On the Eucharistic Mystery:
“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood, has eternal life,” John 6:54.
When one finds love, one gives his life for it. The power of love can completely consume the lover, to the extent that the lover desires to be physically mingled, on the level of body substance, with the beloved. The power of love naturally seeks a unity that is complete, one that is finished, or consummated. The love that binds a husband to his wife is so powerful that as the two come together in the sacrament of Matrimony, they actually become one person. And, for the rest of their lives, each one is imprinted and completely bound to the other.
A man loves in mind before he loves in action. Then the body expresses in a visible concrete way what was already conceived. Love is something very intentional, something well thought out, something well planned. It is not an accident. That is why love is a choice, a daily commitment and a life of constant self-gift to the beloved, so that indissoluble unity is preserved. This is why we pray every day to God in the prayer Our Father, “Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie: Give us today our daily bread.” The bread of life.
When God loved the human person, God mingled his divine nature with the human nature in the great mystery of the incarnation, an inseparable unity. God’s love is so total and complete, it is not lacking nor self-seeking, but it simply enriches the beloved. It simply gives. But why would Majesty pick an interest in lowliness and weakness? Why would such purity mingle itself with unholiness if it was not to change lowliness into greatness? True love that is so pure and complete seeks the good of the other. True love raises the lowly and the weak to greatness. In Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, God raises the lowly human nature to divine greatness. Lowliness is swallowed up by majesty. And this is true love.
The answer to the Jewish question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” finds an affirmative answer in the mystery of love that expresses itself on the tree of the Cross. The mystery of the Cross shows a love that is relentless until it creates a complete unity. In Christ crucified we see a love that is finished. And what is finished is the complete mingling of the divine and the human, a love that is consummated. The feast of Corpus Christi recalls this great love story of a faithful and true lover who loved and gave everything to his beloved so that his beloved might then become this very lover.
“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” This is what the Eucharist is about. In this mystical encounter between God and man, this mingling of the divine and the human, there is a powerful transformation that is happening. The beloved becomes the lover. The more we consume his body and blood, we become love himself, because love is a person, it is Jesus Christ. And this is Heaven, to be one, in complete communion with God in Jesus Christ, our Lord. His mission and the whole purpose he came, was to give life, eternal life, to the one he loves. Without any doubt, this is the greatest love story of all time. God loved because he wanted to give his greatness to the lowly human. And, every human individual who comes and receives from this Eucharistic table, the most holy body and blood of Christ, is capable to true love, for, in that individual, love himself dwells.
And, as St. Thomas Aquinas put it:
Ecce Panis Angelorum, Factus cibus viatorum Vere panis filiorum, Non mittendus canibus
Behold the Bread of Angels,
made the Food of Pilgrims,
Truly the bread of children,
not to be given to the dogs.
Homily given by Fr Wasswa on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 2023
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