds us and nourishes us with himself.

People get into a lot of trouble seeking intimacy in the wrong place.  They have the drive.  They don’t know what it is.  They get into relationship after relationship, after relationship and they are miserable.  We all can testify to that both through our own experiences in life and through our knowledge of others.  Intimacy, the dictionary says, “relating to or indicative of one’s deepest nature; essential, innermost; very personal.” Intimacy.  We have the perfect answer to that need for intimacy here, the Blessed Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ. 

It wasn’t only because Jesus knew us and what we needed; he knew himself and what God needed.  Last week we celebrated Trinity Sunday.  We talked about the Trinity being three persons in one God, that it’s a relationship of persons.  Augustine said, “The Father is love and the son is the perfect reflection of the Father’s love and the electricity, (I think Augustine used the word commerce.) The commerce of that relationship is the spirit.”  Deacon Ray explained so well last week that the Trinity just explodes in love.  It gives life in creation, everything that breathes, breathes as a result of this love that is generated in the Trinity.  We participate in that Trinity through our baptism in Christ Jesus.  We actually enter the Trinity and participate in God’s life and in God’s love.  Therefore, God needs us.

I think it was St. Teresa of Avila who said…  St. Theresa was incredible.  She was a mystic, a doctor of the Church but she was very frank, even when she prayed.  One time her sister said, “You are making a glutton of yourself.  You are eating too much partridge.”  She loved partridge.  She said, “There’s a time for prayer and there’s a time for partridge.  Now is the time for partridge. Eat.”  Another time her carriage got stuck in the mud and it was pouring rain and she got out and was pushing it with her robe and you can imagine she was all muddy.  She looked up and she said, “If this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few.”  In another, and actually I tried to get this on the Internet search and I failed yesterday but I’ll go back to it.  I’m sure it was Avila.  She wrote a prayer to God.  She was praying and she said, “If we could hide from you the way you hide from us, you couldn’t stand it.”  Beautiful thought, isn’t it and its true? 

God loves us.  We could say God doesn’t have any needs but God’s love has a need to be reciprocated in the human person.  He created us for himself.  We are his joy.  We are the crown jewel of all that is created. 

The Eucharist.  Peter Kreeft, the Catholic writer said this.  I think these words are very beautiful, “Jesus didn’t give us a placebo or a pill or good advice.  He gave us himself.  He came.  He entered space and time and suffering.  He came like a lover.  Love seeks, above all, intimacy, presence and togetherness.”  You know Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist was not accepted by most of those who heard him that day.  The 66^th verse of the sixth chapter says, “As a result of this teaching, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer followed him.  Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”  Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the holy one of God.” 

With Peter, our first Pope we say this day, “You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.