What
Makes Us Catholic?
Setting us apart from all other
religions, the Eucharist is what makes us Catholic. It’s no secret that
the major dispute during the Protestant Reformation in the 16thcentury revolved around the
Eucharist. Was it a sacrifice? Was it truly and substantially the Body and
Blood of Christ? The Catholic Church responded with a resounding
“Yes.” The Eucharist makes the Church (Lumen Gentium), informs the way Scripture is interpreted (Dei Verbum), and shapes the way Catholics live in the world (Gaudium et Spes). The Eucharist accounts for a fundamental difference that makes
us Catholic.
St. John’s Gospel offers an
example of this difference. Though John provides no institution narratives for
the Eucharist during the Last Supper, there is a regal, even magisterial
teaching on the Eucharist in the well-known “Bread of Life Discourse.” It opens
with an event familiar to the Synoptic Gospels, namely, the multiplication of
the loaves and fish. Jesus turned to Philip and asked: “Where can we buy enough
food for them to eat?” (Jn. 6:5) He asked this question to test Philip, as he
does each one of us when faced with today’s overwhelming challenges. All four
Gospels describe the inability of the disciples to meet so great a need and how
Jesus miraculously multiplied a meager number of barley loaves and fish to feed
5,000 men (Jn. 6:10) – more when women and children are factored in.
All of those present that day
were sated and filled from eating the loaves and fish. Jesus, therefore, said
to his disciples, “Gather the fragments left over.” (Jn. 6:12) So, “they
collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five
barley loaves that had been more than they could eat.” (Jn. 6:13)
It’s worth pausing here and
reflecting on what exactly was gathered up into the baskets. These were
leftovers of bread and fish, pieces of food with bites taken out of them and
then strewn about upon the ground. The food was bitten by people knowing little
hygiene; handled by people, young and old, who did not wash their hands before
dinner; food peppered with grass and dirt after laying on the ground for some
time. Why would Jesus instruct his disciples to gather up such food? Wouldn’t
it have been better to just leave it for animals and beasts to consume at
night?
There is a clue to answering
these questions in the reasons Jesus gives for the gathering, “Gather the fragments
left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” (Jn. 6:12) Jesus did not wish to
waste food, to be sure, but there is yet another reason for the gathering. In
his polemic with the Jewish leaders, Jesus declared himself to be “the bread of
life.” (Jn. 6:35)
The Father has given us “true
bread” (Jn. 6:32), Jesus Christ, come down from heaven to give life to the
world: “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not
reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own
will but the will of the one who sent me.” (Jn. 6:37-38)
What is the will of the one who
sent Jesus? “And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not
lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day.”
(Jn. 6:39) Here a parallel is drawn between the fragments of bread and fish
left over from the meal and we ourselves who are leftovers from the original
dispensation of creation “in the beginning” before the Fall. We are not the
first serving of creation. We are all leftovers.
So, what is our attitude toward
leftovers? A common practice is to throw them away. In some ways, it is easier
to make a meal from fresh ingredients than from a variety of leftovers in the
refrigerator. How does Jesus view leftovers? He wants none of them to be lost.
In the economy of food stuffs
the Father gave Jesus abundant bread and fish in the miracle of the loaves and
in the economy of salvation the Father has given him: Us! Jesus instructs his
disciples, therefore, to gather up the left over fragments so that nothing of
what the Father has given him will be wasted.
For similar reasons, Jesus
entrusted us to Peter, saying three times: “Feed my lambs” (Jn. 21:15-17),
i.e., tend to the left-overs for whom I gave up my life! Jesus invites Peter,
the other apostles, and all other members of the Church according to the grace
and Sacraments received to do likewise.
This entire truth regarding the
mission of Christ is played out again and again in the Eucharist. During Mass,
the Gathering-Father sends his Son, Jesus Christ the “true bread” come down
from heaven, to accomplish his will. Jesus, who was obedient to the Father even
unto death on the cross (Phil. 2:8), comes to gather up the fragments of our
lives back to the Father.
What makes us Catholic? The
Catholic Church, like the whole human community of men and women conceived into
this world, is composed of leftovers from the Fall. Yet members of the Church
differ from the broader human community in that they are a communion in the
Holy Spirit of men and women striving to love leftovers instead of succumbing
to the temptation of throwing them away.
Human life has become an
expendable commodity today, whether in the womb through abortion or among the
weak and “deplorable ones” who fall victim to the cultural pressures of eugenic
logic in euthanasia. Our Founder in the way of salvation, Jesus Christ, did
not, nor does he now in the Eucharist, throw us away but rather bids us: “As I
have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn. 13:34)
And that is what makes us
Catholic: heeding the Word given for many in the Eucharist.
© 2017
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