Friends, today’s Gospel declares that the Word really became flesh. Why has the Incarnation been resisted from the very beginning? Why is the extension of the Incarnation, which is the Eucharist, still such a source of division?

I think it has to do with flesh. God became one of us, as close to us as blood and muscle and bone. It is no longer correct to say simply that God is in his heaven and we are on the earth. It is not correct to say simply that God is spirit and we are matter. Matter has been invaded by spirit. In Jesus, God became flesh, and, more to the point, he invites us to eat his Body and drink his Blood. But that means that he wants us to take him into ourselves.

“Now, wait a minute!” many people think. “That’s a little too close for comfort, for it means that he wants to be Lord of my flesh and my bones, that he wants to move into every nook and cranny of my life. My work, my recreation, my sexual life, my life of play—all those fleshy things that I do—he wants to be Lord of all of that!” That’s precisely right.