Corpus Christi Blog

Believe in the Eucharist

08-09-2015HomiliesFr. Chad King

We continue our 4 part homily series on the great Eucharistic discourse, John chapter 6.  Last week you might remember Jesus said in the Gospel that the Jews who had just been fed with five loaves and two fish, were looking for a sign.  The Jews were looking for a sign to believe that Jesus was indeed the Savior.  And Jesus encouraged them not to live for ordinary bread that perishes, but to live for the bread that endures to eternal life.  And Jesus went on to say to the Jews, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst”.  Last week, Fr. Rey inspired us to hunger for Jesus, for Jesus is the only one that will satisfy our every hunger.  And then Fr. Rey reminded us that faith in the Eucharist is a gift.

Today, our Gospel verses from John 6, tell us that the Jews were murmuring about Jesus saying, “I am the bread that came down from heaven”.  You see the Jews believed God had saved their ancestors through Moses at the Red Sea.  And when they were complaining on the way to the Promised Land that they were hungry, God fed them with Manna.  God fed them with miraculous ‘bread from heaven’ every morning, and flesh from quail every evening.  The Jews remembered the Manna of the Old Testament, and so they were waiting for God to send a New Moses, the Savior who would give them the New Manna.  Therefore, when Jesus said that He was the “bread that came down from Heaven”, the Jews began murmuring, uncertain how Jesus Himself could be the New Manna.  Murmuring is not a word we use very often.  We could say the Jews were whispering or mumbling to each other.  They were wondering if they heard Jesus right, and if so, they were wondering what Jesus meant by saying He is the bread of life.  And we will see that in next week’s Gospel, the murmuring grows to full out questioning.

Let’s be honest.  If we were Jewish at the time of Jesus we might be murmuring too. To have faith in the Eucharist is somewhat difficult.  Many Catholics are at least murmuring to themselves, is that host truly real?  In fact, it’s been reported that nearly 50% of Catholics do not really believe in the Eucharist themselves.  To believe the bread and wine actually transforms into the Body and Blood of Christ is hard to accept.  It is difficult to believe that a transubstantiation occurs, that there is a change in substance at Mass when the so called bread and wine still looks and tastes like bread and wine yet our Lord is present.  It is unfathomable to think that when we come forward to receive Holy Communion at any Catholic Church, we actually receive Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, inside us.  It is hard to believe that even one little particle of the Host or one drop from the Chalice is the fullness of Jesus, it is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ.   So let us be honest, it is hard to have faith in the Eucharist, but yet, that is what Jesus Christ said, and that is what the Catholic Church has believed and taught for 2000 years.  But sadly, close to 50 percent of Catholics do not believe in the Eucharist.

Today, using today’s Gospel, I want to share with you how I came to have absolute faith in the Eucharist, so much so that I have given my life for this truth.  Sometimes when we think of the word ‘faith’, we might think about something that can’t be proven but that we say we believe in.  So that I say this is true, but someone else says the opposite is true.  Some people think of ‘faith’ as something that they believe in but that they could be wrong and others might be right.  But true faith is not an opinion, it is trusting in what is revealed, even if it is difficult to fully understand.  Fr. Rey said last week, faith is a gift.  Indeed, faith in the Eucharist is a gift from God, a gift that God wants every person to have.  God wants us to have the faith that we are certain regardless what others believe.  The Scriptures use the analogy of the wind.  We cannot see the wind, but we can see the effects, and so we know the wind exists.  God wants our faith in the Eucharist to be that kind of knowledge, to be without any doubt or questioning.  God wants us to be so certain that we think it is absurd to not believe in the Eucharist, like we do the wind. 

I have always been Catholic, and so all my life I heard what the Eucharist is, I heard that Catholics believe the bread and wine actually transforms into the Body and Blood of Christ.  So I heard over and over again, in what Catholics believed, but there came a time when I still had to wrestle with the how and why in order to really understand and accept it for myself.  When I was wrestling with this uncertainty, I asked God for that faith to believe.  I told God, “I know that the Church says the bread and wine is transformed into your Body and Blood, but you know it is so hard for me to believe, it is so hard because I don’t understand the how or why.  A little later, I was thinking again about my uncertainty, and it was as if Jesus asked me- do you believe in me?  Do you believe that I am the Son of God?  This same question Jesus asked me, which He asks each one of us, is the same question Jesus was asking the Jews in our Gospel.  Is Jesus the Son of God or is Jesus just the son of Joseph and Mary?  The Jews knew Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, and they themselves knew Joseph and Mary, so naturally it was difficult to believe that before their son was born, He existed with God the Father and Creator of the world from the beginning of time.  The Jews believed God would send a new Moses to save them and give them a New Manna, but they couldn’t grasp Jesus was the fulfillment to their belief.  Do we?

I had to be still with God and ask myself, do I really believe Jesus is the Son of God.  Do I believe that God the Father so loved the world that He sent his only begotten Son.  And that Jesus is that Son, who has become human through Mary, raised by Mary and Joseph.   That Jesus as a boy was teaching and astonishing even the most learned spiritual men of his time.   That God has the power to heal the sick and raise the dead? That Jesus called people to follow Him, and revealed to them who He really is?  I had to ask myself, do I really believe Jesus to be who the Scriptures reveal Jesus is and claimed to be- the Son of God?  Do I believe that Jesus was arrested, suffered, and even died for the forgiveness of our sins?  Do I believe Jesus was risen from the dead, and that all His followers who knew Jesus the best, saw the Risen Jesus and believed He had been risen from the dead?  Do I believe not only what Jesus said, but what His disciples said in the Scriptures is true?  Of course I answered “Yes” to all those questions of faith.  And so I reasoned that if I believe in all that- if I believe God has the power to forgive sins, to heal the sick, and raise the dead, why is it so hard to believe He has the power to transform bread and wine? 

But that was only part of my conversion to faith in the Eucharist, the questioning and answering helped clarify my intellectual reasoning about the Eucharist, but God wanted more than just intellectual faith.  When someone asks you ‘how do you believe in the crazy idea that bread and wine is transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ’- how do you believe the Eucharist is true- God wants more than us to just say something like, “Jesus said it and so I believe it”.  Jesus wants us to have certain faith, to know it through and through.  During this time of intellectual reasoning, and growing in my faith, sometimes whenever I was in adoration, like on a retreat or something, God would touch my heart.  Or when I was at Mass and my mind and heart was engaged in prayer during the Consecration, God would touch my heart.  Those encounters with God deepened and confirmed my faith that Yes, indeed it is really God in the Eucharist.  For me, faith in the Eucharist became more than what Catholics believe, but what I know to be true.  Do you know it to be true too?  Have you or are you asking God for that faith to really know for yourself?  Are you taking and making the opportunities for God to reveal the truth to you, especially in Mass and Adoration?  When you and I come into the Church, do we genuflect with our hearts toward Jesus’s Presence in the Tabernacle?  When you are presented with the Body of Christ- do you say ‘Amen’- which means Yes I believe, with all your heart? 

Please remember our Adoration chapel is open 24/7, and we need more committed Adorers.   God is waiting and wanting to reveal Himself to you, not only in the Scriptures but also in the Holy Eucharist.  Will you come to Mass and Adoration more often and pray that God reveals himself to you, or will you come and pray for others to come to that same conviction and faith in God’s Real Presence in the Eucharist? 

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