Today in the small village of Guamal on the Magdalena River of Colombia Deacon Gustavo is distributing Holy Communion to the children who are attending Sunday School. On the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica Father Mariano is deciding how many of the forty-two chapels that comprises the parish of Santo Domingo de Guzman he will be able to visit this day in order to offer the Holy Eucharist to his far-flung flock. At the newly built church of Holy Trinity in the hills above Tegucigalpa, Honduras Fray Alexis is celebrating Mass and offering Communion to the people who are squatting on this particular piece of land because they had no place else to go. And in Hinche, Haiti, Pere Clervil does not have a church, does not have a parish but he can gather people together and break the bread and share the cup living out their faith in presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. I know these men and these situations. But there are many more stories about people and places I don’t know. You could multiply these stories by the thousand and the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands in Africa and Asia, in Australia and Oceania, in inner cities and rural communities, in magnificent cathedrals and in thatched-roofed huts, with people young and old, in every language, among every culture, with people of every race, even in Chicago. For the truth of the matter is that the Holy Eucharist is the sacrament of oneness. It makes us one with Christ and it makes us one with one another in Christ. The body of Christ that we receive makes us one body with him and the body of Christ that we receive makes you and me one body with each other.
But that is not an easy lesson to learn. Right from beginning, before Jesus had even given us the Eucharist at the Last Supper, there was opposition to the idea. “How can this Jesus, this son of Joseph, be the bread of life come down from heaven?” This is from the sixth chapter of St. John’s gospel, early in his ministry. Like us, the people of Jesus’ time noticed so easily, so readily are the differences. Who’s in, who’s out. Who’s up, who’s down. Who’s got it, who ain’t. But Jesus wants to break that tendency, that habit that we have to divide, to separate, to form sides. He gave us the bread of life, his own presence in our midst so that can achieve a oneness, a unity, not merely between God and ourselves, but between you and me and the people of Guamal, and Haiti and Guam and Ghana. The same Christ who nourishes our soul in Holy Communion feeds the children of the world – red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus is not divided. There are not different Christs present on the altars throughout the world. There is one body who comes to all of us, one and the same Christ for all.
The sacrament of Christ’s body is above all a sacrament of oneness. Which is why we who are bold enough to approach the altar and partake of the one Christ are obliged in our lives to live out that oneness. Jesus told us to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us because the reality is that we belong together as the body of Christ. But it’s not easy – and as Pope Francis reminded us receiving communion is not a reward for being good but medicine for our sin-sick souls. Like the prophet Elijah we are on a journey and without the strength that we draw from Holy Communion the journey to oneness, to unity will be too long, too tough. So receive the Eucharist this day to strengthen you in your journey so that we can be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another, as St. Paul says in the epistle. With the strength of the bread of life we can live in love as Christ loved us and journey from division to unity, from envy to generosity, from hatred into love.