Jesus' Word of Warning - John Chapter 6

Christians talk often about "spiritual food" for spiritual  growth.  I know that this means more than the Eucharist.  The church cites St. Augustine who said that the believer's "food  from  heaven"  is the Eucharist, but this daily spiritual  bread is also: "the readings you hear each day in church, and the hymns you hear and sing. All these are necessities of our pilgrimage."  Catechism of the Catholic Church sec. 1389 (citing St. Augustine Sermo 57,7).

We all need spiritual food, and that  is a broad subject.  But in this post I am looking at the Eucharist alone.  What can  happen if a person turns away from it?  John 6:53 quoted and highlighted  below becomes a word of warning.  

The Sunday lectionary has just finished a series of Gospel readings in the Gospel of John chapter 6.  Yesterday at Mass in his homily  87 year old Fr. Berghammer mentioned something profound.  He reminded the congregation  that taking the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist is spiritual nourishment.  But that can only happen at Mass with the gathered assembly of believers, except that the sick may receive Jesus at home.  The point is that for almost all of us, we have to go to Mass to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.  Stop going to Mass and we stop receiving him.  (I'm not saying that the Eucharist is the only way to approach Jesus, or for him to approach us.)   Gradually over time people who stop going to Mass may lose their faith as a result.   Fr. Berghammer said that he has seen this many times over his long career.

I would never apply Father's thoughts on loss of faith  to any individual person whom I might know.  Judgments of this kind are up to God.   I have enough trouble dealing with my own pilgrimage.   How any of us come to faith is a great mystery.  The same can be said about how people lose their faith.

Last Supper - Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret 19th Century

People may say that  they have lost their faith because of this or that problem with the church, and that may be the case.  But here is another possibility for the origin of unbelief:    What really may have happened with this "former believer"  is that  he or she for no particular reason  stopped going to church.  That means that week after week the   person  was not receiving Jesus in the Eucharist.  The person was left to go through the grind of daily life  without the bread of life (Jn. 6:35), and after many months or years of this kind of neglect of the Eucharist  a total  loss of faith became  the end result.   The practical point here is not to speculate about the "lost faith"  of people we know, but to apply Fr. Berghammer's  idea to each one of us in a positive way.  If you make it to church and worthily receive his body and blood, you are not going down this dangerous path which can lead to a ruined spiritual life.   The bread of life keeps you on the right path, the narrow way leading to eternal life.

They say ideas have consequences.  The same goes for acts and omissions: "So Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you' ...." (Jn 6:53 RSV).

The sacrament alone does not prevent a person from falling away from God.  Anyone who has read 1 Cor. knows that. Yes,  there is more to the Christian life than the Eucharist.  There are the commandments, the tenets of our faith (the creed), the study of the hold Scriptures, and the duty to love God and our neighbor.  And we have the duty to confess our sins, daily and also in the sacrament of reconciliation, in order to take the Eucharist worthily. My only point here is that it is a dangerous thing to neglect the Eucharist.

John chapter 6 also speaks to anyone who wants to come back to the bread of life, after being away.  Jesus says, "he who comes to me I will not cast out"  (Jn. 6:37 RSV).