Fr. Michael Williams

Last Sunday we celebrated the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity; today we celebrate the mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ- the mystery that Christ humbles Himself and comes to us under the appearance of bread and wine as spiritual food.

St John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus gave His Bread of Life sermon at the synagogue in Capernaum in Galilee. If you’re ever fortunate enough to go the Holy Land, the foundations of the synagogue in Capernaum are still there, which reminds us of this particular doctrine which Jesus taught.

When Jesus taught this doctrine in that synagogue there was uproar! Many asked, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat’ and later many say in verse 60, ‘this is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’

Ultimately, we can only accept this doctrine with divine faith, which is a gift from God. Divine faith allows us to accept the truth of what Jesus says, even though our senses tells us otherwise. St Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian of the Eucharist, put it well in verse when he wrote:

‘Sight, touch, and taste in thee are each deceived,

The ear alone most safely is believed:

I believe all the Son of God has spoken;

Than Truth’s own word there is no truer token’.

As believers we need to continually ask the Lord to increase the gift of divine faith within us, just like the man in St. Mark’s gospel (9:24) who prays to the Jesus: ‘Lord, I have faith. Help my lack of faith’. We need to ask the Lord to help us with our fragile faith. Our faith is vulnerable like a candle flame, but it brings light to the darkened world.

I mentioned the synagogue at Capernaum 2,000 years ago. But in every generation and in many different countries this doctrine of Lord’s has had to be defended, sometimes to the point of martyrdom. Last week when I was on retreat, a priest friend and I, went to visit St Margaret Clitherow’s house in the Elizabethan road called, ‘the Shambles’, in York. That house is now a shrine, but in Elizabethan times Margaret Clitherow’s family house was a welcome shelter to priests, who were trying to minister to England’s Catholics. Her home was also a place where the Mass was offered secretly following the outlawing of the Faith in England under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. She was eventually caught and executed. Because of the heroic witness of people like Margaret the Mass survived in England!

More recently Cardinal Van Tuan in Communist Vietnam continued to preach the Doctrine of the Eucharist from his prison cell. Bread and wine were smuggled into his cell by sympathizers and he would offer Mass. The Eucharist was then placed in a disguised cigarette box and sent around the prison so that the faithful could draw sustenance from the Bread of Life.

I had the privilege of meeting Cardinal Van Tuan, when he gave a talk, speaking of his experiences in a Vietnamese prison.

Our Lord spoke of a hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, which is ‘the Bread of Life’ at Capernaum two thousand years ago. Margaret Clitherow and Cardinal Van Tuan are two figures from Church history, who gave up their freedom and their lives in service to the Holy Eucharist, Christ’s Body and Blood.

We have a treasure given to us by the Lord in the holy Eucharist, so let’s always treasure It and value it, as the source of our every blessing, a blessing which allows us to draw life from the Lord leading to eternal life.