The second reading was the most commonly quoted Sacred Scripture for Communion in the Protestant churches where I grew up. First Corinthians, Chapter 11, verses 23-36.
Brothers and sisters:
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me."
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
"This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
And that, sadly, is where the Mass reading stopped, just as that passage did at those Protestant churches. The next couple of verses are part of what convinced me of the validity of the Church and of the Eucharist. 1 Corinthians, 11: 27-31.
Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord.
A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.
For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.
That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying.
If we discerned ourselves, we would not be under judgment;
An examination of conscience, but more than that, answering for unworthily receiving the body and blood of the Lord. If Communion was a mere symbol, than how would we been unworthy to receive a symbol? Rather, Paul states that it is the body and the blood of the Lord. Let me just repeat that in a paraphrased manner, in keeping with those who say "show it to me in the Bible", Paul says it's the body and blood of Christ!
Then came the feeding of the five thousand in Gospel. Which, if one is to look at it one way, is a misnomer. Christ and His Disciples did not feed a mere five thousand. The Gospel only counts the men, not the women and children. The number was most likely far larger!!
Fr. Chris's homily today spoke about how many times in life, when we encounter a major event, we have a dinner of some sort, a big one. Weddings, funerals, graduations, etc. Yet after this large gathering and preaching to a crowd, there was so little food, yet the King of Kings used what little there was to make it a feast.
So too, Fr. Chris reminded us, does God give us a feast in a small package today. The Host, so tiny and bland tasting, contains the fullness of God, the source and the summit of our Faith! The greatest gift of all, and a foretaste of the Feast of Heaven. He did what so many priests are afraid to do, and he spoke of the Real Presence!
Yesterday on my birthday in Confession, I was treated with genuine care and compassion, both for my spiritual needs and for my physical problems with my hand. It did more to re-awaken in me my faith than anything else could have. Today I attended this Solemnity, and thanked God for each moment of it, even in the pain. As one nun once said after failing to witness any of the miracles associated with the supposed apparitions of the Blessed Virgin in a Bosnian village, "I don't need to see, because I witness a miracle every time I go to Mass".
Bread and wine, body and blood. So many would not have died for the Faith if it were not the Truth. The Apostles would not have gone willingly to martyrdom for a lie. St. Tarcisius would not have sheltered the Eucharist as he was beaten to death, with his final words to a fellow Christian be to ask if the Lord was safe, if the Eucharist were a lie. So many have died for Him, that it is nothing to ask that we live for Him.
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