103 posts 8/8/2007 10:06 pm
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8/8/2007 10:07 pm
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A Meal That Feeds the Body and the Soul
A Meal That Feeds the Body and the Soul…
A banquet is a meal that feeds the body but more especially feeds the spirit. When we dine in friendly company, our souls are nourished by the mutual sharing and the self-disclosure that take place. In the atmosphere of conviviality that a great dinner creates, we renew our sense of meaningfulness and hope. Dining raises to a new level of pleasure the ordinary experience of eating and drinking. It fills our spiritual longing of companionship. Thus there is something holy and sacred about eating together, about blessing God before and after a meal, about sharing food and friendship. A meal is a time when people learn to love each other.
That is why, whenever God gathers his people around himself, he feeds them. In the course of history, he did this repeatedly, each great gathering symbolizing and foreshadowing the next, better gathering. Thus we see God gathering his people Israel in the desert at the time of the Exodus from Egypt (Ex. 16) and feeding it with manna. That first feeding was actually the preview, the harbinger, of a better meal yet to come. The next one took place again in solitary location, but this time the people gathered around the of God himself, who miraculously multiplied bread and fish and fed thousands of men and women. But the meal, too, was only a preparation and an announcement for an even more wondrous meal, the Eucharist.
That is precisely the special event that we are remembering today in this Solemnity of Corpus Christi. Today we are expressing our appreciation and joy for the gift of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the third great feeding of God’s people. But this time, not only we are gathered around the of God, but we have the unique privilege of feasting on the body and blood of the of God. Moreover, this feeding is not a once-and-for-all affair, as we the feeding of the 5,000. it is a feeding which repeated everyday from generation to generation until the end of time. And, because of the unique fare of this feast–nothing less than the very flesh and blood of God–we reach a depth of fellowship impossible in any other feast: fellowship with each other as a members of the Body of Christ, and fellowship with God with whom the blood of his unites us in an unbreakable bond for love. Can such feeling of God’s people ever be surpassed in significance and beauty.
Surprisingly, yes it can. For this gathering around the Eucharist is not an end in itself. However sublime it is, it is still merely a means to an end, foretaste of something even more momentous. For Jesus announced several times during his public ministry (Mt 8:11; Lk 13:28-29; Mr 22:1-14; Lk 22:30 ) that in God’s heavenly kingdom he would gather together, in a fraternal banquet offered by his Father, all of humankind from Adam and Eve to their last descendants. What a meal that will be! There we will eat and drink together in perfect harmony. All tears will be wiped away, as God promises us, and death will have become a thing of the past (Rv 21:4). God will be with his people forever in that heavenly city of Jerusalem, where everything will be new and beautiful.
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365 Days with the Lord
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