I tell this
little bit of history because of something their commander, Major General Dutch
Keiser, said. He had a body guard
assigned to him, Corporal Jake Thorpe who had stuck by him through many battles,
dedicating his life to protect the General.
While driving the jeep through the ‘gauntlet’ that day, Corporal Thorpe
had been in the back manning the machine gun, when he was picked off by a
sniper. Keiser had loaded the dead body
of his friend into the back of the jeep to take him out. However, there were SO
many wounded along the road that eventually they had to leave Corporal Thorpe’s
body on the side of the road to make room for the wounded.
Regardless
of what else Keiser had been through… he said –“it was a hard thing to do…to walk away from the body of the man who had
given his life to save me.” (1)
Could you do
it? Could you walk away from the body of
the man who had given his life to save you?
Many people have
walked away.
You know, we
talk and we talk about how, in the Mass, the bread and wine really do become
the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. But
still, some people walk away.
Talking
about it obviously ain’t enough. Yes –
we NEED the head-knowledge of WHY we believe that when Jesus said ‘This is my
body’… he really MEANT it! And today’s Gospel
from John chapter 6 is one of the main supporting texts given to us by God to help
us understand WHY we believe it. Let me
just quickly re-explain that in case you’ve forgotten. Jesus is telling the disciples – which is the
big crowd – that they have to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Now – they immediately started murmuring –
what’s this about? We can’t eat human
flesh and drink human blood – God specifically forbids that in His law! This raised some serious doubts in the minds
of those disciples. In fact, if we would
keep reading just a few more lines beyond where today’s Gospel stopped, we hear
that “many of them walked away from Jesus and returned to their former way of
life”. That’s an important point… people
were walking away from Jesus BECAUSE of what he was teaching. Now – if Jesus HADN’T meant exactly what he
said, this would be the perfect time for him to say – wait a minute – come back
- you misunderstood me… I..I was only talking symbolically, you know… a ‘figure
of speech’. But instead of saying that,
he upped the ante: “Unless you
eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life within you!” They couldn’t take it… this was too much…and
they walked away. Again he could have
stopped them but instead, he turned to the 12 apostles and offered to them… do
you want to walk away too? He was ready
to lose ALL of his followers if they didn’t want to accept this one, central teaching: This IS my body.
They
believed what he said was true…. And you and I continue to take Jesus at his
Word. It’s still a stretch, but at least
we can logically make sense why we should believe it. But head knowledge isn’t enough. We have to believe what we know to be
true.
We all have
doubts – probably just about everyone in here sometimes wonders… is it
true? When Fr. Eugene is up here praying
the Eucharistic Prayer, It sometimes seems so mundane …. Like just wafers and
wine. The people around us don’t really seem
excited by the fact that the Body and Blood of Jesus are on the altar, so it
can test our faith. You’re not
alone! We all go through that. So – it’s not enough to ‘know’ the truth, we
have to practice our faith and exercise it.
Here are a
couple of ideas…One idea is when Fr. Eugene holds up the bread and says, ‘Do
this in memory of me’, even if you don’t FEEL like it at the moment, bow
slightly and silently say to yourself ‘my Lord and my God’… or ‘Jesus, I
believe it is You… but help my unbelief’.
When we don’t FEEL like Jesus is present, we might have to rely on our head
knowledge to keep our Faith alive until God chooses to reveal the truth in
a way that touches our heart. He may
never touch our hearts… but that doesn’t make it any less true.
The
Eucharist truly is the source and the summit of our Faith… yet people continue
to walk away. When I ask the people who
are still here WHY they HAVEN’T left, almost every time, the answer is the
Eucharist. Many people DO recognize that
we are privileged to have Jesus in our midst – on our altar - and He feeds us
with His own flesh.
It would be
a hard thing to do, don’t you think?…
”to walk
away from the body of the man who had given his life to save me…and you.
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(1) "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War" - David Halberstam
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