The cause of our disappointment can be anything from a car to a carnival; a rest stop or a restaurant; a movie or a meeting. The frustration with whatever letdown happened ultimately makes us say, at least to ourselves, “I’m never going to buy, or buy into, that item again.
Something akin to that decision must have formed in the minds and hearts of many of Our Lord’s early followers on that fateful day when He announced the Eucharist. It was altogether “too much” for them to accept what He said. Time to walk away, back to their former way of life.
In the wake of their shuffling sandals and their overheard murmurs, the Apostles were stunned into silence and confused by the mystery. Then Jesus asked: “Do you also want to leave?” For a few moments, there was a “loud silence,” if you get my meaning. The birds still chirped overhead; the breeze still tousled their hair; images still troubled their thoughts. Eating flesh and drinking blood broke every law of Moses they knew.
But in the nick of time, our bold, brash, and impetuous first pope St. Peter broke the silence and asked the same question we sometimes ask, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Indeed, He did and still does forever.
Yet, here was the perfect opportunity for Jesus to ease their minds and say: “My people, I was only speaking figuratively!” Or “I mean for the bread and wine to be symbols. Not my actual body and blood!” But He never did. In fact, that mistaken understanding is the very one that anchors every non-Catholic Christian church up to today. With due respect for the goodness in those churches, their founders exemplify what happens when hearers of the truth don’t like what they hear.
The Bible stands strong here, when human weakness finds this teaching of Jesus unacceptable. How ironic that fundamentalists, who prefer to take literally what they read in Scripture, will not do so with words that Jesus said on Holy Thursday night.
At any rate, here is a powerful quote from the talk that Pope St. John Paul II gave at Phoenix Park during his three-day visit to Ireland in the Fall of 1979. He unknowingly but prophetically describes the situation we find right now in our own country:
“When the moral fiber of a nation is weakened, when the sense of personal responsibility is diminished, then the door is open for the justification of injustices, for violence in all its forms and for the manipulation of the many by the few. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery. And so, it becomes all the more urgent to steep ourselves in the truth that comes from Christ…It is especially in the Eucharist that the power and the love of the Lord are given to us”
Thank you, St. John Paul, for pointing out the locus of true Love.