June 9th
The Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ Jn 6/51-58

Background

The Feast is a medieval celebration instituted at a time when the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist was not understood as being as closely tied to the Mass as it is today. However, it is not incompatible with our new liturgical understanding so long as we realize that in effect it is an extension of the Eucharist banquet. The discourse in today's Gospel is a theological reflection on the Eucharist written for the early Christians and not an actual dialogue which occurred during Jesus's life. Those who are pictured as contending with Jesus are in fact straw persons that are there to give the Evangelist an opportunity to present his theological and mystical reflections on the Eucharist. Translated into modern parlance (and oversimplified) the message is that it is the community we celebrate with God and one another in the Eucharist that becomes the center of our lives and the promise of a banquet which will never end.

Story (based on a story of Father John Shea)

Once upon a time a father brought his four kids into a thirty one flavors. Well only three of them came in. A teenage girl remained outside in the car sulking, because she was at that age of life at which teenage girls sulk. Inside the two boys fought over which one could choose first because they both wanted garlic chocolate fudge with cookie crumbles and one could not of course order what the other had already ordered (unthinkable!). So they actually came to blows when the older did order that ice cream and the younger one was constrained to settle for orange ripple pizza ice cream. The little girl wept because all the chocolate chocolate chip was gone (well, I'd weep too!)and nothing would console her not even a triple scoop peppermint fudge raspberry mango cone. She sobbed all through her destruction of the cone. Finally the teenager came in and sulked because they didn't have "anything" though actually there were more than forty flavors. She finally settled on vanilla yogurt as a protest against the injustices of the human condition. When he got home, the father told his wife how much fun they had at thirty one flavors. He was speaking the truth. How could he have had fun with those brats? They were his children, you see, and he loved them. And he delighted in feeding them.

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