June 21: Preparing to Celebrate Sunday’s Mass

Over the years, some scholars and preachers have attempted to explain what “really” happened in the account in St. Luke’s ninth chapter, the miraculous feeding of a vast number of people (vv. 11-17). They have asked, “Was food really multiplied? Or did people reach into their own provisions and share them with others? Was that the real miracle: Jesus encouraged them to be generous?”

Let’s be honest: that’s a bunch of nonsense! That is not what is going on in Luke 9. Such thinking tries to “explain away” the miracle and misses the point of the miraculous abundance which God provides through Jesus. If He can change bread and wine into His Body and Blood, He can take five loaves and two fish and feed a vast throng of people.

There is a miracle on display in Luke 9 (and around our altar Sunday after Sunday) and this weekend’s Feast of Corpus Christi is one of the ways we celebrate those miracles. 

Let’s not forget, however, that partaking of the miraculous, in eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, we have to see that a response on our part is crucially important. Communion is inseparable from sharing God’s abundant blessings with others, inseparable from serving them in His name.

Receiving Communion means we accept the challenge to extend the miracle to the world today, by loving and serving. If the Eucharist does not move us to service, it becomes an empty ritual detached from life ... and that, too, would be a bunch of nonsense.