1^st Reading – Genesis 14: 18 – 20

Melchizedek is mentioned in only three places in scripture: this reading plus Psalm 110:4 and Hebrews 5:6, 10; 6:20-7:22.  He is said to be the king of Salem; its name means peace. This place becomes the city of Jerusalem, the center of Israel’s kingdom.

It was customary for a king to be hospitable toward a victorious leader, but there are no ulterior motives here.  Instead, there is a beautiful blessing ritual, to which Abram gives thanks.  Note that Abram did not take his victory greedily.  He only wanted to save his nephew Lot and retrieve the possessions that were taken from him.   For the victory and the blessing, he gives thanks to God.   How do you give thanks to god for the victories and blessings in your life?  

 Later Christian writers would evoke this episode in history and consider it a prefigurement of Christ.  Jesus would offer the blessing of his life – the effect would be irrevocable and would be the gift of God’s self to the entire world – redemption.  Jesus is the only true priest because of both his humanity and his divinity (Birmingham, W&W, p. 560-561).

 

2^nd Reading – 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26

This is the earliest written account (maybe 53-55 AD) of Jesus’ Last Supper and the words that have become our Eucharistic prayer.

From Celebration, June 1998:

Eucharist is about a remembering (anamnesis) that does not simply call to mind the past events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  The Eucharist makes present here and now, within the gathered assembly of believers, the reality of Jesus’ saving death and resurrection. Each Eucharist is a “living remembrance of Jesus’ act of love.” By our participation (offering our ‘hungry selves’, hearkening to God’s Word, sharing peace, and then eating and drinking) in the Eucharist, believers proclaim and are integrated into that death and are given a taste of the resurrected life to come.

We “proclaim the death of the Lord” . . .  What does this mean?  In Eucharist Christ comes to us as the one in whom God participates in the emptiness and negativity of life, as the one in whom God accepts us in the most unrestricted way possible, and as the one who in virtue of this acceptance, lays claim to all that we are and can be. The Eucharist is not simply a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus or the fact that he now lives. Rather, it is a celebration of the fact that it is the crucified one who now lives; it is a celebration of the God who came into the brokenness, the ‘unwholeness’ and the unholiness’ of the human situation, and who came to stay. In Jesus, God has come to be with us where we are. To proclaim the death of the Lord is to find in his death a new definition of ourselves – a new understanding of the meaning of success and failure, of the meaning of life and death, of what it means to be a human person. (John Dwyer, The Sacraments, “Chapter Eight: the Eucharist” p.129-130)

 

The Gospel – Luke 9: 11-17

It is important to place this gospel story within the context of the overall gospel of Luke.  Chapter 9 had started with Jesus commissioning the Twelve and sending them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God.  After they go out Luke tells us of Herod’s curiosity about Jesus:  “I beheaded John. Who then is this about whom I hear such things?”  Then the Twelve return.  They withdraw in private to Bethsaida, but the crowds follow Jesus, and yet, he welcomed them . . . here then, is where the gospel story begins.  It ends with a superabundance of satisfying food.

From “Working with the Word,” http://liturgy.slu.edu:

Too often we narrowly view Eucharist in the context of the Last Supper and its elements of bread and wine. This gospel expands our perception to include the whole event of hungering, and then gathering, blessing, breaking, giving, eating, and being satisfied. Evil diminishes life and enslaves people; God’s kingdom restores life and liberates them from hunger – ‘malnutrition’ and oppression. This story illustrates Jesus’ Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor, the kingdom is yours . . . and the hungry will be satisfied.

It is at Eucharist that we experience most intimately the communion of saints.  Communion of saints in Greek is koinōnia hagiōn.  Koinōnia is any partnership, fellowship, activity, experience or relationship where people come together.  It is togetherness for mutual benefit and goodness (Barclay, The Apostles Creed p. 245).  Hagiōn literally means sacred things, hagiōi meaning members of the Church as saints, or sacred people (p. 247).  Imagine the sacred things as being that which we share in Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus.  In that sense, we are sharing sacred things as a communion (koinōnia) of sacred people.  In the Byzantine liturgy, the priest says, “Holy things for holy people” at the distribution of Holy Communion (Shannon, Catholic Update  May 2005, p.4).  We become the body of Christ.

In the book With God in Russsia by Walter Ciszek  (an autobiography of a Jesuit priest), he recounts being in Poland in a concentration camp and celebrating Mass.  It was forbidden to do so, so it had to be done in secret.  Fasting before Eucharist from the midnight before was common practice then.  Since the inmates were only given 2 meals of gruel a day, giving up the morning meal was a true sacrifice.  If guards did not make it possible to celebrate at the scheduled time, they may go even longer without eating.  So this priest and those he celebrated Mass with truly held Eucharist in deep, deep faith  (Nolan, Hungry, and You Fed Me, p. 273-275).  Consider this as you receive Eucharist this week.

   

Let us pray: 

Christ, be vital food; bread for our souls.

You were broken because we are broken.

You bless us beyond all telling.

Your grace expands like loaves and fishes.

You lavish love on us each time you come to us

and make us one,

since you are our very food and drink.

Help us to pour this love out to one another.  Amen.