Scripture Reflection – Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (17-18th of June)

Our lives are surrounded by food!  Our day is planned around at least nine eating sessions.  We are surrounded by food on Television – a 24-hour Fox food program – then there are My Kitchen Rules, Master Chef – senior and junior, Great British and Australian Bake Off.   Along with these, there are the cooking slots in various home improvement programs, let alone the advertisements for Woolworths and the inane and insane of Cole’s.  It is hard to get away from food!

To prepare for this Sunday I reread the story told by Cardinal basil Hume of Westminster visiting Ethiopia during it famine from 1984-86.  He arrived by helicopter into a settlement where people had been waiting for food to arrive – but it never did.  As soon as he arrived a small boy came up and took him by the hand and would not let go all day.  As they went around the settlement to by pointed to his mouth and rubbed the cardinal’s hand on his cheek.  He indicted his and ours two fundamental needs: food for sustenance and love for survival.

When we come to our Eucharistic celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ we are like the boy in the story: we come with our two fundamental needs – to recognize our need for the body and blood of Christ to sustain us in our physical and spiritual lives, and, to express our need of God’s love.  God’s love was shown when he gave his only son for the salvation of the world.

As we come so regularly to our Eucharistic celebrations, and at times casually to receive the Eucharist , let us realise our hungers both physical and spiritual in the context of God’s love made manifest to us in the Body and Blood of Christ which we rceive.