THE SACRAMENT OF ETERNAL LIFE

FRIDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTER

Act 9:1-20; Ps 117; Jn 6:52-59

His Body and Blood as the Sacrament of Eternal Life

We have an interesting story of the conversion of Saint Paul. An essential background to Paul’s life is that he sought to be righteous before God. He went about it following the tradition of his people or ancestors. Ignorant of Jesus Christ, his zeal for holiness was counterproductive; he persecuted God by fighting against the adherent of the new Way. His ignorance of Jesus Christ, the anointed Saviour, resulted in his ignorance of what pleases God. A new way, different from the old way of his ancestors, has been revealed by God to Israel. He was ignorant of it. He was persecuting the God he intended to please with legitimate actions approved by the religious laws of his people. Hence, there is no holiness or righteous living without Jesus Christ. The Lord revealed this truth in the passage of the gospel we read yesterday, saying that no one comes to the Father except through him. The Son of Man is the Way to the Father. The Jewish people, therefore, referred to the Christians as the followers of the Way. “He had gone to the high priest and asked for letters addressed to the synagogue in Damascus, that would authorise him to arrest and take to Jerusalem any followers of the Way, men or women, that he could find.” Christianity is a way of life; it is a following of the Way, which is the humanity of our Lord.

The following of the humanity of our Lord is not just a physical imitation of what the Lord did in his life as a man but a continual contemplation of his life, words, and deeds. By contemplating his life as a man, we understand the human nature he assumed, for he assumed our nature to illuminate it through and through, as we said in our reflection yesterday. Human nature is dark without the illumination from the Eternal Word. No one enters this sacred Way without making a profession of faith in the divinity of the Son of Man who rose from the dead. The faithful walk the Way to enlightenment or understanding of themselves in God. By the same enlightenment, they grow in their union with God the Son through the participation afforded them by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Our Lord revealed this to Paul when he spoke to him: “‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ he asked, and the voice answered, ‘I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me. Get up now and go into the city, and you will be told what you have to do.’” The experience gave Paul a deep understanding of the union between the faithful and the risen Lord.

Paul was shocked to hear the voice of the Person he believed they killed in Jerusalem by nailing him to the cross. If he is not dead, as demonstrated by his voice and speech, he is alive and living in his faithful members. The implication is that the Christians he killed are also alive and living in him. The consideration convinced Paul to preach the Lordship of Jesus Christ. “He began preaching in the synagogues, ‘Jesus is the Son of God.’” The Lord painstakingly taught his Jewish interlocutors the same doctrine in the gospel. Confused about the meaning of eating his body and drinking his blood, they asked themselves: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” The Lord insisted on the teaching because it is the core meaning of walking the Way. “I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day.” We have explained the spiritual sense of eating his body and drinking his blood above as contemplating his sacred humanity, which is our Way. The sacramental sense is the celebration of the Eucharist, which he instituted on the eve of his passion. The celebration of the Sacrament of Eucharist effectively admits the faithful to the core mystery and event of his sacred humanity—his suffering and death—by which we were ransomed and adopted as sons in the Son. “As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me.”

Let us pray: Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who have come to know the grace of the Lord’s Resurrection, may, through the love of the Holy Spirit, ourselves rise to newness of life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.