19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

1. Today, my dear brothers and sisters, we are invited by the Lord to allow ourselves to be taught by God, and to be enlightened and gladdened by the amazing depth of the Good News which is revealed and communicated in the Discourse on the Bread of Life which we are reading on these Sundays.

2. Jesus, you remember, has multiplied the loaves and the fishes. He has mysteriously been able feed the hungry crowd. In so doing, he has presented himself as the Prophet and the long-awaited Messiah who comes to save God’s chosen people. Taking this further, Jesus then puts before the people the message of a food, unlike ordinary bread which they have just eaten, that does not perish. He speaks of a food that endures to eternal life, bread from heaven, bread which gives life to the world. With the people beginning to ask questions, Jesus goes even further and declares to the wondering people that he is the bread of life; he is the bread come down from heaven. He invites them to believe in him, to be taught by God, to believe in the one who has come from God and has seen the Father. From loaves and fish which sustain bodily life, Jesus has invited his hearers to see in him the bread of life who can bring them eternal life.

3. As if that were not enough, he then moves to a level of meaning which is truly astonishing. He begins to talk about eating the bread of life, and would you believe it, “this bread”, he says, “is my flesh for the life of the world”. The multiplication of the loaves has here achieved its deepest point of meaning and has introduced us to the mystery of the Eucharist through which we enter into communion with the Christ who gave his body, his flesh, for us on the cross. This body, this flesh, we are invited to eat as the bread of life so that we can live for ever.

4. The realism of this mystery is frightening. The bread of the Eucharist consecrated by the priest at Mass becomes the body, the flesh of Christ. How on earth are we to understand this? Sometimes, we have to use difficult words to express what needs to be said. This is one of those times. The word is transubstantiation. The bread blessed and offered at Mass, and consecrated by the priest is transubstantiated, changed in its deepest being, so that at its deepest being, it is no longer bread, but the body of Christ, his very flesh given for us.

5. Sometimes to explain a difficult word, we may use a word like it. A word like transubstantiation is transformation. We could say the bread is transformed and we would be nearly there, but not quite. Transformation indicates a change, but transubstantiation indicates a change of being or identity. For instance, if a lady goes into the hairdresser and gets her hair done, when she comes out, we may say “What a transformation!” But we would not say “What a transubstantiation” because she is still the same person and still has the same identity. The forms, the appearance, the look, maybe even the colour, have changed, but not the substance, the identity of the person. In the Eucharist, it is the other way round, the forms have not changed. The forms remain as they were (all we see, touch and taste – the forms – is unleavened bread), but the substance, the reality, the identity has changed. What is now there is Christ himself who gives us himself to eat as the bread of life and as the sacrifice who takes our sins away.

6. So transubstantiation may be a difficult word but the Church has used it and continues to use it because it expresses the gold standard of her faith in the real presence: the bread blessed and consecrated at Mass truly becomes the body of Christ.. This is how the Lord, the Bread of Life, nourishes his people. This is the mystery we approach at Mass. Here the Lord is truly present and truly adored. Here we receive Him, we adore him, we are strengthened by him so that we can live a fully Christian life of faith and worship, of hope in God’s purpose, and of love and of service.

St. Mirin’s Cathedral,

13^th August 2006