Corpus Christi

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time -Year A- Come and renew yourself in Christ!

God has created us in his image and likeness. He knows that there is a natural tendency in us to look for satisfaction. No matter in which condition we find ourselves, we still feel some void or vacuum in ourselves; there is certain emptiness in us, that incompleteness. There is no crafted human device that can fill up the vacuum in our lives. Not even worldly riches and luxury can satisfy it. Money does not provide happiness. The only thing that can guarantee happiness is God himself.

On that note, in the third part of Isaiah, the prophet proclaims the universal call to salvation in which God invites all, with no exception to come freely to be satisfied. All of us, like every other group of people experience a certain hunger and a certain thirst that only God can fully satisfy. It is useless to look anywhere else for satisfaction. In Jesus Christ, God has provided for humanity with spiritual nourishment: the Word of God and the Eucharist. St. Augustine expresses this fact in the confessions when he says: “You have made us for yourself O Lord, our hearts remain restless until they find rest in you, O God.”

In the gospel, by the multiplication of the bread which has direct relation to the Eucharist, Jesus makes us understand that he is able to feed us and fill up the void in our lives, which material things, as well as creatures, cannot satisfy. This feeding of thousands took place in a deserted place with five loaves and two fish. After making the people to sit down on the grass, we are told, Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples who in turn gave them to the crowds. After they ate and were satisfied, the fragments filled twelve wicker baskets. This narrative tells us, what Jesus continues to do, even till today through His One, Holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. He continues to feed us with His Body and Blood, in every Eucharistic celebration. By his grace, he calls us forth as his united people to first of all, hear his word that is proclaimed in the liturgy of the word. He then goes on to nourish us with his body and blood, soul and divinity in the appearances of bread and wine. By eating of him and drinking of him, we become one with him and with all who receive him. We become what we have received, the mystical body of Christ. And so in the Eucharist, Heaven and Earth are united. We, the militant church become one with the church triumphant in heaven and the church suffering in purgatory. We all become one great fellowship of love in Christ. In the miraculous feeding of thousands with five loaves and two fish. Jesus assigned to the disciples the work of distributing them to the crowds. In the same way, in every holy mass, Jesus the eternal high priest, gives himself in the Eucharist, to the priests to distribute to all those present. So when we come to the holy mass, we come to celebrate this great love of God, offered to us in Our Lord Jesus Christ.

St. Paul imagining this great love of Christ, asks: “what will separate us from the love of Christ?”  Nothing can separate us from this love. In all things, we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. Here, there is a clarion call on us to live in imitation of Christ. The imitation of Christ, invites us to make his agape-attitude, ours. It is the Christian love that is opposed to carnal love. As unconditional love, it loves both friends and enemies alike, in the ways Jesus did, on the cross of Calvary. We find our true happiness in God, through his son Jesus Christ.
This is where God is calling on us to come and be satisfied. Through his prophet, Isaiah, God is inviting us who are thirsty and are hungry, to come to the water, to come to the grain and eat. He wants us to come without paying and without cost, he wants us to drink wine and milk. He will give us abundant life, and renew his everlasting covenant  with us. Let us, therefore, treasure greatly what God has given us in his son Jesus Christ within the holy church.

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