Are You Alive? This Corpus Christi Gospel Means Life and Death

Are you alive?  

I’ve been in a season where it’s been easy to see the dead places in my heart. Sadness, anxiety, loneliness, sin – these are all areas we can see in ourselves where we do not have the life we were made to have.  

In today’s Gospel for the feast of Corpus Christi (Latin for the Body of Christ), Jesus tells us exactly where we can find life. There are nine variations of the word “life” in the short passage, as given in the English translation used in the Roman Missal... 

Jesus said to the Jewish crowds: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” 
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." (Jn 6:51-58, emphasis added) 

 
Jesus says later in the same Gospel: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). Jesus is life itself! We will find life nowhere else except for in him. And if he is truth itself, we must believe what he says. Today’s Gospel from John chapter 6 offers us eternal life...but do we believe the words of Jesus? 

Today's first reading is from Deuteronomy. In a later part of that book, we are shown that we have a choice between following the Lord and his ways, and letting our hearts turn away from him (Dt 30:15-18), and this choice is in fact between life and death: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him...” (Dt 30:19-20).  

This is the choice that Jesus shows us in today’s Gospel. We have a choice between life and death. Jesus does not offer this choice vaguely, as if telling us that by some good will towards him or “choosing” him according to our own ideas gives us the life he offers. No, he gives us the choice between life and death in the specific context of teaching about the Eucharist: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” (Jn 6:53).  

This is THE pivotal question for all of us, even if we claim to believe what Jesus says about himself in the Eucharist. Do we just give lip service to the fact of the Real Presence? Can we recite our catechism that Jesus is truly present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Sacrament of the Altar...but our lives don’t follow? If our heart theology matched our head theology about the Eucharist, if we believed Jesus is who he says he is (and WHERE he says he is) - how could we not rearrange our lives around running to him with all our might? Not everyone who heard Jesus in this passage followed him: we see that they quarreled among themselves because they were shocked at his declaration (they knew he meant what he said literally, otherwise they wouldn’t have been shocked), and a few verses later we find out that “after this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (Jn 6:66). These people were given the same choice as in Deuteronomy between life and death, letting their hearts turn away or cleaving to Jesus, and they turned away. 

We make time for what matters. I’m convicted that I’ve let the overwhelm of new motherhood become an excuse for staying away from daily Mass. True, we are only obligated to go to Mass on Sundays, but I know that the Lord has been calling me to visit him there more often (probably because I need that grace so desperately in this season!). I know I have the time if I would just prioritize it, even just once a week. What would my daily life look like if I rearranged it around Jesus and truly acted like he is the source of my life? What choices would I make if I better lived out a deep hunger for Jesus, the bread of life?  

What would my life look like if I was truly alive?