2nd Sunday after Pentecost 6.6.21 Our need for
the Eucharist
The people invited to the banquet find various excuses not to come. They see their own concerns as more important than anything the banquet could do for them.
This parallels very closely the attitude of many Catholics to the great banquet of the Eucharist.
They think firstly that they have too much else to do to be spending their time at Mass; and secondly that they do not need anything that the Eucharist could do for them. They can get by well enough on their own good intentions (they say!).
It is easy to dismiss what we do not know or do not understand.
The Eucharist is a mysterious reality and certainly does take some effort to understand on our part; but lack of understanding does not mean we can simply do without the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is Jesus Christ present before us – present in His saving sacrifice on the Cross; present in His glorious Resurrection; present as food for our spiritual nourishment.
If we dismiss the Eucharist we dismiss Him.
The Eucharist is directly from Heaven. At each Mass the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of the Lord, by the miraculous action of God Himself.
He makes Himself present in this special way.
It is an interaction between Heaven and earth, something therefore beyond the normal ways we transact things.
He comes not to feed us physically, because the small host would not do that. Nor does the heavenly bread taste anything special to us, because it is not our senses He is trying to reach.
Where He does feed us is the soul, that place where we learn to love - to love God and decide to be faithful to Him.
This is our greatest need, but not generally understood by the human race.
It is more important that we love God than that we have enough to eat, or status in the community, or pleasure in the senses, or any merely earthly consideration.
God feeds us with the ability to know, love and serve Him; with the ability to love others and forgive those who offend us, and to keep all the other commands.
When we can do these things we have truly ‘feasted’ on the Lord. We have tasted and seen that the Lord is good (Ps 33(34),8)
The Eucharist is an intimate and intense encounter with the Lord, in which we take on some of His qualities.
We become more like Him in His charity, wisdom, mercy and all the other good qualities.
We are never as good as He is but we can become more like Him all the same.
Eat this food and you will be more able to love your annoying neighbour, to overcome years of bad habits, to believe in God more fully, to ride through personal problems with more assurance.
In short, the Eucharist, being God Himself, does a complete repair job on us – if we let it take its full effect.
We must not let repetition dull the effects of this encounter with the divine. Take each Communion as though it were your first or your last, and we have then a sense of the drama at stake.
We cannot get by just on our own will power or sunny personalities. There are too many sins and pitfalls for us to think we are good enough by ourselves.
We need this heavenly food, and so we take it gratefully.
What about the majority of the human race who do not see this importance? We must demonstrate to them by our lives that the Eucharist is essential.
And otherwise we pray, catechize, and evangelise about the goodness of God and how He seeks to bless us.
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