This homily is based on two paragraphs in St Cyril of Alexandria’s commentary on Luke 4.
John 6.1-15
Dearly Beloved:
Observe the efficacy of Our Lord’s holy flesh. Notice how revitalizing and restorative is His blood. For It drives away diseases and a crowd of demons. Christ’s flesh overthrows the power of devils and is capable of healing a great multitude in one instance.
This is why the crowd followed Christ Jesus into the wilderness. And why they camped out at the bottom of the hill.
They followed Him because they had seen His miracles which He did on the diseased;
- how He had healed the sick,
- restored sight to the blind,
- opened the ears of the deaf, and
- chased away those whose addictions had made an opening for demon possession.
The crowd followed Jesus because they sought relief. For themselves and for their loved ones.
The crowd was camped out because they were desperate. They wanted help. Not a show, but real healing.
Since He is God, Jesus might have said to the crowd, “Fly away, every disease. Be gone, every affliction. Depart and leave, every sorrow.” But he adopted a different approach.
- To show that His flesh possessed the power of healing,
- to demonstrate that Our Lord’s human hand is actually the hand of God Himself,
- to let us know without a shadow of doubt that His skin and bones are infused and interpenetrated with His Godhead so that it is impossible to separate, mentally or actually, His humanity from His divinity—
this is why Our Lord Jesus often reaches out His hand and touches those who are sick, even sometimes without words.
And so when He saw the great company of people, Jesus had compassion. Not just on their bodies destined for the grave. He saw their yearning for God, their desire to believe in Him, and most of all their soul-sickness.
So Jesus comes down to restore. And not just humans, but all creation—the entire universe. His mission is grand. And so it is not limited to human bodies. But it begins there—in a body like ours. A body that He does not put on as a persona, or some identity. But a body which He completely deifies—even as He desires to deify our bodies and souls but His touch, by His word, by His own flesh and blood.
By coming down to meet the crowd, to feed the crowd, to feed us—our Lord shows that His mercy is not just for the body, but also for the soul. His desire is not merely to relieve slight momentary afflictions, but also to seat us together at the table with His Father and the Holy Spirit, and in their fellowship, to also banquet with the saints and angels.
And so, in a precursor of His Supper, Our Lord took the loaves, gave thanks, and gave them to His disciples, who then ministered this miraculous life-sustaining bread to those who desired it.
Yet the crowd, like us, have a hard time believing that God is in their midst; that the Son of God is feeding them. They simply thought that a godly human was helping them; and they saw God as a quick fix to their troubles. And because of this, the crowd sees Jesus as a politician, a lottery ticket, one of the superrich who could lower their prices and make easier this temporary life. And so they chased. They did not give thanks. They wanted to force Him to be their king. They did not receive the Lord and His gifts as the Eucharist that He is.
But consider this: If Jesus’ hand can heal the sick and multiply bread and fishes, think of what happens when we receive our Blessed Lord’s flesh and blood, His humanity and divinity, His body and soul, into our own flesh in the Holy Mystery of Communion. For when He enters us and we receive Him with a sincere and true heart, confident that the bread and wine have been changed and transubstantiated by the Holy Spirit into His life-saving body and blood—then He will quench the fever of unbefitting and distorted pleasures; He will raise us up to newness of life; and He will strengthen our minds and hearts, as well as our bodies, to see us through life’s hardness and sorrows.
Just as that human hand by which Christ heals the sick is, in truth, the hand of God—in the same way, by His Spirit, the bread which we consume and the cup from which we drink, is now the body and blood of that same Jesus whose hand absorbed diseases, whose feet walked on water, whose touch soothed the anxious and disturbed, whose mouth spoke mercy deep into the hearts of the troubled.
His same flesh and blood is the Living Bread which came down from heaven. His flesh is actually what fulfilling food is. His blood is actually what refreshing drink is. For when we receive it, we receive God Himself.
Let us then take hold not of this rite. Let us take hold of Christ in the way He gives Himself to us. Let us take Him at His word, firmly and devoutly believing that the Son of God, in His human flesh inseparable from His divine self, is being placed into our mouths.
And then let us live from this food. For that is why we limit how much we eat during Lent; and why we deny ourselves certain pleasures; and why we spend more time in church and in prayer; and why we give away what we have and work for. We do these things because we see that the Holy Communion is the food of all foods. And that we will never go hungry, if we have nothing else to eat except the bread with His Christ’s flesh and the wine which is His blood.
Let Christ’s hand, then, hold us. And let us take hold of Him in this place by means of the mystical Eucharist, giving thanks to God for this holy food. For it can free us from sickness of the soul, from the despair of the mind, from heartache and sorrow, and from the assaults of demons. The flesh and blood of Christ can free us—just as His touch helped the diseased. And, more than that, Christ’s flesh in the Eucharist will raise us up on the last day. For this is His promise: “Everyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life; and I will raise them up at the last day.”
To whom, with His Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, belongs all glory, honor, and worship: now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.