Transcription
Peace be with you. Friends,
become this great Feast Day of Corpus Christi, and I want to tell you a quick story before I get started.
Just the other day, Father Andrew Marshall, who's a priest from Scotland, was visiting me about a particular project, and in the course of our conversation, he said I did my studies over in Rome and we had some mutual friends there. And I said, "Well, what'd you write on?" And he said, "I wrote on this whole idea of the Eucharist and manna in the church fathers." And I said, "That is the strangest thing." I said, "Because this very morning I was preparing for this homily." Because the readings for Corpus Christi, reading one is about the manna in the desert and then it's correlated to the Eucharist in the New Testament." So I said, "Could you send me that dissertation?" So he did. He sent it electronically, didn't read every word of it, but I read the section precisely on this, so I want to give Father Andrew some credit for some of the things I'm going to share with you today about manna and the Eucharist.
That's typical, by the way, of the church fathers. They'll look at something in the Old Testament and they'll see it as a type, which means a kind of anticipation, symbolic anticipation, of something in the New Testament, or they'll see the New Testament as a distant echo of something that was sounded in the Old Testament. So a prime example of that is the manna in the desert described in the book of Exodus and the Eucharist, the bread from heaven that Jesus gives us. So I want to explore really briefly just four dimensions of this relationship, I think they're all interesting.
Here's the first connection between Manna and the Eucharist. They are both meant to be sustenance for a long journey. So why was the manna given? Well, the Israelites escaped from Egypt, and now they're making their way in that circuitous manner from Egypt to the promised land. It takes 40 years, they're wandering in the desert, and they're far away from what they knew in Egypt. In fact, they're longing, as they say, for the flesh pots of Egypt. At least there we had enough to eat, here we are in the desert. And so Lord sends them bread from heaven, this mysterious substance appears, this manna so called by the way, because manhoo in Hebrew has a sense of, what's that? What is that? So they call it manna, and it sustains them on their long perilous journey through the desert. Okay. What's the Eucharist? Same thing. It's food for a long journey, our journey now out of sin, but then through the difficulties and obstacles and dangers of this life on our way to fulfillment in heaven. What do we need? Sustenance. Spiritual food. See, in an unhealthy way, we're fed by our sin. We hope to find some kind of sustenance there, but we've turned from that. So we're not going to go back to the flesh pots of Egypt. We're journeying toward heaven, but on the way, what sustains us? The manna, the bread from heaven, the Eucharist. And I want to take this in almost like a literal way, and I don't mean it physicalistically, but we need it. It's not as though the Eucharist is a nice decorative dimension of the spiritual life. No, no, no. It is essential to making our way to heaven. Think of eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ issustaining the Christ life in us. If you say, "Okay, I've come to the Lord and I've received his life through the sacrament of baptism, but now I never feed that life. I don't go to the Eucharist. I don't feed. I stay away from the source and summit of the Christian life." Am I surprised that the Christ life withers up in me? So sustenance.
Second thing, both manna and the Eucharist are understood as bread from heaven. So think of the manna first. manna was not growing naturally in the Sinai desert. It's not something that just they came upon in the ordinary course of things. No, no. They begged for sustenance, and as a miracle, as a grace, this mysterious food was given to them. It was from heaven, not from earth. Okay. The Eucharist now, par excellence, in an even more radical way is bread from heaven. I think I told you before, in the Our Father, it's translated as daily bread, but the phrase that's used is in the Greek is ton arton ton epiousion. Usia means substance, Epiousios means super substantial. Strange, strange expression, unique to the New Testament. What is this super substantial bread? Well, not ordinary bread, obviously, and mind you, not just ordinary bread with a symbolic charge or resonance. I mean, we're aware of that, this bread is symbolic of something, okay. No, no. Nothing as banal as that. This is super substantial bread. Bread, everybody, that has come from heaven. It is not merely of the earth. And the gospel for today now, taken from that magnificent sixth chapter of John, which is the best New Testament reflection on the Eucharist. And when Jesus speaks indeed of this bread from heaven, which is my flesh for the life of the world, and the people object, how could this man give us his flesh to eat? And he's given every opportunity to explain this language symbolically and he doesn't. Instead, he says, "Unless you gnaw on the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, there's no life in you." Purposely using the word to describe the animals eat. "Unless you gnaw on the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." What's he emphasizing? The reality of his presence. Yes, under sacramental signs indeed, but the real, true and substantial presence of Jesus in this bread that has indeed come from heaven. Now, link it to the first theme. This is why it sustains us. If it's just ordinary bread, of course, it won't sustain you spiritually. It's just bread with a symbolic charge. Okay, it'll give you a certain illumination maybe. But you want to be strengthened for heaven, you want to be supernaturalized, you need super substantial bread. Manna came from heaven in an even more radical way. The Eucharist comes from heaven.
Here's a third connection that I find really intriguing, and I'm speaking now very much as a Catholic. So remember in the Book of Exodus, the Israelites are given instructions to build the Ark of the Covenant. And read it. It's wonderful, these detailed instructions of what the ark should look like and how it's made and how big it is and so on and so forth. What was placed inside the ark, this most sacred vessel? Well, the remnants of the 10 commandments, so Moses breaks them against the Mount Sinai, and so the pieces of the 10 commandments go in there. Also, it said the staff of Aaron, the first great priestly figure. What's the third thing though in the Ark of the Covenant? Manna. They took some of the manna and they put it in the ark to remind them of this bread from heaven that sustained them on their journey and they kept it. And the Ark of the Covenant, before it was lost around the time of Jeremiah, that's the center of Israelite life. That was at the heart of the temple. Their worship was focused upon it. Is there something like the Ark of the Covenant in the Catholic setting? You bet. You go into a Catholic Church, it's a place where we gather to pray, yes, a place where we sing hymns and yes, all of that, but why is a Catholic Church a sacred place? Not because of any of that. It's a sacred place because it's the Domus Dei, we say, it's the house of the Lord. Because in the Catholic Church there resides the Eucharist, the real presence of Jesus, and where do we keep it? We keep it in a version of the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle in a Catholic Church, which becomes the focal point of our prayer and adoration is hearkening back to the arc of the covenant. I remember when I was in LA as an auxiliary bishop, we had a retreat every year in the, we call it the House of Prayer for Priests, a lovely place in LA. And it was a smaller chapel. I used to love to pray there because the tabernacle was built just like the Ark of the Covenant and it was just a favorite place of mine to go and pray and it's exactly this connection. So yes, indeed, we consume the Eucharist at the mass. That's the point of it. But we also, as the Israelites kept a bit of the manna, so we keep the Eucharist in the tabernacle. Can I tell you how many times in parishes and dioceses the spiritual life is renewed when the people adore the Blessed Sacrament? When first a few, then more and then many, and then an army begins to adore the Blessed Sacrament? Parishes and dioceses come back to life. The Arc of the Covenant, it held the manna and now it holds the Eucharist.
Okay, here's a final connection symbolically between manna and the Eucharist. See, manna was appreciated by ancient Israel as bread for the journey, not food for the destination. Now what do I mean? Well, as they were journeying through the desert and they were hungry, they were given manna to eat, but it was always understood and indeed it was confirmed that when they got to the promised land flowing with milk and honey, this rich promised land, well, they wouldn't need the manna anymore. And so as Israel passes, remember across the Jordan, they go around Jericho, they enter into the promised land, we are told the manna ceased. Now here's the connection, everybody. The Eucharist, Jesus really truly and substantially present, but under sacramental signs. Do we see him, I'll use Thomas Aquinas' language here, do we see him in his proper species, his proper appearance in the Eucharist? No, no. We see him according to a sacramental species. Therefore, we see him veiled. Real, true, and substantial, yes indeed, but sacramentally veiled. That's the food that we eat, everybody, as we're on the way. Will the Eucharist give way? Yeah. Will there be the Eucharist in heaven? No. Now, why? Because it's no good? No, no. It's that we now are ushered into the promised land of heaven where we commune with the Lord face to face, where we see him in his proper species, where we've left the desert and that long journey through the desert and we've come to the promised land. We come to the place flowing with milk and honey, we come to heaven. And in heaven the sacramental signs give way because the reality appears. It's a bit like, I can't look at the sun directly, but I can see it reflected in the light of the moon. I can spend all night contemplating the moon, but once I'm in the presence of the sun and I'm able with elevated eyes to see it, I don't need to look at the moon. And so the Eucharist gives way in heaven just as the manna gave way once they reached the promised land. Let these sink in, everybody. That's the beauty of these typological images. They allow us to meditate upon different dimensions of this great mystery. Maybe revisit the text about manna in the book of Exodus and then read John Chapter Six and see these beautiful connections and resonances. And God bless you.