The lyric of a piece of music that I recently composed reads: The broken Bread of Life is the Holy Bread of Friendship! "This is my Body given for you; this is the Cup of your salvation!" Come, come and eat and drink!
This piece is all about what we are doing here tonight: remembering and being present at the Institution of the Broken Bread of Life as the Holy Bread of Friendship: The Most Blessed Eucharist, as our spiritual food and drink for then, for now, and for all ages.
The supreme act of reconciliation that Jesus came to this earth to accomplish was the reestablishment of the Divine Friendship between God and his people! God created Adam and Eve – he created the human family to be first of all friends of his, and then, friends of one another! When Adam and Eve freely chose to disobey God, they tragically and seriously wounded that Friendship – and they introduced sin and death into the world. Only one person could qualify to rejuvenate that Friendship – and that was a man who was also at the same time God: this, of course, is Jesus.
The only way that Jesus could accomplish the reconciliation – the forgiveness of sins and the destruction of death – was to take sin upon himself, and to die so that we might be freed from sin and death forever! And so the broken bread of his life on Calvary became the Holy Bread of Friendship, broken and given bread at the Last Supper.
This is my Body given for you; this is the Cup of your salvation! Come, come and eat and drink! When we eat and drink what was given to us, we eat and drink to the death and resurrection of the Lord, and our own!
What an amazing thing the Eucharist is – and it is there for us every time we come to Mass. It is real spiritual food, real spiritual nourishment for all our spiritual needs.
Now what guarantees that we, here, today have the exact same Presence of Christ in the Eucharist that has been there since the Last Supper is the Apostolic line of succession that transmits, from age to age, the spiritual power needed to really and truly change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ – the line of succession of the priesthood – which began at this Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. He told them "Do this in memory of me!" He wanted to be with us in this sacramental way until the end of time – and so he provided the sacramental means of the New Testament priesthood to make himself really present. Because the "ordination line" has been carefully preserved – you can trust that you really have Jesus here present today – I know, to the best of my knowledge, that I have been validly and licitly ordained.
But none of this spiritual food would really even be necessary unless we took Jesus at his word in St. John's accounting of the Last Supper: he leaves the narration of the "consecration" of the bread and wine to other writers, and focuses on spiritual action: having been spiritually nourished, it must lead to loving service or else the nourishment is simply selfish and ineffective.
Our reception of Communion must lead us to be a better neighbor, a better husband, a better wife, a better son, a better daughter, a better worker; a better student – a better FRIEND to all people – or else we ought not even receive it. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples; we must wash each other with loving acts of kindness, forgiveness, healing and help! After this homily we will have our customary "hand-washing" ceremony – which will be our way of doing the "foot-washing rite of the gospel"; may this external act move us interiorly to BE A GOOD AND FAITHUL CATHOLIC FRIEND to any who need us!
The broken Bread of Life is the Holy Bread of Friendship! "This is my Body given for you; this is the Cup of your salvation!" Come, come and eat and drink!
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