“Have You Anything Here to Eat” by Rev. Paul Berghout

"Have You Anything to Eat?" by Rev. Paul Berghout 

Monday of the Third Week of Easter

Piety

 

 

“Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” (John 6:26-27)

Study

On the Third Sunday of Easter, Luke's Gospel has the very human story of Jesus' appearing to the disciples after the Resurrection, inviting them to touch his hands and feet to see that he is real. He ate with them and “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”

Following that, this week the daily Gospel is from John's 6 on Jesus as the “Bread of Life.” Like so many stories in this gospel, Jesus teaches from one layer of understanding to another, taking us deeper into understanding his gift of himself to us in the Eucharist. Jesus says, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.”

“The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

 

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

A mother proudly told her pastor: “My teenage son has finally learned one bible verse: It’s Luke 24, verse 41, from Sunday’s Gospel, where Jesus says to his disciples, “Have you anything here to eat?”

As we reflect on the bread of life which is Jesus’ body, consider the characteristics of a resurrected body to eternal life. 

St. Thomas Aquinas says that the glory of the soul “causes” the glory of the body because, with respect to corruption, the matter of the human body will be entirely subject to the human soul. (SCG 4.86)

The soul is created immediately by God. The Church teaches at the level of the Ordinary Magisterium that “ensoulment” occurs at the moment of conception.

The Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, in “Donum Vitae,” makes very clear, at the moment of conception, or the moment of a human being’s existence at conception, he possesses and is a body/soul composite. We should, therefore, treat him as a human person.

The resurrected body to eternal life (and not to eternal damnation) means that the body ceases to be a limit of time and space, and its capacity for communion remains.

We make our life our own when we don’t have to deny our personal histories, we just situate it in the death and resurrection of Christ, and we get humility and courage from the Risen Christ to continue in holiness.

The Resurrected Christ bears the marks of the crucifixion, and so will the bodies of those resurrected to eternal life bear their wounds -- St. Bernard reminds us that the wounds of the Savior are a place of firm security for the weak.

Scar tissue is the strongest skin of all.

Following a long tradition, the wounds of the martyrs should be considered marks of honor (”Dignitas”) and virtue rather than as deformities; it would only be fitting that these wounds and scars somehow remain in the glorified resurrected state as in the case of the scars of the risen Christ.

Wounds and blemishes are apparent, yet the appearance is so glorious that a resurrected person might not be immediately recognizable to friends and loved ones.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said, “When we hear of the holiness of some people, our first reaction is: I knew her when...Between the “then” and the “now” has intervened a battle in which selfishness lost, and faith won out.”

The third characteristic of Risen Life is to heed Jesus’ giving us the mission to the Gentiles, that “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations. You are witnesses of these things.”

Mary Demuth shares the story of Rick Sylvester.  She tells us that he was a broken child on the path to becoming a broken adult—until God intervened.

Rick met Jesus in Washington, DC, through National Community Church as he read its pastor Mark Batterson’s newsletter and attended the Church alongside Andersen, then his girlfriend. “I had hit rock bottom,” he explains in his book. “I was a broken man, and I wanted healing. And the way they made it sound at this Church—God could be the healer—I hadn’t ever taken that to heart before. I was tired of walking around so empty.”

Rick’s journey from emptiness toward wholeness comes at the very end of the book, and the reader is left wondering what that process may have looked like. Perhaps this is because Rick is still living this story as a married father of two who longs to forge a new path for his children. He has drilled a hard-won stake in the ground, empowered by the transformation the [Risen Life] brings.”

Let’s hope Rick discovers the Eucharist and the Catholic faith.  

Action

Many people want to believe.  Perhaps if they see Christ’s wounds and our battle scars, with personality, a victory with a cost, they would heed “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins” in Jesus’ Name.  Then, they can freely enter R.C.I.A. to receive baptism and the other sacraments of initiation to begin living the risen life.  

Amen.