So, we have just heard the final instalment of the long chapter 6 of St. John’s Gospel on the Bread of Life. The Church has spread the chapter over five Sundays to help us “chew” on it and to savour its deep, rich and often complex tastes. As we have heard, though, there were different reactions to it among the hearers. That was true then, and it is equally true today. For example, in 2023 a survey of US Catholics revealed that one third don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, while two thirds do. Surveys deal in opinions, but the doctrine of Christ is not a matter of opinion. This means that one third of Catholics mentioned don’t believe Christ’s own words. Nor, therefore, do they believe in the two-thousand-year-old teaching and tradition of the Church, rooted in the words of Jesus, and confirmed and reconfirmed by the Spirit of Truth, whereby the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Risen Christ.

St. John records the original motivation of many followers of Jesus as being a search for bread to fill their bellies. They did not see the multiplication of the loaves as a sign of His divine identity, as the I AM of God. And dotted throughout the beautiful words of Jesus about Himself as the Bread of Life, St. John quotes people as saying: “How can He say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’” and “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” But the more people doubt Him, the more Jesus insists. The climax comes when they say, “This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?” They then reject Him, choose to reject Him.

There has always been, and probably always will be, controversy in the Church – and, from the Reformation onwards, among different Christian denominations – on the meaning and nature of the Eucharist. But however sophisticated the arguments and analysis involved, Jesus Himself identifies the root problem as one of faith. With deep and palpable disappointment, He simply says, “But there are some of you who do not believe.” He had already experienced rejection from the leaders of the Jewish community in reaction to His Word and actions; here, the rejection is from his own disciples and is in reaction to His doctrine on the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Sacraments. What is particularly sobering, if not disturbing, is when Jesus says: “This is why I told you that no one could come to me unless the Father allows him.” This sounds as if He is saying that His Father is stopping his disciples from believing, but its meaning is rather that the Father has rejected those who are radically closed in mind and heart to believe in His Son. The Father rejects those who want to stop going with Jesus and so reject Him. It’s as if even before ever hearing of Him or seeing Him, they were opposed in principle to belief in Him.

But there are those who do believe in Him, who do not want to go away. Jesus poignantly asks the Twelve whether they want to leave Him as well. Peter’s response must have been music to Jesus’ ears and given Jesus much needed comfort and encouragement. It is a magnificent response for at least two reasons. First, Peter hits the nail on the head: where else and to whom or what else can anyone really go for life beyond death, for truth to escape the lies and illusions of the world, for a love and happiness which don’t end in bitter disillusionment and the grave? It’s as if Peter is saying to those who have left Jesus, “are you people mad? Do you really think your own ideas and cult of self-will can offer you anything of lasting value?” But the second reason is better. We should not choose Jesus because there is no greater option, as if we might not choose Him were we to think there was one. Rather, we choose Him for His own sake, because of who He is: “we believe, we know that you are the Holy One of God.” Our faith in Him is not by default or on the rebound, but by design. We accept His message as the expression and bearer of eternal life; we accept His discourse on the Bread of Life as the plain and simple Truth. We say Amen to Him as the Bread of Life, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Son of the living God.

For if He is not that, then the entire edifice of the Church and of the Cosmos itself collapses. If the Eucharist is not truly Christ, then it is not the source and summit of the Church’s life, as taught by Vatican II. If the Eucharist is not truly Christ, then it does not contain the entire spiritual wealth of the Church, as also taught by Vatican II. If it is not Christ, then it is not the Heart of the World, as taught by Pope St. John Paul II. If it is not Christ, then it is not the driving force of the final stages of evolution and the transformation of the universe into a share of the life of the Trinity, as many Church fathers tell us. If it is not Christ, then Holy Communion is merely a symbolic, spiritual and disincarnate exercise of piety, however sincere. If it is not Christ, then we are left in confusion and disarray as to why He Himself said, “this is my body; this is my blood” and “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you will not have life within you.” If the Eucharist does not contain the Real Presence of the Risen Christ, the Mass is not a sacrifice, there is no need for the ordained ministerial priesthood or the apostolic succession. As Pope Benedict XVI once put it very bluntly, without the Eucharist, “the Church simply does not exist.”

In the fourth century, 49 Abitinian martyrs, in modern day Tunisia, chose to die rather than to be deprived of Sunday Mass in the face of Roman persecution. They proclaimed: “Without the Sunday Eucharist, we cannot live.” They preferred death rather than to forfeit the Sunday Eucharist. The Eucharist is, therefore, a matter of life and death. It is the Sacrament of Christ’s death and resurrection, first. It is the Sacrament by which the Church lives or dies. As such, it must logically engage each of us at the deepest core of our Christian lives and deaths so that we work to ensure that nothing, especially nothing in our moral or spiritual lives, can come between us and the loving, worthy and faith-filled reception of Sunday Communion. Christ died with unparalleled love to give us this lifeline to the great mystery of His Risen, Mystical and Cosmic Body. Nothing can compare with this. Nothing. Everything is worth sacrificing for this. Everything. And so we pray: Lord, open our hearts to believe more deeply. Open our minds to understand more fully. Open our lives out to radiate more effectively to others the grace, the truth, the love of the Holy Eucharist. Make of us living martyrs of your Eucharistic love.