Communion with Jesus: What does it mean?

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara CSsR

Homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Gerard Majella Church

Baton Rouge, LA, USA

August 19, 2012

Today’s Gospel is a continuation of John, chapter 6. For the past four Sundays, we have been reading John, chapter 6, which is a Discourse on the Bread of Life. In today’s Gospel (John 6:51-58), Jesus says, I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. When some of those who heard Jesus speak those words started quarreling among themselves: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? the Lord insisted all the more: Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. The command to share in this food from heaven, the Bread of Angels, the precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, is indeed strong!

But what does it mean to share communion with Jesus in the Eucharist? Sharing communion with the Lord in the Eucharist is much more than simply the physical act of coming forward to receive the Eucharist at Mass. It is also meant to be a spiritual communion with Jesus, a profound desire to live in peace with him, a choice and a decision to live by his commands. To share communion with Jesus in the Eucharist is not only about coming forward at Mass and receiving his Body and Blood. When the Lord says, Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day, he wasn’t saying it was going to be an automatic thing, that as long as we receive his Sacred Body, we are automatically saved; that we don’t have to do anything else. Communion with Jesus in the Eucharist also entails becoming the body of Christ. We must become Christ in the world. When we receive the Body of Christ in the Eucharist, we must strive to become like the One we have received. This means that our hearts, our minds, eyes, hands,  and every part of us must experience, express and then communicate God and God’s love. We are to show love where there is hatred; to avoid judgement where there is injury; to speak peace where there is striving; to pray for sight where there is blindness; to be the light of Christ where there is darkness; to pray for millions in the world who are crying for healing and freedom; and to bear the cross patiently when we suffer, believing that if we die with Christ, we will also live with him (Romans 6:8) This is what communion with Jesus in the Eucharist is all about. 

Communion with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist means accepting the Lord as both our  life and our destiny. Communion with the Lord entails seeing him as the air that we breathe, the food we eat for everlasting life, the water we drink that quenches our thirst, the salt that gives our lives sufficient and amazing taste. It means taking Jesus as the cloth that covers and hides our ugliness caused by our sins. With this, we see Jesus as the cloth that gives us our dignity and respect, as the cloth that gives us amazing beauty and as the cologne and the perfume that gives us a sweet scent of glory and heavenliness. Communion with Jesus means seeing him as the house in which we find shelter and rest. In this house we are refreshed and protected against demonic bandits. 

Sisters and brothers, it bears repeating to say that communion with the Lord in the Eucharist involves accepting Jesus as our refreshment, our relaxation, our rest, our discussion, and our thought. It means keeping him at the center of everything we do and say. It means seeing him as the door and the gate we pass through daily. He is our everything. Through him we see God; through Jesus we hear God; through Jesus we touch God; through Jesus we perceive and feel God. Through Jesus we taste goodness, we taste God. Through Jesus we smell the glory of heaven and smell the sweet scent of God. Through Jesus we eat and dine with God. Through him we rest and sleep in God.  

Now, there are few other things I would like to point out in my message. They are still part of the Church’s teachings which we sometimes ignore or forget. Firstly, let us always remember the minimal one hour fast from food before we receive the Lord. The Church wants us to approach the Table of the Lord with our stomachs somewhat empty, so that physical hunger and emptiness will remind us that our true hunger is for God. We fast and hunger in order to know Jesus as our food, as the real food and the real drink. This kind of hunger is an attitude of life for the faithful Christian. We are not to fill up our lives with so many distractions and unnecessary things that we no longer desire Jesus or love him. Secondly, if we are not at peace with Jesus, if sin has separated us from him, the Lord asks that we repent and ask forgiveness of him before we receive his Body and Blood. He asks that we seek change in our lives, and if the sin is serious, that we confess it and seek reconciliation through the ministry of the Church. It is after that that we can come forward to share communion with him. Thirdly, as soon as the Sacred Host is received either by hand or on the tongue, it must be consumed immediately. No one should ever walk away from the priest or the Eucharist minister carrying the Host to the pew. When that happens, someone should follow that person and make sure that the Eucharist is consumed. Here in our parish, we have found the Sacred Hosts thrown away outside the Church. That is very wrong! If you have invited a guest to the church who is not a Catholic, please tell him/her not to receive Communion and why he/she is not allowed to do so. The person can come to the priest to receive blessing. Remember, the Eucharist is Jesus Christ! It’s the Lord’s everything! Finally, no one should leave the Church immediately after having received the Lord. Once we have received Christ, we must remain to pray and sing and give thanks, not to retreat to the parking lot. Unfortunately, by the time the Mass ends, many of those who have received Jesus in Holy Communion have already gone. Can’t we spend some precious moments in communion with the One we have received, giving thanks with God’s people until the priest says, Go in peace, the Mass is ended? And be there to respond: Thanks be to God?

Eucharist: The food for the Journey 

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara CSsR

Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Gerard Majella Church

Baton Rouge, LA, USA

August 12, 2012

What does it really mean to share communion with another person? The most dramatic and yet familiar image of communion between persons is to be found in the marriage bond. The book of Genesis 2:24 tells us that “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh,” the two are united in an intimate communion of life and love. This very covenant between a man and a woman is by nature life-giving. For this reason, we say that the bond of marriage exists for the sake of both life and love.  

This is how it is with the Eucharist. Our communion with Jesus Christ is, in fact, a spousal union. Jesus Christ is the Bridegroom and we the church, are his bride. We are intimately united with him in the holy Eucharist that we become one body with him. By eating his Flesh and drinking his Blood we are materially and substantially united to Jesus Christ in an intimate communion of life and love. And if our hearts are truly open to the grace that is offered us in this sacrament, if we receive the Lord worthily, with willing hearts, we participate in the very life of Jesus Christ, and through him, we  partake in the life of the Blessed Trinity as well. This marriage relationship with Christ Jesus, by its very nature, is life-giving and makes us fertile. This union makes us generators of life and givers of life to those who hunger and thirst for God. 

In today’s first reading taken from 1 Kings 19:4-8, we see a foreshadowing, an indication of this mystery in the story of prophet Elijah in the desert. Prophet Elijah was being hunted down by Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab for silencing the false prophets of a false god, Baal. In a message to Elijah, Jezebel said, “May the gods strike me dead if by this time tomorrow I don’t kill and destroy you.” Elijah was frightened by her threat, so, he escaped and ran into a desert. Elijah walked a whole day into the desert and thereafter became tired and worn out. In his fatigue, he prayed “Lord, this is too much for me. (Please) take away my life; I might as well be dead!” While sleeping under a tree, an angel of God came to Elijah with heavenly bread. The angel ordered him, “Wake up and eat.” When Elijah got up from his slumber, he found a loaf of bread and a jar of water near his head. He ate and drank, and lay down again. Later, the angel came back and said to him, “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you.” Elijah ate again and was strengthened both in body and in spirit to continue his journey to the mountain of God’s presence- an earthly image of heaven- and strengthened also to continue proclaiming God’s presence to those he had been sent to preach. 

Beloved in Christ, Elijah got the strength and the encouragement he needed by simply obeying the orders of an angel who said to him, “Wake up and eat!” By eating the bread and drinking the water offered to him by an angel, he got his lost strength back. He was nourished and strengthened not only spiritually but also physically. But Jesus, our Most Holy Redeemer, the One greater than an angel, greater than all the angels, the One that all the angels worship is offering us the real Bread- his Body and the real Drink, his Blood. In today’s Gospel he says to us, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

You know, when Jesus said those words to his audience, they immediately rejected and dismissed him saying “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, “I have come down from heaven?” They judged him by human values and by external standards, and easily dismissed him. They couldn’t understand how Jesus, the son of a carpenter, a man from a poor home could possibly be the Son of God. 

But this Gospel is no longer about the Jews of Jesus’ time. It is about us! Do we sincerely, profoundly and supremely believe that Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven? Do we believe that the Bread and Wine we eat and drink at Mass is the Body and and Blood of Jesus? When reflecting on the Eucharist, do we only apply  human, scientific and external standards? What drives and motivates us? Faith? Sight? Let’s remember the words of St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:7 “Walk by faith and not by sight.” Let’s also remember that Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must first believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” 

In today’s Gospel, in this third section of John 6, Jesus invites us to come to him, to share communion with him by eating his flesh: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven...” Jesus is the essential for life. He is the essence of life. He is the quintessential of life. To refuse the invitation and command to partake in the Bread of Life is to refuse life. It is the food for the journey. And if we receive him in the right disposition, St. Augustine says, “We become what we receive- that is, the body of Christ.” 

Dearest beloved, Jesus is the food for the journey. The Eucharist is our food for the journey of discipleship. The words of the angel to prophet Elijah “get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!” says it all. The journey may be long! The journey may be steep. It may be an uphill or downhill journey. We may travel in sunny, pleasant conditions. We may also travel in cloudy, foggy, and dark night. But no matter what the journey brings, we will surely get to our destination if we are united with the Lord through the Eucharist. The Eucharist embodies the transformative power of the Cross. It contains Jesus’ everything, given to us so that we might live more fully here in this world and be ultimately granted a share in the marriage feast of the Lamb in the Kingdom. As we feed our body with material food for its sustenance, let’s not forget the most important food of all- the Eucharist. It’s the food for the journey. It nourishes both our body and our soul.  

“Lord, give us this Bread everyday”

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara CSsR

Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Gerard Majella Church

Baton Rouge, LA

August 5, 2012

On this 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we continued with the Gospel of John 6.  Today, we read that when the crowd did not see Jesus and his disciples (because they had withdrawn from the people), they (i.e. the people) got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. As soon as they found him, they exclaimed “Rabbi, when did you get here?” But Jesus did not waste time in telling them why they were actually looking for him: “Amen, amen I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life which the Son of Man will give you.” After a back and forth argument, the people wanted Jesus to give them the true bread from heaven. Jesus now used the occasion to tell them who he is “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Why did the crowds pursue Jesus? What were they looking for? What was so compelling, so utterly different and unique about the man Jesus? What actually made crowds of thousands go looking for him until they found him on the opposite shore? 

It’s important to point out that the Jews had been looking for Jesus for a very long time. Our first reading today from Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15 describes how the Israelites in the time of Moses, during the time of their wandering in the desert, went out each day in search of food. And when they found what appeared to be fine flakes on the ground and asked what it could be, Moses assured them “This is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat” (Exodus 16:15). Twelve centuries later, when the descendants of those same Israelites set out in search of Jesus and found him on the opposite shore, little did they know that they had found the One about whom Moses prophesied. This is what Jesus meant when he said to them: “It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, for the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:32-33). Reflecting on the words of Jesus, the Jews asked him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” And Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst” (John 6:34-35).

“Sir, give us this bread always” the people pleaded with Jesus. The bread that the Jewish people wanted always, beloved in Christ, is Jesus Christ. This same Jesus, who came down from heaven and who gave his life to the world, is truly present in the consecrated Bread that we receive in the Eucharist and in the Cup that we share. He is the real Bread from heaven, which the Israelites hungered to receive. 

Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life.” All other food we eat will grow stale, inedible in a short period of time. Even the manna from heaven that fed the Jewish people in the wilderness was temporary. But Jesus, our Greatest Treasure offers us a new kind of Bread, one that does not go bad, one that is not temporary, one that nourishes and sustains everlastingly, one that sustains and bolsters hope. 

Beloved in Christ, the Eucharist is the Bread of Life. In the Eucharist, Jesus is truly and supremely present - Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. During communion, what we receive is not a symbol of the Lord, it is the Lord himself. It’s Jesus! We are the most fortunate of all. The demand of the Jewish people, “Sir, give us this bread always” was given, so to say, to us. When they asked for the daily bread, their minds were in material bread. But the Bread of Life which was first revealed to them is made available to us daily at Mass. So, to Catholics who can afford to come to Mass but choose not to come, you are the one missing because at every Mass, the Lord feeds us specially with himself- the Bread of Life. To Catholics who wish to come to Mass but cannot come due to ill-health, advancement in age, and other impediments, please make arrangement for a Eucharist minister or a priest to bring you Communion. We all need the Bread of Life. Like the Jewish people of Jesus’ time, let’s continuously ask, “Lord, give us this Bread always.”