St. Luke paints a down-to-earth picture of Jesus walking the dusty trails of Palestine, "speaking to the crowds about the Kingdom of God," "healing those who needed to be cured", and even making sure they had enough to eat. This picture shows how close Jesus wants to be to us. That's a central message of today's feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Back in first century Palestine, Jesus spent all His time doing things for others. His whole life was for others, for us. He came for us; He came to be our Savior and to be the Friend who will never let us down. He wanted to make sure that we would never forget that. So He figured out a way to remain with us even after He died, rose, and ascended into heaven. He has remained with us not only in the holy Scriptures, not only in the living Church, not only in the examples of the saints, but even under the humble and silent appearances of bread and wine.
In the Eucharist, He is as close to us as He was to those people who walked with Him on the dusty roads of Palestine. In fact, He is even closer. Those people received bread at His hands, but we receive the Lord Himself in Holy Communion. What more could Jesus have done to show us how passionately He wants to be near us, to guide us, to strengthen us? Jesus has not changed since the day He multiplied the loaves for the hungry crowds. He has not all of a sudden become selfish, harsh, and unforgiving. He is as good and generous now as He was then.
John Paul II's last encyclical emphasized this desire of Christ to stay close to us, a desire that expresses itself most eloquently in the Eucharist. At the very beginning of the encyclical, he wrote about how "in the Holy Eucharist, through the changing of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord... [the Church] rejoices in this presence with unique intensity" (#1).
Pope Benedict XVI recently re-emphasized the same point in his message to the whole Church, written in the wake of the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist. In this Exhortation, called "Sacramentum Caritatis", he repeats his favorite theme, that God's love is the solution to every problem, personal and social, as well as the answer to the yearning of every human heart. He also explains, at the beginning of the message, that the Eucharist is the ultimate manifestation of that love. Here are his words:
"The Holy Eucharist is the gift that Jesus Christ makes of Himself, thus revealing to us God's infinite love for every man and woman...In the sacrament of the altar, the Lord meets us, men and women created in God's image and likeness, and becomes our companion along the way. In this sacrament, the Lord truly becomes food for us, to satisfy our hunger for truth and freedom..."(#s 1-2)
This is not just theory. This is reality. Christ's close presence, most evident in the Eucharist, gives us strength to fulfill our life's mission and discover the happiness He wishes for us. As Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, the Eucharist "...is the spiritual food that sustains me - without which I could not get through one single day or hour in my life."
If Jesus has chosen to stay close to us, it is because we need Him to be close to us. He knows this, and so He instituted the Eucharist. But do we know it? We all believe that following Christ is the only way to true, lasting happiness, but do we stay as close to Him as we can? Is the Eucharist at the center of our individual lives, the way it is at the center of the Church's life as a whole?
If someone were to videotape us living our normal life for a whole week, how often would the Eucharist appear? The Eucharist is so quiet, so subtle, and so gentle. We have to be honest; our culture much prefers things that are flashy, explosive, and spectacular. Is it possible that we have been too much affected by our culture? Is it possible that we sometimes let doubts and hesitations hold back our friendship with Christ? Is it possible that we really could come to receive Holy Communion more often?
Is it possible that we keep trying to solve all our problems all by ourselves, leaving Him alone in the Tabernacle, not coming to visit Him briefly during the week, just to talk things over, not come to adore Him and to let Him be our strength? Yes, it is possible. But today we can turn over a new leaf. Jesus has stayed among us in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul, and divinity.
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