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A good Sunday to all.

In last week's Gospel, we remember that Jesus presented himself as the bread of life that came down from heaven. A statement unheard of by the Jews who immediately asked themselves, how can this man say that he has come down from heaven? We know him very well. He is the son of Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth. This statement is even blasphemous. The bread of life that Israel has received as a gift from the Lord is his word, which is contained in the holy books of the Torah of Moses. This is the only bread that nourishes truly human life. This Torah tells you not to kill, not to commit adultery, and not to steal is educating you to be truly human. Jesus did not deny that the word of God contained in the Old Testament is the bread of life, but he now presents himself as the incarnation of this wisdom of God.

Whoever wants to contemplate the perfect realization of the human being has only to look at him. And this is already a scandalous statement for the Jews. But Jesus now goes further; let us listen to how he continues his discourse:

 

"At that time, Jesus said to the Jews, "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.” The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

 

This question seems to us a rejection of a cannibalistic proposal. When we speak of meat, we refer to what we buy in the market. But in Jesus' time, when people said that man is flesh, that's not what they meant. They meant that man is fragile. He is a limited creature; he gets sick, gets old, and eventually dies, a condition of weakness. In this sense, it was said that 'man is flesh'; he belongs to the earthly sphere, not to the world of God, which is eternal and immortal.

The Jews understood very well what flesh Jesus was talking about; it is his person. Jesus presented himself as flesh, as a weak, mortal, limited man, just like us in everything. Still, he came down from heaven and had in himself another life that doesn't come from the dust of the earth like the biological life that we all have, but it is a life that belongs to the world of God, the life of the Eternal. Jesus says that whoever assimilates this flesh of his, which is his person, receives his own eternal life as a gift.

Let us understand what Jesus proposes to us because we will hear that all his speech speaks now of this bread that is to be assimilated, which is he. Let us try to understand; perhaps the famous title of Feuerbach's work will help us: "Man is what he eats." This is true if understood, of course, not in the German philosopher's materialistic sense but metaphorical sense. We also use verbs metaphorically referring to food: to eat, to drink, to assimilate, to nourish. And to grow as people, it is not enough to eat the food that fills the stomach; it is also necessary to assimilate other food that nourishes the mind and the heart. If, for example, a person eats only soap operas and other Plato's dialogues, it is clear that they grew up two different people, or if one greedily reads the Monday sports paper and then reads nothing else, Another devours Leo Tolstoy's and Fyodor Dostoevsky's books. It is clear that they grew up as different people. They have fed the mind and the heart with different foods. We are also talking about assimilating a philosophy. We also say that today, people swallow everything that circulates on social networks.

Even the Bible metaphorically uses the image of food to refer to God's wisdom to be assimilated and embodied in our lives. We encountered this metaphor in the first reading which is proposed to us today and which speaks of the Wisdom of God who imagines herself as a beautiful lady who prepares a banquet and invites all to come to her: 'Come, eat my bread, drink my wine which I have prepared, and you shall have life.' You must be careful about what you choose when you eat these foods because you can also eat poisoned food.

Let us remember that Adam was deceived and ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil that he was not to touch. He was warned that it was a food of death. Even Jesus warned his disciples against a deadly food: "Beware of the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees." It was their false catechesis. Jesus says, 'If you eat the bread kneaded with their leaven, if you assimilate their catechesis about God, you will become intoxicated; you will reason like them and live like them. Let us be attentive because poisoned bread is also circulating today.

A person's growth depends on what feeds his mind and heart; well, Jesus proposes to us the only true food that nourishes a life that does not end. This food, this bread that he proposes to us, is his person, eating his flesh, that is to say, assimilating the proposal of man he incarnates, you obtain the life of the Eternal. It is an unheard-of statement, and the Jews who understood it well reacted, saying that they already possessed the food of life, the word of God in the Torah. They did not realize They saw the word of God, not written in a book but incarnated in a person, Jesus of Nazareth.

However, Jesus had not yet spoken explicitly of the Eucharist until this point in the discourse. It is now when he introduces the subject because the Eucharist is the sign with which we declare that we accept the Bread of Life that he is; it is the sacrament by which we accept that his life becomes ours; it is the sacrament that unites us in a spousal union with him. Let us hear what his proposal is:

 

Jesus said to them, “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. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.

 

 Until the Second Vatican Council, the faithful's relationship with the Eucharist was marked by respectable devotions. However, these have not always helped us understand the true purpose of the Sacrament instituted by Jesus. This objective is evidenced today by two verbs repeated with insistence in the passage we have just heard: "Eat" and "drink." These two verbs were not insisted upon before the Council; however, the two signs Jesus chose for this Sacrament, the bread and the wine, already have a clear message. The bread and wine on the table tell us nothing more than that they are an invitation to eat and drink. The bread and wine serve only this purpose.

We have heard with what insistence Jesus repeated the verb 'to eat' - φάω - fáo in Greek. We have heard this four times, so let us beware of all devotions that do not emphasize this one meaning of the Eucharist: it is bread to eat. Then Jesus made a second request: drinking his blood to obtain the gift of eternal life is necessary. There is nothing more repugnant to a Jew than drinking blood. In all the religions of antiquity, there was the conception that life resided in the blood; therefore, to lose blood was to lose life. To drink blood or to eat meat that had not been carefully bled meant to take life, and this is something that man cannot do. Many biblical texts forbid this practice because life belongs to God, and man cannot possess it. Even today, the Jews, when they kill an animal to eat, bleed it in the most precise manner so as not to take possession of a life that belongs to God. Therefore, they pour the blood on the ground and return it to God.

When Jesus spoke of drinking his blood, his hearers immediately understood that it was not about material blood but about accepting his life. Let us, therefore, be conscious of what we do when we drink from the chalice of the consecrated wine, and I insist that we must find a way to do it always if we want the sign that Jesus wanted to be complete; it is not enough to eat the bread, we must drink his blood, drink from the chalice. Jesus said, "Drink all of you" - Πίετε ἐξ αὐτοῦ πάντες - piete ex autó pántes, says the Greek text; it is an imperative. This is why the Council of Trent could not forbid drinking from the Chalice; it is an imperative of Jesus.

What does our choice to drink from the Chalice imply, then? It is the gesture with which we declare that we have decided to welcome his life into us, that life which we then want to translate into our lives. in concrete works of love, like those that Jesus did, because if his life circulates in us, it manifests itself concretely in works of love. We know how Jesus lived and how the Spirit was present in him. His whole life was a gift of love, to the last drop of blood, to the last drop of life. This is Jesus's proposal: 'Assimilate my life given, assimilate my love.'

Then Jesus takes up the proposal again of the bread to eat. Still, he does it using another Greek verb, no longer fagein - to eat, but τρώγων - trógon which has another much stronger meaning, which, unfortunately, the translations do not underline; trógon' does not mean just to eat; it means to chew, crush, and crumble. Jesus wants us to do this with his life. Whoever chews my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. The bread of life that he offers us must be chewed; his person must be assimilated in its entirety; of his life of love, not even a crumb must be lost; we must accept him in his fullness, and only then we receive There is eternal life in us, not the 'bios,' the biological life, but the life of the Eternal, that life which he has brought into our world.

This is the meaning of the Eucharist, a proposal that Jesus makes to us of spousal love with him, a proposal to incarnate his life in us. What is it, then, to eat that bread and drink that cup? It is the yes to his proposal to us of spousal love. He asks us, 'Do you want to join your life to mine?' And we, eating that bread and drinking that cup, we answer YES with joy and without hesitation. The Eucharist is this and only this. The consequence of this spousal union with him is that Jesus says, 'he that chews my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.’

This verb is characteristic of the Gospel according to John, μένει - 'menei' in Greek. It is abiding in each other. It is a union of a complete life, like that of the branches with the vine; from the vine passes to the branches the one sap, the one Spirit; it is the divine life that we receive and that then manifests itself in the divine life, which is a life of love only of love; it is the mutual belonging of the bride to the bridegroom. Jesus uses the same formula as the lovers: 'Abide in me and I in him.' When one is in love, one always carries the beloved within oneself.

Let us now listen to Jesus using twice more times the verb 'trogon,' to chew the bread that he is. Let us listen:

 

Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

 

There is only one eternal life, certainly not ours, which we see decaying and then ending. The life of this world, all life, returns to the dust from whence it came. Only one life is eternal and is never touched by death, is the life of the heavenly Father, that life He gives to the Son, begets the Son, that is, He gives his life to the Son, and this life that the Son has received, he gives it to us, to us who receive it, to us who eat to him who became bread. As the Son is one with the Father, so are we who are united with Christ in one life, are united to the Father.

Celebrating the Eucharist means celebrating this union of love. The celebration of the Eucharist should lead us to affirm, like Paul, "It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me." Then, the one who meets us when we come out of the Eucharistic celebration, people must find in us the person of Jesus of Nazareth, must grasp the thoughts, the judgments of Jesus of Nazareth, the words of Jesus of Nazareth, the glances, the caresses of Jesus of Nazareth because in us now circulates his Spirit, his life.

The discourse of Jesus concludes with a final reference to the manna, which nourished not the eternal life but the biological life, the one that ends, the one that perishes. And Jesus contrasts this life that ends with the life that he gives, the life of the Eternal: "This is the bread which came down from heaven; not as the bread which their fathers did eat and died; whoever chews this bread lives forever. And to chew this bread means to accept everything. When approaching the Gospel, I must not miss a crumb; I must understand everything to make it my life.

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.