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What it Means to Share God’s Life
Homily
We continue our summer meditations on the Holy Eucharist, prompted especially today by Jesus’ words, that we share God’s life when we eat his body and drink his blood. Indeed, Jesus says, “The one who feeds on me, will have life because of me.” Therefore we need to think about what it means to live, and then what it means to share God’s life, otherwise this teaching will fall on our deaf ears. This is a very deep question, what it means to live, so let us confide in the Holy Spirit to help us understand these mysteries of faith. What does it mean to live? First of all, “life” and “to live” are almost the same thing. “Life” is the abstract, whereas “to live” or “living” is the concrete act which the word “life” describes. So what is it for a thing to live? Let us first consider life in the creature made by God, then after that we will consider life in God the Holy Trinity himself. We know something is alive when it moves itself. A dust ball is moved by wind, so it is not alive. A pet dog lives, because it moves itself, for example, when someone knocks at the door or when food is put out for it to eat. Now, plant life is the simplest life, because its movements consist only in growth, nutrition and reproduction. Animals have a bit more of an interior world, for they know, even though their knowledge is only based on their senses, and they have no intellect as man does. Cats, for example, eat fish and not rocks; they know something about these objects when they are placed before them; yet they cannot converse or create a science or even a joke about fish, for they have no intellectual soul. So the movement proper to animals is sense knowledge. The movement proper to angels is purely spiritual. Angels know and love in a purely spiritual way, and this spiritual action is so powerful that it governs created things, for angels affect things by knowing and loving them; or the evil angels who burn forever in hell, by knowing and hating or using them. Life, for man, is of most interest to us. What is it for the creature called man, male or female, to live? The movements that manifest his life our very numerous: speech, science, romance, political society, culture, laughter, and much more. Life is what all men most want and what all men most intend. Aristotle is famous for saying that “all men desire to know,” and he is right. Intellectual knowledge is the highest movement of man, but yet he has a body, and he also desires to live in the flesh. Life for man is both active and contemplative, and the contemplative is superior. Life for man is both practical and speculative, and the speculative is superior. The active and practical life is for and at the service of the contemplative and speculative life which exists only in the intellect, in the soul, not in one’s hands and exterior actions. In a word, to live is to be, for those things whose essence it is to live. What is it for God to live? Again, we know life and come to understand it by actions. Which actions, therefore, manifest to us God’s life, so we can understand at least something of it? The Creed we pray each Sunday is of great help to answer this question: God creates from nothing. He begets from all eternity and is begotten in love and is therefore a trinity, one God in three divine persons. He is the author of all other living things, the giver of life, and he has spoken through the prophets. So now we have to tie in Jesus’ words, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, I live because of the Father, he who eats me will live because of me” (Jn 6:56-57). Now, if God lives in you by communion through the Eucharist, and we have just seen what a majestic thing it is for God to live, listen, o creature made by God’s hand! See what majesty and mercy God bestows upon you, by pouring his own immense life into your own soul! For the creator, the Trinity, the author of live has made his life yours! And the effect of this sharing of his life on you is called habitual grace, God’s dwelling in your soul. It is by this grace that you are made priest, prophet, and king. If God is alive in your soul, your movements will manifest his life. You will love God above all things, and your neighbor as yourself, even to the point of dying for your enemy; and this love will be the greatest testimony of God’s life within you. There are some that try to create a society full of some sort of mutual love among men, but they do so appealing to political power, civil society’s funds, causes of minority groups, and other such foundations where God is completely absent. How can man attain love, I ask, without God? How can we move in a godly way without the life of God within us? If you wish to live and love like God, imitating him, you need to have God in you by a life of grace. Otherwise, it will be impossible. So do you want to live forever? Then come eat the holy Eucharist, and feed on the source of all life. Do you want to be a king in Christ the King? Than become one with him through Holy Communion. Do you want to offer to God praise and intercession for the salvation of souls? Then come consume Jesus Christ the one High Priest, present in the Eucharist. Do you want overcome the death of sin, and the temptations from the devil, the flesh and the world? Then live off the Eucharist. Meditate often on what it means that God lives in your soul, think of these things that are above and not of the things of this passing world. Live for God who lives, the author of life, and live and die for the Lord of life. Amen. |