Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
We continue a four-part homily series on the Eucharist and chapter 6 of John’s Gospel. This weekend we will explore the Eucharist as Communion.
St. Peter tells us that through Christ’s own glory and goodness we can “become participants of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). St. Thomas Aquinas said it another way, “The only begotten Son of God, wishing to enable us to share in his divinity, assumed our nature so that becoming man he might make men gods.” The first line of the Prologue to the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.”
The divinization of man and woman does not mean that man becomes God, but that man and woman might become transformed into the full image and likeness of God. Sin diminishes that image and likeness. Through the gift of sanctifying grace and supernatural love, that likeness begins to be restored.
When we receive Christ in the Eucharist, we call it “Holy Communion”. St. Augustine reasoned that the word communion came from the roots com, meaning “with, together” and unus, meaning “oneness, union.” So, communion means to come together as one.
Throughout our Catholic Tradition, this becoming one with Our Lord in the Eucharist has always had nuptial overtones. In one sense the Incarnation (God becoming man) was ordered to accomplishing a mystical marriage between the Bride, the Church (the Mystical Body of Christ), and Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God and Bridegroom (the head of that Mystical Body). Jesus Himself used wedding imagery in the parables to depict this nuptial union.
The Church remains in an “already, but not yet” reality. We are the Bride of Christ, but we are exiled in this world. How can this “marriage” be consummated with the Bride in exile? The Eucharist is the answer the Lord provides. In Heaven, there will be no need for the Sacrament, for the consummation will be fully realized.
Sincerely yours in Christ Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life,
