This is a homily given during a Eucharistic procession for Corpus Christi. I thought it so moving that I wish to share it through firmumest.com
Pont. Univ. San Tommaso d’Aquino - J. Augustine Di Noia, OP
The Mystery of the Eucharist According to St. John’s Gospel
The first people to hear Christ proclaim the Eucharist found that the message surpassed their understanding. Some embraced the mystery in faith, but others were put off by it. When they heard Christ say: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” they asked incredulously, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:51-52) How can this be indeed? Although we want to embrace Christ’s affirmation in faith, it is instructive to consider how perfectly natural this question is from the human point of view. It is one that is frequently voiced when human beings hear about something that God is said to have done or to be doing. With regard to the Eucharist, it is asked: how can Jesus be really present under the appearances of bread and wine? How can he give us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink? How can the Eucharist be a sacrificial offering? And so on. The initial question “how can this be?” unfolds into a series of questions about the Eucharist. But suppose that we look at things with the eyes of faith, in the light of the mystery of faith. Suppose that instead of maintaining a human point of view we adopt the divine point of view. Suppose that we approach these questions as the great theologians of the Catholic tradition have. Suppose, in short, that we look at the Eucharist in the way God looks at it. When we do this, we may find that our troubling “how can this be?” becomes an awestruck and faith filled “why not?” We could say that the mystery of the Eucharist becomes “understandable” in some sense when we see it precisely for what it really is, namely a mystery of faith. In the first chapter of the encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, Pope John Paul II was especially concerned to exhibit something of the profound interrelationship of the mystery of faith, the Paschal mystery and the Eucharistic mystery. In the simplest terms, we can say that the Eucharistic mystery is a re-presentation of the Paschal mystery and that, surpassing human understanding as they do; both mysteries are part of the single mystery of faith and thus can only be received in faith. The divine gift of faith, bestowed on us in Baptism and nurtured through the sacramental life of the Church makes it possible for us to enter into this mystery of faith. Fundamental to this mystery of faith is the divine desire to share the communion of Trinitarian life with human beings. No one has ever desired anything more than the triune God desires this. God himself has revealed to us (for how could we otherwise have know about it?) that it is this diving desire - - more properly, intention and plan - - that lies at the basis of everything: creation, incarnation, redemption, sanctification and glory. To look at everything though the eyes of faith - - to adopt, as it were, a “God’s eye view” - - is to see everything in the light of this divine plan. Looking at things this way - - look at them the way God himself has taught us to do - - we understand why we were created, why the Word became flesh, why Christ died and rose from the dead, how the Holy Spirit makes us holy, and why we will see God face to face. We were created so that God could share his life with us. God sent his only-begotten Son to save us from the sings that would have made it impossible for us to share in this life. Christ died for this, and, rising from the dead, gave us new life. To become holy is to be transformed, through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church, into the image of the Son so that we may be adopted as sons and daughters of the Father. Glory is the consummation of our participation in the communion of the triune God - - nothing less that seeing God face to face. The mystery of faith is, finally, a mystery of Love. The Catholic tradition has not hesitated to describe this participation in the divine life as a true friendship with God. Given this truth of our faith, is it not in a sense appropriate that God should be moved to send His only begotten Son into the world and, in breathtaking divine condescension of the incarnation, to take up a human existence to be known and loved among us as Jesus of Nazareth? Was it not fitting, as the Scriptures say, that the Son of Man should offer his life to his Father on the Cross in the reconciling sacrifice of love for our sake? For St. Thomas Aquinas, it is but a short step from the incarnation to the Holy Eucharist. In this connection, St. Thomas wrote: “It is a law of friendship that friends should live together … Christ has not left us without his bodily presence on our pilgrimage, but he joins us to himself in this sacrament in the reality of his body and blood” (Summa Theologiae III, 75, 1). In effect, Aquinas is saying that it makes sense, given what we know about God’s plan to bring us into the intimacy of his divine life, to leave us the extraordinary gift of the real and substantial presence of his Son in the Eucharist. In the light of the entire mystery of faith, we can see the Eucharist as the gesture of our divine friend. Pope John Paul II writes: “It is pleasant to spend time with him, to like close to his breast like the Beloved Disciple (cf. Jn 13:25) and to feel the infinite love present in his heart” (n. 25). But there is more. This is a friendship that expressed itself in the ultimate sacrifice of love in which Christ gave his body and blood up for our sake. When he instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, “Jesus did not simply state that what he was give them to eat and drink was his body and blood; he also expressed it sacrificial meaning and made sacramentally present his sacrifice which would soon be offered on the Cross for the salvation of all” (no. 12). By overcoming the effects of sin, the sacrificial passion and death of Christ and his glorious resurrection - - the Paschal mystery - - restored our friends with God. In this connection, the Holy Father makes a striking point: “This sacrifice is so decisive for the salvation of the human race that Jesus Christ offered it and returned to the Father only after he had left us a means of sharing in it as if we had been present there (no. 11). Not only does our divine friend want to say with us; he wants to do so precisely in virtue of the power of the Paschal mystery which guarantees what must now, always and everywhere, be reconciled friendship won at the price of his blood. No wonder that Pope John Paul II could write: “I want once more to recall this truth and join you, my dear brothers and sisters, in adoration before this mystery: a great mystery, a mystery of mercy. What more could Jesus have done for us? Truly, in the Eucharist, he shows us a love which goes ‘to the end’ (cf. Jn 13:1), a love which knows no measure” (no. 11).