Lk 9:11b-17
11[Jesus] spoke to [the crowds] about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who needed to be cured. 12As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, “Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here.” 13He said to them, “Give them some food yourselves.” They replied, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.”
14Now the men there numbered about five thousand. Then he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of (about) fifty.” 15They did so and made them all sit down. 16Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. 17They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.
FAITHFUL TO HIS MEMORY: Memory is something one takes for granted—until the dreadful day when one loses it. When one suffers from amnesia or, worse, Alzheimer’s disease, one has a “break with the past” and ceases to know who one is.
A human being has a personal memory. Far from being an unorganized jumble of data and experiences, it forms part of one’s being. It is a dynamic factor that influences not only one’s present circumstances but also one’s interpretation of the past and one’s plans for the future.
As a people, we also have a social memory, a shared memory. This communitarian memory binds together small societies of family or clan, or larger ones like tribe or nation.
Today we celebrate the solemnity of Corpus Christi or the Body and Blood of Christ. It is the celebration of the sacrament of the Eucharist where we partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus as nourishment for our spiritual life. We refer to the Eucharist as a thanksgiving, sacrifice, communion, or memorial, depending on what aspect of the sacrament we wish to emphasize. Today’s solemnity focuses on anamnesis or remembrance.
When Christians gather to celebrate the Eucharist, they celebrate the anamnesis of the Lord Jesus until he comes again in glory. What is recalled is not simply a remembrance of the past, but a living, collective memory that is brought alive or made present in the celebration and continues to shape the life of the community.
We see this in the anamnesis of Jesus’ Last Supper which Paul hands on to the Christians in Corinth (Second Reading). The community is beset by division, and their Eucharistic gathering is marked by quarrels, abuses, and contempt for the poorer members (1 Cor 11:17-22). The apostle reminds them that their actuation is a betrayal of the memory of that night when Jesus gave his body and blood as food for his disciples, the same body and blood that he would give up on the cross the following day. A tradition kept by the evangelist John notes that on that same night, Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, an act of utter humility and self-sacrifice. Paul invites the Christians of Corinth to come to their senses and wait for one another. Division and fighting betray the “body of the Lord,” both as sacrament and as community of believers.
The Gospel tells us of the multiplication of the five loaves and the two fish and the feeding of the multitude. The actions of Jesus—taking the loaves, looking up to heaven, saying the blessing, breaking the loaves, and distributing these—are the very same actions of Jesus at the Last Supper. The memory of the feeding of the five thousand, therefore, points to the Eucharist of the Last Supper when Jesus finally gives the “true bread that comes down from heaven.” This is the same miracle that John uses as the starting point of his presentation of Jesus as the Bread of Life.
Zhang Yimou’s wonderful film The Road Home gives a truly moving example of the power of a beautiful memory. When the teacher of a far-flung village in China dies, his wife insists that the body be carried home in procession. When the day comes, his former students from different places brave the cold to join the cortege. The teacher thus remains a living and vibrant memory to his wife and son and to the whole village.