Homilies for August 2024

For August 4, August 11, August 18, and August 25, as well as the Feast of the Transfiguration (August 6; homily by Rev. John Cush) and the Solemnity of the Assumption (August 15)

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 4, 2024

Readings: Ex 16:2–4, 12–15 • Ps 78:3–4, 23–24, 25, 54 • Eph 4:17, 20–24 • Jn 6:24–35
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080424.cfm

When hunger overtakes you, the importance of what you were doing fades until you find the satisfaction of a filled stomach. Whatever you were doing, that day’s pursuit, succumbs to the simple need for sustenance. A life spent primarily on the pleasures of food and drink is meanly lived, yet no one can go without eating. Wisely, we often combine caloric intake with the good of eating together, changing the meal into a communal repast of joyful conversation. We do well when the replenishing of the body is joined with true communion with others, the one thing really worth living for.

In the first reading the Israelites, wandering in the desert, are hungry and grumbling to Moses about it. Forgetting that the Lord is with them, they fear they will starve to death in the desert, and begin to long for the lush and fertile land along the Nile River in Egypt. In the moment, they would accept a return to slavery if it meant a filled stomach each and every day. Their predicament symbolizes the spiritual choice we ourselves must make in choosing to live either for our bodies or for the Lord. We could prefer life in Egypt — that is, a life enslaved to the pursuit of being comfortably satisfied. Or we could risk embarking on a desert journey lived in obedience to God who will lead us to a life that already tastes of heaven. For in his mercy the Lord feeds his hungry people with a food unknown to them, described in the psalm as the bread of angels. He rains down from heaven manna, a word in Hebrew that perfectly captures the wonder and surprise they felt when they first discovered it: what is it?

As we heard in last week’s Gospel, Jesus had just fed the multitude in a deserted place by multiplying a few loaves and fishes. When the crowd finally finds Jesus again the next day, Jesus discerns that they were looking for him because they had the satisfaction of filled bellies. Instead, they should desire the “food that endures for eternal life.” As with the Israelites in the desert before God, the crowd faces the same spiritual choice before Jesus: self-satisfaction or the life that only God can give. This life, described here as eternal, and later in the chapter as life in the Son, is the gift of God and sustained by the true bread from heaven. God has authorized — set his seal upon — the Son to give this life. Jesus can give this life because God has sent him from heaven as the true living bread, the bread of life.

In this time of Eucharistic Revival, we also need to ask ourselves about our faith in Jesus as the true bread from heaven. With the Israelites let us wonder about the Eucharist, the true manna, asking: what is it? This means a renewed embrace of the Church’s faith, continuous from apostolic times, that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, under the sacramental sign of bread and wine. Simply, the Eucharist is Jesus, his personal reality hidden under the sensible appearance of bread and wine. He gives himself in this sacramental way so that we might receive him precisely as our true food and drink, and thus have eternal life, life to the full. No mere symbol could possibly be the true bread of heaven, for it is not meaning or significance that sustains us eternally, but only God.

But our asking what is it about the Eucharist must also include asking, what is the Eucharist to me? Do I find in the Eucharist the life I am looking for? Do I taste heaven when I receive it? When we receive the Eucharist, do we understand what Jesus meant in saying we will never hunger or thirst again? When Jesus hands himself over to us as our daily bread, do we find fulfillment in the divine life, the divine love, contained within it? We too face the same spiritual choice: do I live for self-satisfaction, or do I long for and seek the life only God can give when He sends the true bread from heaven? Am I willing to let God lead me beyond an enslaved life of comfort and security for a desert journey to the promised land?

Only by faith can we know Jesus in the Eucharist. But do we treat the Eucharist in the same way we would the risen Jesus? Do we love the Eucharist precisely as we love Jesus, or do we regard it as “Jesus lite”? If you heard that the risen Jesus would be appearing in a certain church at a certain time, would you not rearrange your entire schedule to be there for the encounter? Yet how great is our effort to meet the very same Jesus present in the tabernacle in every Church at any time of the day? How is it permissible to ignore the Real Presence in the tabernacle when we would never do that if the risen Jesus stood in our midst? When we receive the Eucharist, let us never just consume it without encountering the person. As he gives his very self to us, let us always give ourselves to him, sharing ourselves with him who shares his very life with us.

Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord – August 6, 2024

Readings: Dn 7:9–10, 13–14 • Ps 97:1–2, 5–6, 9 • 2 Pt 1:16–19 • Mk 9:2–10
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080624.cfm

By Rev. John P. Cush, STD

Sometimes in our reading of Sacred Scripture, it’s important to put things into context. Sometimes, it’s important to examine exactly where a section of the Bible is taken from in order to understand it more fully. In the Gospel offered for our reflection this day from the Evangelist Mark, the Lord Jesus is at a low part of his ministry. Just prior to the events of the Transfiguration, which we read about today in the ninth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, the Lord was gradually teaching his disciples, by his words and actions, some difficult lessons. Mark, in his eighth chapter, details the feeding of the four thousand and then the immediate challenge given to him by the Pharisees, who demand a sign. From there, the Lord heals a blind man, showing further proof that he was the long-awaited Messiah. Then, in Mark’s account of the Gospel, the Lord Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” The Lord Jesus then informs his disciples that he will suffer and die. Peter remonstrates, saying that he will never allow Jesus to suffer in this way, to which Jesus instructs his disciples on the conditions of discipleship. Did these men, the band of the Twelve, know what they were signing up for when they followed the invitation of the Lord to come and follow him? No doubt, at this point in their journey of apostleship, their morale is down, and they are discouraged.

Now, it’s important to remember that Mark, in his Gospel, has Jesus keep what many Scripture scholars call the “Messianic Secret.” At its essence, it means that Jesus is not going around screaming that he is the Messiah and that all need to believe in him. He doesn’t do that because that’s what all the other false messiahs who were swarming Jerusalem were doing. Jesus wants the people whom he encounters with his words and actions to come to the sure and certain knowledge that he is the one, true Messiah, and, by making this act of faith in him, to come to eternal life. And he doesn’t want people to go around telling about his mighty deeds, because his time had not yet arrived.

Regardless, these apostles, even having come to believe, are having their faith shaken. By taking his chosen Apostles, Peter, James, and John, up the mountain, by showing them who he is in his transfigured glory, by having them encounter the Law (as symbolized by the person of the Lawgiver, Moses) and the Prophets (as symbolized by Elijah), and especially by hearing the words of the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him,” this inner circle of the Lord Jesus are reassured. Peter, James, and John, in seeing the Lord Jesus radiant in his glory, in the midst of their doubts, haunted by insecurities, and weighed down by anxieties, have their spirited lifted before the sorrowful events of the Passion and Death of the Messiah.

And note that, even with the full vision of the glory of God, the three Apostles still have doubts. Listen to how this Gospel passage ends: “As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.” Faith and doubt go hand in hand in this plane of existence.

Don’t we need to hear this Gospel? When we doubt, can’t we remember the times the glory of God has been shown to us, in little ways and in great ways, in the countless ways the Lord reveals himself to us? There is suffering and pain in this world and we walk by faith, not by sight. But it is Jesus on whom we should focus our eyes, looking only to him. He is Lord and he is God and he loves us. Jesus is the Savior and wants us to be saved. This week, as our faith is tested and the pressure mounts, remember the words of the Father to the Apostles: “Listen to him.” Jesus has words (and deeds) of love that reveal his glory daily in the midst of our troubles.

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 11, 2024

Readings: 1 Kgs 19:4–8 • Ps 34:2–3, 4–5, 6–7, 8–9 • Eph 4:30—5:2 • Jn 6:41–51
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081124.cfm

We continue a month-long hearing from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, which began with Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes to feed a multitude in a deserted place. When the crowd recognized the miracle as a sign that God’s Messiah would reenact the wonders of Exodus and again feed them heavenly bread, Jesus quite simply disappeared. He fled from their adulation, their plans to make him their king. He went deeper into the wilderness, higher up the mountain, to pray to his heavenly Father in secret. The crowd could not find him, and the next morning they heard reports that he had crossed to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, even though they had seen he did not leave with his apostles in the only boat they had. When they find Jesus again in the synagogue in Capernaum, they ask, “Lord, how did you get here?”

It is worth remembering this question given what they say in today’s Gospel, for both the question and the answer are crucial for proper Eucharistic faith. Now, after Jesus had revealed to them that he has come down from heaven as the true bread of life, the crowd murmurs in objection, claiming they know Jesus’ origins. They know his father Joseph and his mother Mary, know that he is from Nazareth, and thus object that he cannot possibly have come down from heaven. But they really do not know how he got there or where he is from. They are using the truth that Jesus is indeed human to discount his divinity, not unlike what we can do whenever we use the truth that Jesus is indeed divine to discount his humanity. It is not one truth or the other, but both. Either / or is a mistaken theological judgment about divine mystery, something that also applies to the mystery of the Eucharist. For the Eucharist is the reality of Jesus’ Body and Blood with the appearance of bread and wine. It is mystery and sign, reality and symbol.

Mystery means living with more questions than answers. Mystery is not ignorance; it is knowing, accepting revealed truths that exceed the ways of this world. We put a proper faith in them when we ponder and reflect again and again upon what God has said and done, knowing that the light of its full meaning will break forth in our hearts and minds only on the last day when our risen Lord appears in glory. Every week we confess the same faith because the revealed mysteries of our salvation shed new light upon us as our lives slowly unfold. Jesus explains that the prophecy of Isaiah 54:13, “They shall all be taught by God” is fulfilled in us when we listen to God, learn what He has said and done, and come to Jesus. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him.” A reflective engagement with the truth of God’s many acts of love for us (Liturgy of the Word) leads to faith (Creed), and without faith we should not approach the Blessed Sacrament (Liturgy of Eucharist). Only by this reflective engagement does faith grow into a life lived in the presence of Eternity. Eternal life is lived now, in this everyday world where nothing we see seems to have changed, including the bread offered on the altar. And yet, because divine mysteries have and do happen in this very world, how we see everything has fundamentally changed. And if we act on this new seeing, this faith, then we will change, and the way we relate to others changes. We can truly become what St. Paul calls us to be in the second reading: be kind to one another, compassionate and mutually forgiving. The love of Christ, recalled and received, enables us to love one another in the same way.

Being sustained in living this eternal life of faith and love requires eating the true bread from heaven: Jesus, the very bread of life. Without this coming to Jesus in the Eucharist, the Christian journey of faith becomes too long for us. To receive the Eucharist in faith does not mean we have to deny what one sees and tastes — the appearance of bread and wine is real, for Jesus is giving himself as food. But we are called not to limit our response to the Host simply to what our senses tells us, and this means receiving the Eucharist as a genuine encounter with the living Jesus. For the very Gospel we heard proclaimed, telling of what Jesus said and did in our world many years ago, is the personal memory and experience of the One we receive and meet under the sign of bread. To eat the Host with faith is to taste how good the Lord is by remembering how he has loved us. In faith we should ask each time the Host is in our hand, “Lord, how did you get here?” For even with the many, many times we have eaten the Host, we still do not yet fully know the heaven contained in the Eucharist.

Solemnity of the Assumption – August 15, 2024

Readings: Rv 11:19A; 12:1–6A, 10AB • Ps 45:10, 11, 12, 16 • 1 Cor 15:20–27 • Lk 1:39–56
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081524-Day.cfm

Today, on the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, the heavens part and we gain a glimpse into the beauty of the heavenly glory awarded to Mary and promised to us.

The event of Mary’s Assumption into heaven is not recorded in the Scripture but remembered in Tradition, fittingly so since the Scriptures focus on Jesus Christ: the mysteries he revealed and the salvation he accomplished. The hidden depths of that revealed truth, and the full effects of that salvation for us, have come to light only in the Tradition, the fruit of centuries of reflection and contemplation. Mary, the type or model of the Church, is the one who kept and treasured the Word of God, pondering what God has done in her heart (Luke 2:19, 51). Only when the Church has had time to do the same do the mysteries of Mary and the Church come to the fore. Gradually the dogma of Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven came to be believed by the faithful, celebrated in the liturgy, and contemplated in the Rosary until it was formally defined by the Church’s supreme teaching authority by Pope Pius XII in Munificentissimus Deus.

Yet today’s chosen readings are evidence that Mary’s Assumption is implicitly taught in Scripture, discerned in the spiritual and typological sense of the biblical text. The first reading from the Book of Revelation describes a vision into heaven, where the ark of the covenant could be seen in God’s temple, followed immediately by a great sign in the sky of “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars,” who gives birth to a son destined to rule all nations. The ark of the covenant, built according to a heavenly design Moses received from God (Ex 25:9, 40; 39:42–43), is a type foreshadowing the Blessed Virgin Mary, who came into this world with the unique divine favor bestowed in her immaculate conception. Also, just as the ark was overshadowed by the cloud of God’s presence (Ex 40:34–38) and contained the stone tablets on which were written God’s word in the ten commandments (Ex 25:21, 40:20), so too Mary was overshadowed at the Annunciation by the Holy Spirit, by whose power she conceived God’s Word within her womb (Luke 1:35; John 1:14). The responsorial psalm, a royal enthronement hymn (Ps 45), portrays Israel’s queen arrayed in gold, with a beauty greatly desired, who enters the palace of the king, helping us to imagine the scene of the glorious Virgin Mary’s entrance into heavenly splendor.

The second reading from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians brings out the great significance the Assumption has for all of us. Paul teaches that Christ’s Resurrection is the prototype of our own, Christ’s Resurrection the firstfruits of the harvest, ours when the harvest is complete. The Christian Good News stands or falls not just on whether Christ rose bodily from the dead, but on whether we ourselves will conquer death and be restored to the full integrity of our nature. “If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are of all people the most pitiable” (1 Cor 15:19). Mary’s Assumption is the verification that Christ’s Resurrection is not his exclusive prerogative but the future destiny of all the dead. Her Assumption is her own bodily resurrection and glorification, demonstrating that Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension is a pattern that will be copied in all those who persevere in grace. The Second Vatican Council says that in her Assumption Mary was “fully conformed to her Son” (Lumen Gentium 59). What a salvation promised us and verified in the Assumption: we will share fully in all that is Christ’s!

The Gospel of the Visitation is appropriate for the Assumption because it recounts Mary’s charity and her Magnificat. If she did not let the overwhelming joy of becoming the Mother of God prevent her from hastening to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, we can be sure that, assumed into heaven, she remains mindful of us whom her Son redeemed. With the Christ child in her womb, Mary’s presence transformed a whole household, anointing the Precursor with the Spirit of God, assisting the elderly Elizabeth in her pregnancy, and lifting Zechariah out of a sullen despondency to praise God in his canticle. In her ascent to heavenly glory she has not distanced herself from us but has become even more available as mother and intercessor for all the children her Son gave her while hanging on the cross. And in her Magnificat we hear strains of the continual praise she offers the Almighty with all the saints and angels. In this canticle the glorious Virgin Mary leads the pilgrim Church in praise of the great things God has done for us.

The eastern Church has always called this feast the Dormition of Mary, borrowing the language Jesus used when he said the daughter of Jairus was not dead but sleeping. In light of Jesus’ teaching that one can enter the Kingdom of God only as a child (Matt 18:3), one can read Mark 5:41 in a spiritual sense as describing that moment when Jesus called his mother to the Kingdom: “He took the child by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha koum,’ which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise!’”

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 18, 2024

Readings: Prv 9:1–6 • Ps 34:2–3, 4–5, 6–7 • Eph 5:15–20 • Jn 6:51–58
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081824.cfm

Today’s Gospel contains one of the most disputed passages in Christianity. The question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” continues to be raised by his followers. Jesus’ teaching divided his initial audience and has not ceased doing so among the generations of believers since. What Jesus says is controversial and scandalous, yet because Jesus speaks quite clearly, repeating three distinct times the provocative phrase of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, the reason for the quarreling over what he meant lies with his followers, not with him. Nor can it be argued that the passage allows for more than one construal, not only because the two interpretations are contradictory and mutually exclusive, but also because only one of them makes any sense of the fact that many quit being his disciples precisely over the offense in what he said, and Jesus was willing to let them leave rather than modify his teaching to make it more palatable to them. If Jesus meant that he is to be “eaten” as the “bread of life” only in a symbolic sense — meaning, e.g., he is to be believed as the source of life — what is so offensive about that?

Now, since most Christians believe that Jesus is truly divine and as God can do all things, the dispute is not really over whether Jesus could turn bread and wine into his Body and Blood and give it to us to eat. The contention is over whether Jesus would ever do such a thing. There is more here than just the reasonable rejection that Christ would never command his followers to engage in a kind of cannibalism. (To be crystal clear, certainly no interpretation of what he meant can support such a suggestion, as will be explained in a moment.) What is also rejected is the necessity that receiving life from Christ requires the eating of his very flesh and blood. Yet, Christ, with the full force of invoking his most solemn authority, explicitly states otherwise: “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.” Many Christians seem quite content to contradict Jesus on this point, believing they have the life Christ gives simply through their faith in him. They believe Jesus gave his life for them on the cross (true); in them dwells the Holy Spirit (true); and therefore by this faith and grace they are fully alive in Christ without any need to take him in as their food by eating his flesh and drinking his blood (not true). If they claim that Jesus was speaking only symbolically, they imply that he — the Word of God made flesh, the fullness of divine Revelation, Truth itself — taught in such a poor manner that the words he chose to use conveyed the very opposite of the meaning he intended.

Let us remove the confusion that his command to eat his flesh and drink his blood involves a kind of cannibalism. Those who find the literal sense too horrible to contemplate resolve the dilemma by positing he could only have meant it in a symbolic sense. Yet there is another way to affirm the literal sense of “eat my flesh and drink my blood” without violating a fundamental taboo of civilization. The flesh and blood of Jesus we are commanded to eat is his resurrected flesh, what he offered on the cross and raised from the dead. It is his flesh but not in the earthly state it was when he spoke these words in the synagogue of Capernaum, but rather his flesh in the glorified state of his resurrected body, described by St. Paul as no longer mortal but immortal, no longer corruptible but incorruptible, no longer natural but spiritual (1 Cor 15:42–44, 53). Because it is incorruptible and spiritual, Jesus can give his glorified flesh for us to eat without loss or injury to himself. Jesus’ glorified flesh is “the living bread come down from heaven” not only because it gives life but because it is no longer subject to death or corruption.

In the second reading St. Paul tells us, “Try to understand the will of the Lord.” What then is the will of the Lord in providing the Eucharist? Why does Christ insist on the necessity of eating his flesh and drinking his blood to have life within? The readings for today can help clarify his intention. In the first reading the Wisdom of God is personified as a hostess setting a table for invited guests, but what is the food and wine she has prepared for them to eat? It is wisdom and truth itself — not just spiritual realities, but that which is divine, for God is Wisdom. Consuming this Wisdom leads to life and knowledge of God. God wants us to be alive with Himself.

One line in this section of the Gospel is the key to understanding what Jesus is up to — the fifty-seventh verse: “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.” As the Son, Jesus is divine and alive because of the Father, for as we confess in the Creed, he is “God from God.” The divinity — the substance — of the Father is the divinity and substance of the Son, and thus Jesus lives because of the Father, or better, Jesus lives in the Father and the Father lives in him. Jesus’ gift of the Eucharist, by which we truly eat his body and drink his blood, allows for a similar kind of relation and communication of life. By eating his body and drinking his blood we have life because we share in Jesus’ very substance, so that we may live and remain in him, and he in us. That divine substance of Jesus is Life itself, truly given to us as food because when we eat his flesh we consume Him.

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 25, 2024

Readings: Jos 24:1–2a, 15–17, 18b • Ps 34:2–3, 16–17, 18–19, 20–21 • Eph 5:21–32 or 5:2a, 25–32 • Jn 6:60–69
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082524.cfm

“This saying is hard; who can accept it?” A hard saying of Jesus is one that his own disciples find difficult to believe or accept. Not everything he taught is “hard,” yet any believer who finds everything Jesus says pleasing and agreeable has not truly heard the Jesus revealed in the Gospels. A man rejected by his own people who in the end clamored for his crucifixion was not one who simply told people what they wanted to hear. More than once they took offense at what Jesus said, whether it was the townspeople of Nazareth saying, “Where did this man get all this?” (Mark 6:2-3); or the Pharisees affronted by Jesus’ indictment that they nullify the law with their traditions (Matt 15:12). His own disciples had trouble accepting Jesus’ prohibition on divorce (Matt 19:10), or believing how hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God (Matt 19:25). The truth of the Gospel is confirmed in that the hardness of Jesus’ teaching has not faded, since believers in the many generations after the apostles continue to object to what Jesus laid down. We need to examine our own willingness to accept all that Jesus says, from the comforting to the challenging. Our own response to a hard saying of Jesus reveals a lot about us: the strength of our faith and perhaps some resistance to fully submitting to Christ’s authority in everything he teaches.

In today’s Gospel Jesus describes the disciples who find his teaching hard as those “who would not believe.” The hard saying here is: “For my flesh is true food and my blood true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” Now these words are hard, their meaning objectionable and difficult to accept, only when taken at face value, with “flesh” and “blood,” “eat” and “drink” not reduced to a mere symbolism. Yet Christians who reject the plain meaning of these words are not few, including Catholics who regard the Eucharist as “the Body and Blood of Christ” in only a symbolic sense.

Some Christians even use two lines from this Gospel to justify their assertion that Jesus was speaking metaphorically: “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.” First, they interpret Jesus as referring to his own flesh as being “of no avail” in giving life (hence it is not what Jesus wants us to “eat”). Secondly, they have Jesus implying that the words he has spoken have a spiritual, not literal, sense. Not only does this interpretation directly contradict Jesus saying three times that the one who eats his flesh has life, but it violates the fundamental saving truth that we are redeemed because Jesus’ body (not spirit) was nailed to the cross, and by his blood our sins have been forgiven. If even his saliva mixed with dirt could heal blindness, who would dare say Jesus’ flesh is powerless? No, in the context of this passage, “flesh” here refers to our natural powers. We do not make ourselves believe by rational effort, and if we do believe it is only because “it is granted by the Father.” Faith is a gift given by the Spirit, not a deduction reached by human reasoning. This gift is available to those willing to submit to the authority of Jesus to teach us what to believe even when we find the teaching hard.

If we are honest with ourselves, we would have to admit to a general aversion to the act of submission. Will not the shorter form of today’s second reading from Ephesians be widely preferred over the longer form primarily because the latter does not contain (repeatedly!) the command: “be subordinate”? How many Christians excuse themselves from another hard saying of Jesus: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23; 14:27)? Far more than a symbol can signify, the Eucharist, as the memorial of Christ’s suffering and death, contains the mystery of his very humble and loving submission to the Father’s will in his for love of us. As such, the Eucharist is medicine for our stiff necks and hard hearts, if only we are willing to accept Jesus’ word on it.

Gratefully, this Gospel ends with an act of faith in and submission to Jesus’ words by Peter and the apostles: “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” This is the Johannine equivalent of Peter’s confession in the Synoptics to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” The author of the fourth Gospel is implying that the catholic faith in who Jesus is cannot be separated from faith in the Eucharist, confessed by those who are willing to submit to Jesus’ command to eat his flesh and drink his blood. This teaching of Jesus on the Eucharist is words of eternal life, for those who remain with Peter and the apostles in their Eucharistic faith remain with Jesus, and in the breaking of the bread come to partake in the eternal life the Son has with the Father and shared with us.