To Whom Would We Turn?

7 May

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament.  There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.”  ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Many of us are avid readers.  I grew up in an era with the slogan that stated, “Reading is FUNdamental.”  The teachers tried to get us to realize that reading could be fun.  They knew that if they could hook us, that we could become voracious readers.  Reading, we were told, would help us with vocabulary at the very least as well as expand our minds.

We were told to read the Bible and other Church books and periodicals.  In them, we gained a lot of information that was essential to living our faith as completely as possible.  Many of us read more than the Bible and other Church literature.  We were passionate about reading novels:  murder mysteries, fantasy stories, westerns, and the like.  We often saw ourselves in the people about which we read.

That is why it is so nice to see that some of our favorite authors were also believers.  In the midst of all their writings, they nursed a deep, abiding faith in God.  J.R.R. Tolkien, best known for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, among others, was also a person who rooted himself in God.  He made his First Communion on Christmas in 1903.

We believe that Jesus gives us His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.  This belief is what sets us apart from many other faiths and even from some other Christians.  There are some who only believe that the bread and wine are symbols.  We believe that the bread and wine are immutably changed into the Body and Blood of Christ.  That Eucharist is what nourishes our souls and sustains us in our daily journey to the Kingdom.

In the gospel for Saturday of the third week of Easter, we read about the fallout of many who could not believe that Jesus said, “Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will have no life within you.”  They left him.  Jesus turned to His disciples and asked, “Do you also want to leave?”

That question, intimate and personal, is posed to each of us.  Do we truly believe or is this too much and do we want to leave?  We can only answer for ourselves.

FAITH ACTION:  Kindly pray for the third graders in our parish family who receive the Holy Eucharist for their first time this morning at a special Mass at 10:00 a.m.