The host is the meal himself

Published For Sambuhay Misalette | Maundy Thursday

Food industry today is probably at its highest demand due to the growing population of the world. The areas of livestock, farming, and fishing have become lucrative enterprises. In fact, hospitality industries are growing in the urban areas. Restaurants and convenience stores are everywhere; be it coffeeshop, pastry shop, pasta or pizza corner, burger stand, candy booth or many more. The fact that these food industries thrive and actually fulfill a growing demand, it speaks of a new emerging culture of eating.

Eating used to be an activity for survival. We eat in order to live another day. Eating is supposed to be an activity which nourishes the body in order to give it strength. It is a necessary part of one’s existence. However, eating today has assumed different intentions and purposes.

People today use this activity to supplement or augment a missing segment of their life. People today eat as they wait. People eat because they have problems or because they are depressed. Some eat at a certain phase or degree because they have a dietary plan. Some eat to cure illnesses. Some avoid to eat because some food are detrimental to their health. Some eat to accompany them in their movie viewing.

Today, on this blessed Maundy Thursday, Jesus presents to us a new intention and purpose of eating, that is communion. He ate with people he call friends, people he later on called children of his Father. Eating is also a form of bonding, -that is having friends gathered together over food to partake among themselves as they share stories. Jews do it quite similarly. It is part of the Passover tradition among the Jews to read the Haggadah or the book of prayers and stories about the victorious exodus from Egypt, and the instruction to pass this stories to their children. Our first reading gives us a glimpse of these stories and instructions to the Israelites. We heard instructions on how the people would prepare the food, how and when to eat the food and how the food becomes essential to their survival at the passing over of the Lord over the doorposts where the blood of the spotless lamb were painted on.

Today, meals have become a necessary segment of the gathering of people or friends as they enjoy each one’s company. The gathering of friends, the stories they share or recall and the food which they partake prefigures the Eucharistic Banquet which we today celebrate and recall. But more noble and more spiritual in nature, the Eucharist is not an empty partying but is a living gathering of friends. In the Eucharist, meaning abounds, intimacy is present, and life is given.

In the Eucharist, the participants are not mere friends but are brethren, sisters and brothers to one another, and are a family. In Eucharist, the stories are not mere recalling but the living out and a living on of what had happened in the past especially on the Last Supper and on the Paschal mystery of Jesus Christ. More than anything else, the food which is served and is eaten in the Eucharist is not a mere dietary nor nutritive substance but the life itself…Jesus, the life of the world himself.

This eating has assumed a new meaning because this meal, this communion, this eating together of a family called for and dignified by God has become in itself a mission. The meal is a mission for everyone who partakes of it. Jesus commands: Do this in memory of me. This meal is therefore a meal of honoring and making-present-for-all-time the one who commanded thus. It is a meal that is forever; bridging the past and the future as it is celebrated in the present.

The Mass is a mission and a mission-sending. It is our mission to celebrate it faithfully, celebrate it well, make it meaningful, and live it. It is also a mission-sending or a commissioning because like Christ, we who are united with him in baptism is meant to be missionaries to bring this life to the world, to bring this healer to the broken, and bring this light in the midst of darkness. In fact, after the Mass, the priest commands: Our Celebration has ended, GO……in peace. How many times in the life of Christ did he sent his disciples to GO. Go to the villages, to the roads, to houses and communities to proclaim the Kingdom of God.

Isn’t it wonderful that today we celebrate the institution of two noble Sacraments; that of the Eucharist and that of the Ordination? It is on this same day when we are asked to reflect upon the words of Christ Do this in memory of me that a two means of sanctification is implied: there is an action and there is an actor. In the Eucharist, there is a banquet and there is a host; and the host being the banquet himself.

On the same day Christ instituted priesthood and the Eucharist, he commands his disciples of love one another as he loved them. This message reechoes to us today. The Mass is a commission to love. The priesthood is the vocation which sees through that the vocation to love one another is carried out and safeguarded for all times. As having been incorporated into the fold of the common priesthood of the Church, it is our mission to see through this enormous commission and Christian responsibility to love and spread love flaming and living in the hearts of all so that the Kingdom of love, justice and peace would be fulfilled in the here and now with the Eucharist as its source of nourishment.