BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST FATHER'S DAY

BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

FATHER’S DAY

                      Jesus lived in Palestine. Palestine enjoys a great variation in climate and rainfall. Therefore it was blessed with a great variety of vegetation and foliage. This was especially true in the time of Jesus, when the countryside was free of the scourge of pollution produced by technology; the river Jordan and the lake of Genazareth were limpid clear of industrial effluents. Jacob’s well knew no arsenic! Humidity was almost down to zero, and even though it was hot by day there was no sticky feeling. (The only sticky entities were the scribes and Pharisees!)  Trees and fruits were abundant, with juniper and oak the most common, and olive and fig trees the most valuable because of the fruit and oil they produced. And of course the people had the wonderful “fruit of the vine”, the grapes from which they produced their deep, full-bodied red wines, so thick and rich that they had to be diluted with water before being served. Jesus referred to himself as the true vine (John 15, 1-17), and the Gospels refer many times to the vineyards and those who tended them. When the grapes were ripe and ready for pressing, you could imagine the young Jesus in his shorts treading sing-song the thick carpet of grapes with the other guys and gals, and being paid the denarius at the end of the day.

                  

                   The common grain in Jesus’ time included wheat – the most valuable – along with oats and barley. Barley was basically the poor man’s grain, and Bible commentators opine that Jesus used barley bread at the Last Supper.

                   Bread was the essential food of Jesus’ day, so much so that bread alone could sometimes be a full meal, especially that it was heavy and substantial, pure unrefined whole wheat. Downed with a few cups of full-bodied wine, there were no complaints. As the staff of life, bread was treated with great respect, and many Jewish laws governed its preparation, use and preservation. So when Jesus identified himself with bread and wine at the Last Supper, those around him knew what he was talking about: he was revealing himself as the one who gives them complete sustenance and fulfilment. This “bread of life” could satisfy completely the deepest hungers of people (see John 6, 22-5).

                   For Catholics the celebration of the Eucharist is the “breaking and eating together” of the bread that is Christ, Son of God and son of Mary. Breaking stands for sacrifice, and eating stands for sustenance. (Incidentally, bread on our tables today should not be sliced with a knife but broken with the hands and shared). So the Eucharist has its secular origins in the central place that bread and wine occupied in the lives of the people of Jesus’ day.

Today’s feast of the Body and blood of Christ is redolent with the appeal and offer of sustenance  -  material, moral, emotional and spiritual. And “Father’s Day” dovetails quite appropriately with today’s feast.

 When fathers are gathered on Judgement Day, the Lord will gently say, “I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink, naked and you clothed me, homeless and you sheltered me, imprisoned and you visited me. Come, enter the kingdom I have prepared for you.” And the fathers will be bewildered and will ask: “Are you sure, Lord? When did we see you hungry and feed you?” The Lord will reply, “Do you really not know? Do you not remember the way you carefully fed me when I was a baby; the way you loved me into my first small steps across the living room into your arms; and, later, my bigger steps into the waiting world?” “All the time that was me you were nourishing. Yes, of course, it was your child. But it was me, your God, as well.”

“When were you thirsty, Lord?” they ask. “I needed your love and comfort. You held me to your chest and I could hear your heart. As tenderly as the sun opens the daisies in the morning, your gentle voice and loving eyes opened my soul to the mystery of my true identity. I, your God, became your vulnerable child so as to experience your tenderness to me.”

“But naked, Lord, and homeless?” The Lord will reply, “I was born naked and homeless, and you sheltered me, first in your wife’s womb and then in your arms. In my rebellious years I left home, blinded by lesser lights and loves. You did not judge me, your great heart never doubted me; you forgave me, you believed in me, you drew me into a higher way of life, light-making and love-making. No matter what, on my return home, your face at the door was always a smiling sacrament of welcome.”

“But imprisoned, Lord? Surely not!” The Lord paused. “There are many kinds of prison. When I was imprisoned in my fears I cried out in the night; you came and lifted me from behind the bars of my cot and folded me in your arms. Years later you lifted me from behind the bars of bigger fears  -  fears of my own inadequacy, of my own intense emotions, of the terror and beauty of the unknown life ahead. You were the brave one, Dad, wielding the gun that defended the family and kept us together; and you gave me the guts to leap into the jaws of death like a good soldier. So, because of you I can soldier on. Bless you, Dad.”

And, so, dear friends, we go to Mass to remember and to celebrate together the extraordinary revelation that no moment is “merely” human or worldly, but rather an event of grace; every threshold a door to heaven. Jesus embraces every family, each with its own stories to tell him  -  the hurting and the healing, the sinning and the gracing. He then sits down and explains to us, amazed, how those ordinary moments of raw human life are his life too. His eyes are twinkling as we struggle to understand what he is telling us. Comforted, we eat and drink his words with the bread and wine of joy. He kisses each one of us before we leave. Our hearts are burning within us as we recall his parting words of comfort  -  our kitchens, too, are little Bethlehems, our breakfast tables are small altars; our whole lives, with their calvaries and resurrections, are one long consecration and communion. But now we are so slow to leave. “Don’t be sad,” he says, “I’ll be waiting for you at home. There are many rooms in my Father’s mansion.”