June 2021

Passover was the great Jewish feast commemorating – and spiritually renewing – the freeing of the Israelites from Egypt, their crossing of the Red Sea and their forty-year journey through the desert, and year after year this was commemorated. Today’s Gospel takes us to Mark’s account of Jesus giving Passover a whole new meaning on the night before he died. 

At this meal, Jesus does two remarkable things which are quite plausible in His own language. He takes bread – an essential ingredient of Passover – and He says, “This is my body.” Then He takes a cup of wine, saying, “This is my blood… which is to be poured out…” We are used to these words, echoed at every Mass, but, to Jesus’ disciples, these were unusual words for Passover. What we might miss, though, is that Jesus’ disciples do not sound surprised in the least. In Aramaic, Jesus’ own language, similar to Hebrew, the verb “to say” is also the verb “to do”. We’ve actually heard this many times from the beginning of the book of Genesis. God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light. This continues throughout the creation narrative. When God says, “let there be…” it must happen. So, when Jesus says, “This is my body… This is my blood,” He means it in reality. In Aramaic, there is no such thing as a figure of speech. Oddly, we don’t get any indication of reaction here from His disciples, presumably because they knew exactly how their language worked and that Jesus spoke literally when he said, “This is my body… This is my blood.” We do, however, have a very clear idea of what people think when, in John’s Gospel, Jesus says: “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” Jesus does not mean “I am like living bread.” Clearly, Jesus’ entire audience knows what he is claiming – that he, personally, is living bread. Most cannot accept it; the Twelve, led by Peter, say, “Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter never makes a greater or truer statement. Back to the Last Supper and the Gospel text for today: Jesus, the living bread come down from heaven, is about to equate the surrendering of his own flesh and blood for the life of the world with the bread and wine which he now declares to be his body and blood. His gift is total. And Jesus even gives the bread and wine that is his body and blood to Judas Iscariot, and then, in John’s account of the Last Supper, tells Him to go and do what he has come to do. The Eucharist is the guarantee that God has never, does not and will never hold back God’s love from anyone.