As Catholics we have a particular awareness of God’s Presence. In our churches and chapels, we experience flickering candles, the smell of candle wax and occasionally aromatic incense. In some churches we see stained glass windows, statues, icons, mosaics, and all manner of rich symbols that almost transport us to another world. When we enter our chapels and churches, we enter space that is in this world, but yet not of this world.
Above all we are confronted with the crucifix, the ultimate symbol of our salvation and redemption. At the same time, we are also aware of the living Presence of the Risen Christ. Our eyes are led to the tabernacle, that sacred space in which the Risen Christ is present to us in the Blessed Sacrament, in the Living Bread come down from heaven.
All of this enfolds us in Mystery, the mysterious spiritual presence of God who comes to us in His Son, a presence made tangible to us in all that we experience in a Catholic church in which the Blessed Sacrament is present. For when we encounter God, we are entering into His mysteries to be lived, not problems to be solved.
Every priest and catechist will tell you of people they have met who have expressed their awareness of this unique presence of God. Candidates in the Rite of Christian Initiation classes talk about it. Catholics who have left the Church and then returned talk about it. Lapsed Catholics will tell you about the haunting tug they feel within them, that unfulfilled awareness that they no longer experience God’s closeness as they once did when they received Him in Holy Communion in days gone by.
There are those who defiantly declare that they don’t need Holy Communion because, they say, God is everywhere. Catholics who don’t go to Mass any more say they don’t get anything out of Mass, it doesn’t do anything for them, and they say they can experience God in nature or in other special places.
It’s true that God is everywhere, but it isn’t the whole truth. God is uniquely and particularly present in the Blessed Sacrament. For while God is present to us and near us in other places in this world, God lives in us in Christ’s flesh and blood, in the Blessed Sacrament, in that small white host we receive in Holy Communion.
It’s true that God is everywhere in general. It’s a deeper truth to accept the reality that God is particularly present in the Eucharist and is uniquely living within us when we receive Holy Communion. To say that God is everywhere is to say that God surrounds us and is near to us. But God wants more. He wants not only to be near us but also to live within us. Our Lord declared that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you do not have God’s life within you.
After hearing these words, many of Our Lord’s followers said: “This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?” And so, they left him. And many, down to this very day, have done and are doing the same.
Those people who don’t understand Catholicism complain that the Catholic Church is against freedom of choice. But nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that the Catholic Church is very much in favour of freedom of choice. After all, if there is no choice to love, then there is no love at all. The very essence of love is found in choices, in decisions, not just in emotional urges and feelings. Affection is a feeling, but love is a choice; and the harder the choices the deeper the love that is given.
The question then, is not whether we can freely choose. The question rather is about what we freely choose to do. It’s what we choose, not the fact that we choose, that is the question: for what we choose to do can have enormous consequences for both ourselves and for other people.
Today’s first reading recounts one of the greatest moments in Jewish history, that moment in which Joshua assembled all the Israelites and put the big question to them: Decide whom you wish to serve. Do you want to serve other gods, or do you want to serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
The history of the Bible is a history of human choices, the chosen responses of people to the God who offers Himself to us. Those biblical choices have been momentous, and their consequences stupendous.
God presents each and every one of us with the opportunity to make momentous decisions. Each of us, no matter how great or small, no matter how famous or unknown, is presented with the choice we find in today’s gospel. Will we accept the living God into our own bodies and into our daily lives?
What God is giving us in the Blessed Sacrament is more awesome than all of our other choices we could ever possibly make. What God is offering us in Holy Communion is not only His love, but also His very life.
And so, let us all join Saint Peter in his response to Our Lord’s challenge. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and we know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Dum Tacet Clamat 