Year A, Lectionary 167
For the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, we are called to focus on what it means that God gave God self to humanity. It calls back to God providing manna on the Exodus journey to the promised land, it calls to the incarnation of God in Jesus, to the Last Supper and to the Eucharist celebration since then. God's infinite sacrificing love for us is always available to us on our life journey back to God.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Appreciate • Body • Communion • Community • Eucharist • Exodus • Family • Food • Holy Trinity • Journey • Justice • Love • Manna • Mass • Mystery • Participate • Presence • Remember • Sign • Unity •
“So what he's doing here is he's drawing an analogy between the body of Christ that's represented by the one bread and the body of Christ that's constituted by the Church itself. So he's not just talking about the mystery of the Eucharist here, he's also talking about the mystery of the Church.”
“the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist is not just an instrument, but in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist we have the Giver of the grace, the Giver of the gift himself: Jesus Christ”
“Nourishment, forgiveness and empowerment. That is what Jesus is about. That is what Jesus is giving away to us.”
“He gives them a kind of a window or an insight into how to understand the mystery that he's just revealed to them and that clue is the manna”
“the Eucharist is not something, the Eucharist is someone, namely Christ himself”
“What is it that Jesus has said that is hard to accept? Certainly the idea of eating his flesh and drinking his blood but also his claim to be the Bread of Life come down from heaven, which means of course his incarnation.”
“God didn't send us a tweet, God didn't livestream, God sent us Jesus Christ the Savior of the world. We thank God for our social media, it got us through a tough time but it's nothing like coming together as God's family, there's nothing like being Church, there's nothing like being together.”
“spiritual food feeds us to do the work of Jesus Christ, to know him scripturally, theologically, prayerfully but also to live him as his disciples”
“We live in a world that is hungry and thirsting but what we're really hungry and thirsty for is the Lord”
“At church it's always a good exercise to ask 'how would this reading or homily affect people who aren't in the room?'...Digging through tradition should be part of our faith and practice, it's part of building a better church.”
“Memory is a special gift from God to us. Memory helps to bring something from the past to the present and to prepare us for the future. When we remember something from the past in the present, it empowers us for the future, it makes us also responsible for the future.”
“Carrying the burden of the presence of God is no easy quest for no one”
“we got to isolate ourselves from anything that divides us. It's not us and them, it's we together.”
“Jesus was making a bold proclamation, a statement saying 'this is it, I've done it all and I have done it all for you.'”
“at the end of the day the Eucharist begins and ends in relationship, that that's where it all comes from and where it all returns to”
“I know it's in my unworthiness that God indeed calls us even more to this close relationship with him”