No triumphal march: fragments, to reconcile

(Jn 6:52-59)

The Eucharistic theme conveys a fundamental message, about the quality of Life of the Eternal that we can already experience here and now.

The Life of the Eternal is not the effect of external "belief" in Jesus. Conviction would stop us, and we would lose 'contact'.

Instead it becomes reciprocal, it evolves, it recovers us, as in a natural energy.

Here is the raw Food, and Drink: 'chew it' and 'crush it', 'drink it' and 'swill it' even [verbs used in the Greek text].

Total assimilation, which is converted into an experience - Gift from Person to Person.

The Food to be nourished on is not a seal; rather, an everlasting, convoking motion.

Not a logical doctrine, compassed and consenting, but Word-event that fully engages.

And his story - with all its implications of persecution suffered, and harshness, and denunciation activity.

[This is an aspect that is in tune with the so-called inspired prayer 'in the Name of Jesus', i.e. a prayer imbued with the dramatic bearing and burden of his historical events; which neither spiritualises nor anaesthetises us at all, because it contrasts critical witnesses with installed situations].

For this reason, here is the Person of Christ - in his true and full human reality, offered and broken; in his authentic teaching and vicissitude as the paschal lamb.

Between wolves that have shredded it.

It is the abrupt means by which the Life of the Eternal is given and preserved.

In this sense, the Eucharist received in naked Faith is the real (not symbolic) Presence of the Risen One.

The harshness of the vocabulary used - not very intimate - scratches the believers' lives with concrete first-person effects, not automatic or magical.

Faith emphasises the paradigmatic nuptiality "Do you want to unite your life to mine?": it is a privileged place - on which we feed and drink, even in its very harshness, to make it explicit.

It is Life from the Father through the Son, assimilated in us: not devotion.

"To have Life" is to be united with Jesus - but not in a sweet, sentimental, or dazzling way.

We are impregnated and sent, made One with the "Son of Man" [the divine measure for each one of us] in the Covenant of events.

Relationship, motive, vehicle, unifying movement, anticipation, which unfold the Communion between Father and Son - without stillness or pause.

The covenant of a new kingdom is life in God: a charge that is not exhausted, and ushers us into the paradoxical and wounded glory of the community of sons.

The Eucharist is a point of reference for the Church, sometimes lost in the hypnosis of external events.

Assembly that recognises itself; it defines what it is called to be. And it must not find its perennial bonds elsewhere.

Some passages from John are an interesting historical testimony of the catechesis at the end of the first century in the communities of Asia Minor.

Fraternities in search of ancestral motivations, of the most ancient energies, that would rise above the whirlwinds of persecution and not alter consciousness in Christ.

Instruction was configured to short questions and answers, formulated to welcome pagans, stem defections, deepen themes.

Arguments and thrusts that distinguished the living Faith from a religiosity of the past and its perfectionist or commemorative schemes.

Styles that it was appropriate to lay down, to satiate the hunger and thirst for fullness - conquering freedom, joy, and a more complete, total, indestructible being.

With polemical rawness, Jesus insists on presenting himself as the Lamb of the true Passover.

A lamb that, roughly pounded, crushed, shredded, and totally absorbed, could liberate from bondage, and give the joy of ecstasy.

In this way, he introduced his own into angular, but true trajectories - finally reknotted, both to activate the authentic realisation of individuals, and for qualities of coexistence.

His proposal passed through an impertinent transgression of purism, legalism, and intimist, devout culture in general.

It was absolutely forbidden to take blood, which was considered the seat of life.

To make the story of the total Christ - so far removed from controlled thinking - his own was to mark contestation.

It was rejection of symbols, norms, habits or fashions. There would be no alternative, no non-offensive compromise.

Not only that: it was also necessary to change the minds of those who imagined that they could align themselves (individually or as a group) with the archaic idea of a powerful, victorious, and guarantor Messiah.

Perhaps adaptable, flexible; available for any kind of Jesus-Empire alliance, which already enchanted some.

In short, other external, diluted, conditioning-centred 'manne' or affective dependencies could not even be pale figures of the Living Food.

Communion of life with the concrete Person of the Lord is only that of the Son with the Father.By cultivating it, we dream it and keep it there, along with our own affairs - so that they may be nourished by that same Spirit.

By letting the motivations and the world of images linked to the Lord's Supper evolve, we allow ourselves to be led by the efficacious Sign.

It will guide and even lead precisely where we need to go.

By surrendering to such a memory-giving intimate impulse, something will happen - for the soul to take the field.

Waiting until we are ready, we will learn to understand the fruitfulness and wisdom of the broken Gift-Response that incessantly gives birth to other stages, still activating different, perhaps unknown, resources.

Here it is the Judgment of the wounded Crucified One that spreads authentic 'life' even inclemently; without admirable attunement all around.

This by taking our flesh and blood [it even involves the body and humours] that assimilates the discarded, the outcasts of earthly thrones, and opportunistic entanglements to Him.

This is shocking to the vulgar mentality outside. World of convictions that raises defences and seeks approval, recognition, achievements; mirages of success, things everyone wants.

Diminution that does not attract enthusiastic consent, but rather repels the normal expectations of the usual choruses of glory - of symphonies of acclamation for the swirling and available, but mitigating success.

Flesh and Blood: thrown into the furrows of history.

Involved without dampening the Spirit; personally and intimately. One body, assimilated into Him and His story.

First fruits of no triumphal march: we too become food, crumbs and fragments, to reconcile.

Otherwise, the time of Promises cannot be fulfilled.

To internalise and live the message:

What understanding do you show by taking the Food and Drink of Life? All quiet?

How do you see fit to combine and deepen Faith in the Real Presence of the Risen One with the harshness of life?