First reading: Dt. 8:2–3,14b–16a
Moses said to the people: “Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments. He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.
“Do not forget the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery; who guided you through the vast and terrible desert with its saraph serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock and fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your fathers.”
Second reading: 1 Cor. 10:16–17
Brothers and sisters: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
Gospel: Jn. 6:51–58
Jesus said to the Jewish crowds: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 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. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
In other words
Fr. Emmanuel Menguito, SVD (Cainta, Rizal)
Many of you must have heard of the countless ways by which people have desecrated, sacrilegiously treated or, at least, have shown irreverence to the most sacred Body of our Lord. Sacred hosts were scattered on the church floor by a robber who was just interested in stealing the gold-plated ciborium; communicants not consuming the sacred hosts but bringing them home to feed to their fighting cocks for good luck, or communicants carrying home the sacred host to adore at their home. These are just a few instances that I know of which obviously stem from a fundamental lack of understanding of the sacred mystery of the Eucharist and, thus, a total lack of faith in the holiest food given to us by Jesus Christ. It would be most worthwhile then to say something about what happens when the Holy Mass is celebrated. It all boils down to the mystery called transubstantiation.
Transubstantiation is the change of the whole substance of bread into the Body of Christ and the whole substance of wine into the substance of the Blood of Christ. While the outward appearances of bread and wine remain, the word of the Lord Himself at the Last Supper and said by the priest during consecration makes this mystery possible. Basically, it depends on one’s faith in the power of the word of Jesus, which is now said through His ordained priests, that this miracle happens. Even if there is no faith present in the person present at Mass, the miracle still occurs, but for the person without faith, they will still only see in the consecrated host and wine, mere bread and wine. But for the believer, when the bell rings as the bread and wine now turn into Christ’s Body and Blood are raised by the priest, the believer raises their eyes to look in deep adoration at the Eucharistic presence of Christ, offering Himself as spiritual food. “Praestet fides supplementum, sensuum defectui,” says a line in the Eucharistic hymn “Tantum Ergo.” “Faith for all defects supplying, where the feeble senses fail” is an excellent translation of the Latin lines. Our senses may see, feel, and taste the bread and wine, but our faith leads us to say, “My Lord and my God.”