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SCRIPTURE READINGS
As the day drew to a close,
the Twelve approached Jesus, saying,
"Dismiss the crowd so they can go to surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions, for it is deserted here."
Jesus said, "Give them some food yourselves."
They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have,
unless we buy food for all these people."
The men there numbered approximately five thousand.
Then Jesus said to his disciples,
"Have them sit down in groups of about fifty."
They did so and made them all sit down.
Then, taking the five loaves and the two fish,
he looked up to heaven, said the blessing, broke them,
and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.
All ate and were satisfied. And the leftover fragments filled twelve wicker baskets.
Luke 9:11b-17
"Do this in remembrance of me" (1 Cor 11:25). There are many ways of approaching the Eucharist, but one thing is clear: it comes with a dual mandate to "do" and to "remember." These verbs take us beyond receiving Communion and private devotions to the Blessed Sacrament; rather, they demand that we enter liturgical time as a community and then, made new by what we have received, go out into the world to continue Christ's work of transformation through Love. This is not to discredit individual piety around the Eucharist-- far from it-- but to assert that there is "something more" that calls us on a communal level. You could say that private devotion supplements communal celebration, strengthening and preparing us to face the challenges of Christian discipleship.
But let's return to the idea of liturgical time. In his book, The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade distinguishes between sacred time (the time of a sacred action) and profane time (the time of ordinary history), explaining that through ritual, we not only commemorate a sacred event, but "reactualize" it. In this way, we become participants in the sacred action itself, allowing it to be eternally present. If we apply this to the celebration of the Eucharist, this means that "remembering" = "making present" + "being present" + "being re-membered" (made whole). Through liturgical time, the Last Supper is an eternally present event that we experience on both a personal and communal level, just as the disciples did. Like the disciples, we each have our feet washed, receiving the mandate to wash one another's feet (Jn 13:1-17). Then, at the table, we hear Jesus' words, witnessing him break the bread and share the cup:
"This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me...
This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."
When we are sent forth at the conclusion of each liturgy, we re-enter what Eliade would call "profane time"; however, from a Christian perspective, all time is sacred because of the Incarnation. Our task is to "DO," to extend Christ's love to those who are hungry both physically and spiritually, because as we learn from today's Gospel, we have all the resources we need to satisfy the hungers of the world. Five loaves and two fish can go a long way where Divine Arithmetic is concerned-- we just have to believe it!
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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
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What does the Feast of Corpus Christi mean to you?
- How can you participate more consciously in the liturgy?
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In what ways does the Feeding of the Five Thousand have Eucharistic undertones?
- What are your personal beliefs about the "Real Presence," and how do these beliefs influence your ways of praying?
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