Dear Friends of The Blessed Virgin Mary:
PEACE! ...JOY! ...APOSTLESHIP!

During one of my Slide-Lecture tours on the East Coast, I was very fortunate to be present at "Our Lady of The Presentation Church" in Brighton, Massachusetts, when Father Joseph Pelligrin, a native from Sierra Leone, in South Africa gave one of the most inspiring sermons I have ever heard, about the Holy Eucharist. He said:

"For the past couple of Sundays, we have been listening to passages from the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel. This chapter is commonly referred to as 'The Bread of Life Discourse" and for many theologians it is the Exposition of The Blessed Eucharist. Through this process of exposition. Our Lord prepares His audience and us for a comprehensive understanding of what the Eucharist is all about.

Our Lord makes it very clear to us that what we do receive in Holy Communion is His REAL Body and Blood. This became even more evident on Holy Thursday, the day that He instituted The Blessed Eucharist...when He took bread and said to His disciples:

'TAKE AND EAT FOR THIS IS MY BODY' and after supper He took wine and said: 'THIS IS MY BLOOD.'

And according to Our Lord unless we partake of His Body and Blood we cannot have life within ourselves. We cannot inherit eternal life.

Today's Gospel then brings us to the end of this "Bread of Life Discourse" and The Exposition of The Eucharist and finally at the end of the sixth chapter of St. John. Last Sunday we saw how some of His audience, became very reluctant to accept His teaching. There was a very strong feeling of discontent among them as they argued:

'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' But despite this feeling of discontent Our Lord insisted: 'UNLESS YOU EAT OF THE FLESH... ' AND DRINK HIS BLOOD..."

These words were spoken by Our Lord in clear, simple, and unmistakable language. In fact, it was for this reason that some of His followers in today's Gospel continue this nonchalant attitude. They kept on saying that this kind of teaching is very difficult to endure and accept:

'For how can this man give us his flesh to eat?'

As a result, those who complained began to back off and to go away. The more they dissented the more they became disunified with Him. But among those who stayed were His twelve apostles...His appointed twelve...and Our Lord has this interesting question for them: 'DO YOU ALSO WANT TO GO AWAY?'

It was Simon Peter, the spokesman for the group who said: 'To whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life.'

Our Lord has invited everyone of us to come to Him and not to go away from Him, to reunite ourselves and not to disassociate ourselves from Him, to consent to His teachings and not to dissent because the very purpose of The Eucharist is unity, not disunity. That is why Jesus offered Himself for us as a victim...as a sacrificial lamb, so as to reconcile and unite us with The Father and to one another.

So my dear friends, today Our Lord wants us to be united with Him and with our brothers and sisters through our faith, commitment, and acceptance of His Teaching. Therefore, let our personal response to the Eucharist be that of Peter's:

'LORD TO WHOM SHALL WE GO, YOU HAVE THE WORDS OF ETERNAL LIFE.'"