Deacon’s Corner

I am constantly amazed how our Lord gives me ideas or things for me to share when I turn to Him in prayer. The following, I shared at the Cursillo Renewal weekend in July.. It’s a compilation (it might be 80-90% word for word) that I extracted from Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s book These Are the Sacraments. I hope you enjoy it. I love his writings! 

John Chapter 6: verse 53: “Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.”

How many times have we heard that scripture passage?

This short meditation, sheds light on how natural it is to yearn for Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, as food for the soul! 

There is a young wife who, for a year, was taking instructions in the Catholic faith. She told the catechist that she could believe everything in the faith, except the Eucharist. 

Upon inquiring about her husband, it was learned he was in the Middle East, on military duty. 

In answer to further questions, she admitted that she corresponded with him every other day and she had his photograph before her in every room of the house. 

They argued that there was nothing wanting for perfect happiness. 

What more could she want, than the constant memory of him through photographs, FaceTime and videos, in which heart is poured out to heart? 

But she declared that she could never be truly happy except through union with her husband. 

It was acknowledged that if human love craves oneness, shall not Divine love? If husband and wife seek to be one in the flesh, shall not the Christian and Christ, crave for that oneness with one another? 

The memory of Christ, who lived twenty centuries ago, the recalling of His mercy and miracles through memory, and the correspondence with Him by the scriptures. All these are satisfying, but they do not satisfy LOVE! 

There must be, on the level of grace, something unitive with Divine love. Every heart seeks  happiness outside itself, and since perfect love is God, then the heart of man and the heart of Christ must, in some way, fuse. 

In human friendship, the other person is loved as another self, or, the other half of one’s soul. 

Divine friendship, must have its mutual indwelling. 

“He who dwells in love, dwells in God and God in him”. This aspiration of the soul, for its ecstasy, is fulfilled in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. 

The Sacrament of the Eucharist has two sides; it is BOTH a Sacrifice and a Sacrament. 

Inasmuch as biological life is nothing but a reflection, a dim echo, and a shadow of the Divine Life, one can find analogies in the natural order, for the beauties of the Divine. 

Does not nature itself have a double aspect: A sacrifice and a sacrament? The vegetables which are served at table, the meat which is presented on the platter, are the natural sacraments of the body of man. By them he lives. 

If they were endowed with speech, they would say: “Unless you have communion with me, you will not live”. 

Nature, therefore, suggests that a sacrifice must precede a sacrament; death is the prelude to communion. In some way, unless the thing dies, it does not begin to live in a higher kingdom. 

When we come face to face with the realities of life, we see that we live by what we slay. Elevating this to the supernatural order, we still live by what we slay. 

It was our sins that slew Christ on Calvary, and yet by the power of God risen from the dead, and reigning gloriously in Heaven, He now becomes our life and has communion with us, and we with Him. 

In the Divine order, there must be the Sacrifice or the Consecration of the Mass, before there can be the Sacrament or the Communion, of the Soul and God. 

Running through the universe is the law that “Nothing Lives, Unless it Consumes”. Plant life, obedient to this law, goes down to the earth, eats and drinks from it, its waters, phosphates, and carbonates, and circulates them through its organism. 

The animal, because endowed with a higher life than that of the plant, is in still greater need of nourishment. It needs not only the nourishment of the mineral order, the air, the sunlight and the like, but also the nourishment of plant life. 

The instinct of the animal is to seek food. The animal, roaming in the field, the fish swimming in the water, the eagle soaring in the air, ALL are in search of daily bread. 

For without knowing it, they acknowledge that life is impossible without nourishment, that life grows only by life, and that the joy of living comes from communion with another kind of life. 

Man has a soul as well as a body. The spiritual part of him demands food, which is above the material and the physical and the biological. 

Nothing can satisfy the ‘Soul Hunger’ of man, except a nourishment suited to his soul, and its aspirations for the perfect. 

In the Order of Grace, this Divine food is the Eucharist, or the Communion of man with Christ and Christ with man. 

This is not something contrary to the natural law, for if the chemical could speak, it would say to the plant: “Unless you eat me, you shall not have life in you.” 

If the plant could speak, it would say to the animal: “Unless you eat me, you shall not have life in you.” 

If the animal, plant and air could speak, they would say to man: ‘Unless you eat me, you shall not have life in you.” 

With the same logic, but speaking from above and now below, because the soul is spiritual, Our Blessed Lord actually says to the soul: 

“Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you Shall Not Have Life in You.” 

The law of transformation works consistently through nature and Grace. The lower transforms itself into the higher, the plant transforms itself into the animal when taken as food. 

Man is transformed by Grace into Christ when he takes Christ into his soul, for it’s a Quality of Love, to transform itself, into the Object That is Loved. 

Let me share this analogy about the Eucharist and a hamburger. With physical food, a hamburger, after we digest it, we are nothing like the original food source.  We don’t take on characteristics of that hamburger. 

But with spiritual food, the Eucharist, after consuming, WE DO become more and more like the original food source. 

When we receive the Holy Eucharist, our brains are transformed and we think like Jesus; our hearts are transformed and we love like Jesus; and our tongues are transformed and we speak like Jesus. 

As St. Paul explains in his letter to the Galatians; “It’s no longer I who live, but it’s Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20a). 

Do you want to be Christ-like? 

Let us consume Jesus in the Holy Eucharist (as often as possible) and let Him transform our lives. 

Remember, Jesus said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you. 

Jesus, Do in Me what You Must, So as to Do through Me, what You Will! 

See you at the next Mass! 

Deacon Matt