Friday April 23

Third Week OF Easter

 

CHRIST LIVES IN ME

                        

Introduction 

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” This is the question of Jesus the Lord when he lets Saul, the persecutor, encounter him on the way to Damascus. Jesus identifies himself with his persecuted disciples. From that moment on, Saul will serve the Lord, whose life he will live. It is an encounter that radically changed Saul into Paul.

The Lord speaks to us today: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood live in me and I live in them.” This will be our encounter with Christ. May this encounter be so deep that it changes us.

 

Opening Prayer

Our living and loving God,
how could we know the depth of your love,
if your Son had not become flesh of our flesh
and blood of our blood?
How could we ever have the courage
to live for one another and if necessary to die,
if he had not given up his body
and shed his blood for us?
Thank you for letting him stay in the Eucharist with us
and making himself our daily bread.
Let this bread be the food that empowers us,
to live and die as he did,
for one another and for you,
our living God, forever and ever.

 

Reading 1:  ACTS 9:1-20

Saul, still breathing murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord,
went to the high priest and asked him
for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, that,
if he should find any men or women who belonged to the Way,
he might bring them back to Jerusalem in chains.
On his journey, as he was nearing Damascus,
a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him.
He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him,
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
He said, “Who are you, sir?”
The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.”
The men who were traveling with him stood speechless,
for they heard the voice but could see no one.
Saul got up from the ground,
but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing;
so they led him by the hand and brought him to Damascus.
For three days he was unable to see, and he neither ate nor drank.

There was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias,
and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.”
He answered, “Here I am, Lord.”
The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight
and ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul.
He is there praying,
and in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias
come in and lay his hands on him,
that he may regain his sight.”
But Ananias replied,
“Lord, I have heard from many sources about this man,
what evil things he has done to your holy ones in Jerusalem.
And here he has authority from the chief priests
to imprison all who call upon your name.”
But the Lord said to him,
“Go, for this man is a chosen instrument of mine
to carry my name before Gentiles, kings, and children of Israel,
and I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.”
So Ananias went and entered the house;
laying his hands on him, he said,
“Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me,
Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came,
that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
Immediately things like scales fell from his eyes
and he regained his sight.
He got up and was baptized,
and when he had eaten, he recovered his strength.

He stayed some days with the disciples in Damascus,
and he began at once to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues,
that he is the Son of God.

 

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 117:1BC, 2

(Mark 16:15) Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Praise the LORD, all you nations;
glorify him, all you peoples!
R. Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
or:
R. Alleluia.
For steadfast is his kindness toward us,
and the fidelity of the LORD endures forever.
R. Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
or:
R. Alleluia.

 

Alleluia   JN 6:56

Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood,
remains in me and I in him, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

 

Gospel: JN 6:52-59

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my Flesh is true food,
and my Blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

 

Intercessions

–   For the Church, that the Eucharist may remain the source of its vitality and of its ability to witness to the presence of the Lord in his community, we pray:

–   For Christians everywhere, that they may hunger and thirst for justice in the world, we pray:

–   For us here and for all Christians who come together around the Lord’s table, that Christ may unite us heart and soul and make us open tables to one another, we pray:

 

Prayer over the Gifts

Our loving God,
as a Father who deeply cares,
you invite us to the table of your Son.
He will change our bread into his flesh,
our wine into the drink of life.
Make us one with him,
appease our hunger with his bread
and refresh us with his drink,
that we may live his life
of courage and commitment
and that we may live with him in your love,
now and forever.

 

Prayer after Communion

Thank you, God our Father,
for nourishing us on the way to you
with the true bread and drink of life,
your Son, Jesus Christ.
In this and in every Eucharist
let him take on flesh and blood in us
and make us encounter him so deeply,
that we may do for one another
what he has done for us.
Let Christ live in us, now and for ever.

 

Blessing

Paul encountered the Lord and he became a totally new person, completely changed. Our encounter with the Lord in the Eucharist should bring about such a change in us. For Jesus told us today: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood live in me and I in them.” Let him fully live in you, and may Almighty God bless you for this task, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

Commentary

The discussion of Jesus as the Bread of Life continues.
Understandably the Jews are deeply shocked at Jesus’ invitation to eat his flesh and drink his blood. It sounds like a primitive recipe for cannibalism. For the Jews, it was an abomination to drink blood because it was the source of life.
To come in contact with blood would mean, that person immediately becomes ritually unclean. In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37), one of the reasons why the priest and the Levite did not come to the help of the injured man lying on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem was almost certainly because he was bleeding and they were on their way to the Temple to pray or offer sacrifice. The woman with the chronic bleeding problem (Mark 5:25-34) did not dare to reveal herself to the crowd or even to Jesus because she should not have been in such close proximity with people.
To this day Jews only eat meat from which the blood has been previously drained (kosher). And here is Jesus inviting, even telling, people to drink his own blood! We have heard these words so often that we fail to feel anything special about it!
Yet Jesus makes no apologies for what he has said. On the contrary, he tells his hearers that if they do not eat his flesh and drink his blood, they will not have life. “Whoever eats me will draw life from me.”
From our reflections on Chapter 6 of John during this week, we have tried to understand the meaning of Jesus’ invitation to eat his flesh and drink his blood. It is to assimilate totally into our very being the whole way of thinking and acting of Jesus, the very Person of Jesus. To be able to say with Paul, “I live, but not I, it is Christ who lives in me.” “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.”
Nor are the Body and Blood of Christ only to be understood in the context of ‘receiving communion’ in the Eucharist. Certainly, there are Eucharistic references in what Jesus is saying but we need to understand the Eucharist as a sacrament or sign of a much wider relationship with Jesus. The Eucharist is primarily a community celebration of what we are – brothers and sisters who are the Body of Christ for each other and for the whole world. Jesus’ flesh and blood come to us not only through the Word of God that we listen to during the Liturgy and the sharing of the Bread and the Cup, but he comes to us also through every loving experience that we have in a community. Which means, Eucharist is incomplete without the Body of Christ – the community!