Is There Life Within You?

A friend of mine called last week. She asked, “How are you?” It’s a common question, one we ask and are asked every day. You and I both know the standard answers and I gave them. I said, “Fine. I’m doing well. Things are really busy right now. I’m good.” She laughed and said, “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

I suspect I’m not the only one who’s had this type of conversation. Most of us have these kinds of conversations several times each day. We offer the usual answers. We might be fine and busy, getting our work done, meeting deadlines, fulfilling obligations, volunteering our time, and loving and caring for our families, but there is a huge difference between living life and having life within us.

Living life or having life is the issue that Jesus is concerned about in today’s gospel (John 6:51-58). It’s so important that it has been the subject of the last several Sundays of gospel readings. Each week has brought us closer to the unspoken question behind today’s gospel: Is there life within you?

That’s a hard question and one which many of us will avoid or ignore. We would rather walk away than face that question. “Fine, busy, good, and doing well” simply do not answer the question. We cover it up. But this question pushes us to discover the hunger within us and the life that Jesus wants to feed us. That’s what Jesus has been trying to get us to understand these last few weeks.

First 5,000 hungry people were fed with five loaves and two fish. They didn’t get it. They thought it was about loaves and fish but it was really about life and where life comes from. Then Jesus challenged us to consider the bread we eat. Is it perishable bread or is it bread that endures forever? Last week Jesus declared himself to be the bread of life, the living bread they came down from heaven. Today he says, “Eat me. Drink me.” This is the only way we’ll ever have life within us. Jesus is very clear about it. Any other diet leaves us empty, hollow, hungry and lacking life. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you do not have life within you.”

Jesus is talking about more than just physical or biological life. He’s talking about a life that is beyond words; a life that is indescribable, and yet we know it when we taste it. We get a taste of it when we love someone so deeply that everything about us disappears, and somehow we are more fully alive than ever before. We get a taste of it when everything seems to fit together perfectly and all is right with the world; not because we got our way but because we knew that we were a part of something larger, more beautiful, and more holy than anything we could have done on our own. It’s in these moments when we realize that we have life within us – and it tastes good!

Most of us spend a fair amount of time, energy, and prayer trying to create and possess the life we want. In spite of our best efforts, we find ourselves less than fully alive. Sometimes the outside and inside of who we are don’t match up. We ask ourselves, “What am I doing with my life? Is this all there is? Is this as good as it gets?” We lament at what has become of us and our life. Nothing seems to satisfy us. We toil and despair at what is and what we think will be.

So then how can we go out and tackle another week of life? The boss yells at you, you have to take your kids to yet another activity, the car breaks down, your friend or spouse loses their job, terrorism is in our neighborhood. What else can possibly happen this week? We carry these huge loads on our backs that are so bulky and heavy that it pushes us down to our hands and knees and we wonder if we will ever be able to get back up again.

But then we read today’s scripture and we realize that the only way that we will truly live is to feed on Christ constantly.  In the eating and drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood in the Eucharist, he lives in us and we live in him. We eat and digest his life, his love, his mercy, his forgiveness, his way of being and seeing, his compassion, his presence, and his relationship with the Father. We consume his life so that he might consume and change ours.

Jesus knows our heart aches and the pain and suffering we are going through. He knows what is happening in our lives. He is telling us to come and eat with him. He is asking us to have a relationship with him; to be one with him. Let us allow Jesus to be a part of our lives so that as we approach this Eucharistic banquet, we can be transformed so that we just don’t live life, but that we truly have life within us.