The Eucharist: Nourishment for the Soul

Homily for Eighteenth Sunday - Year B

There are three golden threads running through the lives of the great saints

- Love for Jesus in the Eucharist; Love for Mary; and Love for the Poor. We

see it again today in the life of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. His very

wealthy parents were not religious. His father was agnostic and his mother

was nominally Catholic. They misunderstood and disapproved of his piety

and intense interest in Catholicism. They were worried that he would go

overboard and become a priest. His regular mingling with the poor troubled

them and they verbally abused him.

On the surface, he seems like any other young person. He was a young

mechanical engineering student, juggling the spiritual life with intense study.

He was an outdoorsman and loved hiking, riding horses, skiing, and

mountain climbing. There are photos of him on the mountain, rosary in

hand and pipe in his mouth. He advocated for political causes. Photos show

him laughing and drinking and joking with friends.

He had a special love for the poor. Frequently he arrived home late for

supper because he would spend the afternoons serving the hungry and

usually ran home after giving away his bus money. Once he arrived home

without his coat because he had given it to someone who needed it.

The two pillars of his spiritual programme were the Eucharist and Mary. He

spent regular times in adoration of Jesus in the Eucharist and received

Communion daily (in those one had to get special permission for this); and

he prayed the rosary. His vocation was to serve the poor and although he

considered priesthood, he chose a lay vocation which he felt would bring

the most contact with the poor. At the time of his death at age 24, he was

personally supporting around 120 families with food, medicine and clothes.

And all this was hidden from his parents.

When Pier Giorgio contracted polio which resulted in his swift death, even

from his sick bed his last concern was for the poor. On the eve of his death,

with a paralyzed hand, he scribbled a message to a friend, reminding the

friend not to forget the medicine for a poor man who he had been assisting.

When news of Pier Giorgio's death reached the neighbourhood and city of

Turin on 4th July 1925, his parents, who had no idea that their young son

had been serving the poor, were astonished by the sight of thousands of

people crowded outside their mansion on the day of their son’s funeral Mass

and burial. The poor, the lonely, and those who had been touched by Pier

Giorgio's love and faithful example had come to pay homage.

Pier Giorgio’s motto was that living without faith, without battling

constantly for truth, is not to live, but to ‘get along’; but we must never

just ‘get along’. When he was beatified by Pope St John Paul in 1990, he

was referred to as a man of the Beatitudes. His friends described him as an

explosion of joy. Apart from Pier Giorgio’s love of the Eucharist, I think his

life answers profoundly the question the crowd asked in the Gospel for this

Sunday: ‘What must we do to be doing the works of God?’

Many people would say that they have experienced hunger to some extent,

but most of us have the luxury of thinking of hunger in very domesticated

terms, like, “I’m so hungry, I didn’t have any lunch today”. On the other

hand, isn’t it true that the reality of our polarised South African society is

that while most of us can say we have never known real hunger, there

people not far from us, people who come to our doors, who are often really

hungry. Perhaps the image that really epitomises real hunger is the one in

which people are seen going through dustbins to find discarded food.

Whatever our sense of hunger and however serious it is, this need for food,

can help us identify with the people of Israel in the wilderness or the crowd

that followed Jesus because he gave them bread.

The readings for today speak of a bread that really satisfies, a bread to our

heart's content, a bread that gives life, a bread that speaks to our hunger.

This is something deeply relevant to each one of us. We have a

responsibility to ourselves to understand and seek what will really nourish

us, at the heart of our being.

And in the readings, both the first reading and the Gospel, we see human

nature. We see ourselves as in a mirror. In the book of Exodus, we have a

frightened, angry, grumbling, disheartened people who are hungry in the

wilderness. In the Gospel we find a people longing for more to life, looking

for meaning; a people attracted to Jesus, even if only because they see in

him someone who can satisfy their physical hunger.

The questions we find in Scripture are often helpful in terms of knowing

ourselves and knowing God, and reflecting on what it is that God wants us

to say to us. Today’s question in the reading from the Book of Exodus is

one of those questions: The Israelites ask, “What is it?”, referring to the

manna. From the Gospel, we understand this manna in the wilderness as a

promise and a symbol of the Eucharist, which is Jesus, the Bread of Life.

What is it for us? What does the Eucharist mean to us personally? How does

the Eucharist nourish us? How do we connect with Jesus in the Eucharist?

In what sense can it be said that we hunger for the Eucharist? Over the

next few weeks, we will meditate on Jesus, the Bread of Life.

The question that the crowd put to Jesus in the Gospel is also relevant to

our lives. What must we do to be doing the works of God? What are our

lives about? What is it that we hope and dream for? What do we long for?

We have a responsibility to ourselves to seek the answers to these

fundamental questions. The philosophers of Ancient Greece spoke of the

human search for beatitude, which is contentedness, inner peace, or

happiness. Behind all our immediate wants and desires is a deep longing

for happiness. Once we are able to acknowledge this, then the most obvious

question becomes how we attain this happiness. It would be the greatest

tragedy for this longing which is fundamental to our being, to be frustrated.

The old Penny Catechism with its question-and-answer format, sums this

up. The first question is: Who made me? The answer is, “God made me.”

Then, the second, “Why did God make me?” The answer is a simple

statement of the reason for our existence. It goes: “God made me to know

him, to love him and serve him in this life, and be happy with him forever

in the next.” It stands to reason that by fulfilling our purpose we can attain

the happiness for which our heart longs. God would not allow this longing

in us to be frustrated. God would obviously have made it possible for us to

come to the meaning that we long for.

St Augustine’s beautiful prayer in his autobiography is one we constantly

return to before God: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our

hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” Augustine taught that

we human beings have an essential and necessary capacity for God. There

is a God-shaped emptiness in each one of us, that only God can fill. Only

when our hearts are filled with God, do we find the satisfaction of our

deepest longings. God is the purpose of our existence and the key to our

longing and hopes and dreams.

The people who went after Jesus in boats, finding him at Capernaum, were

in search for more than just food. Something about Jesus spoke to their

hearts, even though they seemed to have been confused about what it was

they really wanted. We see this in that when Jesus started to teach them,

they asked for a sign. It was as if they hadn’t already been given a

significant sign in the multiplication of the loaves and the fish. These people

are an image of us. We share the same human condition. As they were

looking for more to life, even if they expressed it poorly, we also long for

meaning and purpose. The answer to our deepest human longings is Jesus

himself, of whom the Eucharist is the most perfect sacrament. Our hunger

and thirst at the deepest levels are satisfied by the presence of Jesus, given

to us in the sacrament.

We were created to love and be loved. Love is our destiny and our highest

good. In Jesus and the Eucharist, we fulfil our calling and our destiny. So,

let’s be who we were created to be. Let’s fill the God-shaped vacuum in our

lives with God alone. Blessed Pier Giorgio, the happy man, the man of the

Beatitudes, the explosion of joy, shows us the way. Let’s live out the

purpose for which we were made. Let’s allow the Eucharist, well-received,

intentionally received, gratefully received, to be the nourishment you long

for. Let’s be in communion with Jesus, that we may not hunger or thirst

again.