“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.” (John 6: 56)
What a beautiful image of communion today’s Gospel (John 6:52-59) gives us! What we eat becomes totally a part of our being. Jesus is the Bread of Life who nourishes his people through a communion of becoming one physically and in every other sense. Communion of living in each other.
Saint Eugene reflects on communion in a reflection on the Feast of All Saints:
One of the thoughts that strikes me most about our holy religion is the thought of its catholicity; in my mind’s eye I scan the whole wide world and everywhere it numbers people as brothers [and sisters], it would not be easy to find any part of the inhabited globe where the fact of being a child of Jesus Christ and his Church would not assure the Christian of a welcome as an envoy of the Lord and not meet with an abundance of tender care flowing from the most ardent charity and poured forth in the name of him in whom all hearts who have seen the light are joined together….
How wonderful this communion in which turns the whole universe into one single, large family whose interests are common, needs are similar, helps are mutual
The Bread of Life is broken for others, so we remember that our communion with Jesus contains the element of being broken for others – something that the pandemic makes us urgently aware of.
Many things come up from within me this morning – none of them particularly satisfying and I am left wondering if I am incapable of responding, wondering if I am missing the point. It would be easier to give into the urge to chastise myself for not being able to figure it out and run with it as they say.
As I look at the picture I see all the saints – they are not in glass or plexiglass cases – there are no roofs over their heads to protect them from the elements.
It is only now after sitting with Eugene’s words of “…Him in whom all hearts who have seen the light” and Frank’s “…our communion with Jesus contains the element of being broken for others…” There is something there and these two are connected. I cannot explain it, I can barely grasp it. I have most certainly thought that of Jesus – in his humanity but have I somehow limited that to Jesus?
How am I being broken for others? I am not sure that I want to grasp it. Easier to say that it eludes me. But there it is stark – right in front of me, even to close my eyes will not hide it.
There are words but they seem meaningless at the moment. I simply need to sit and be with them. “The Bread of Life is broken for others …our communion with Jesus contains the element of being broken for others…”