20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
B
As I stated last week, this week and
next we will continue our reflections on Jesus’ ‘Bread of Life
Discourse’ in John’ Gospel.
It’s about the Eucharist! Do I take
time and reflect on the Eucharist in my life? I have been privileged
to be a priest for 48 years. I have no idea how many masses I have
celebrated but each mass has been God’s gift to me. It is
important to reflect on what the Eucharist means to me today. Do I?
Not as much as I should. St Charles Borromeo gave a wonderful talk
directed to a council of bishops saying if they find mass boring,
‘what do you do before you come to the celebration of the
Mass…what do you do after the celebration? Do you spend time on
the importance and the honor of what you will be celebrating?’ I
remember this so often.
Our ordinary language has ‘done a
job’ on each one of us to cover over the meaning of what is
happening at the Eucharist. ‘I got to go to Church…I’m going
to Mass…Hope the AC is working today…Hope the priest isn’t long
winded…Hope the music is decent…I need to do a lot of things
today, hope mass isn’t long…hope we don’t have a boring
visiting priest…I hope…hope…hope BUT what is happening? I’m
going to be with Jesus and receive His Body and Blood. Do I
ever add…I’m so excited…I need this so much. I’m so
anxious to see how the Lord is going to fill me with His life today!
The readings today help me with my
Eucharistic preparation since all use metaphors of meals and direct
each person on the way to a true life. The first reading from the
book of Proverbs tells me to, “Forsake
foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding.”
The first 9 chapters of this book, Wisdom,
is portrayed as a woman who goes into the streets and calls all to
seek her and learn from her. ((Proverbs 8:4). In
today’s reading, she has built a house and invites those who lack
understanding to join her extravagant banquet. What is her
instruction in finding the real way of living? It is to give up
foolish living which is the opposite of Wisdom so one can truly live.
How much am I devoted to doing ‘foolish things’…perhaps way
too much. I put off straightening out my life to ‘another time’
when it will be more convenient. The ‘I’m going to syndrome’
…just never comes. The overall theme of Proverbs is that true
living consists of honoring and worshiping God. The question is: am
I honoring God by the way that I live? Am I seeing in each person,
one that God loves? Am I loving that person as God needs me to love
them? Am I being Jesus?
The Psalm Response makes a simple
statement into a question for me: “Taste
and see the goodness of the Lord.” When I come to
the Eucharist, do I do that? Am I conscious of WHAT the Eucharist is
and what God has in store for me? Am I grateful?
Paul is writing to the Ephesian
community in the second reading and he continues with words of
wisdom: “Watch carefully
how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of
the opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not
continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the
Lord.” Even though a banquet is not going on he
warns against too much drink which can lead to all sorts of
debauchery. Now there was a Dionysian pagan cult in Paul’s time in
which drunkenness was thought to lead to divine encounters.
That is not life in the Spirit…that has nothing to
do with being love. A Thesaurus search on ‘debauchery’ adds
these words: wickedness, sin, depravity, corruption, dishonesty,
decadence, immorality, self-indulgence etc. Am I preferring me to
God? The Eucharist is God.
Jesus says it all in the first sentence
in the Gospel, “I am the
living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will
live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life
of the world.” He’s talking about Himself…He’s
talking about the Eucharist. When the people first heard this they
had to pause in their tracks. What is He talking about? The
earliest critics of Christianity used this text and some others to
make the assertion that Christians practiced cannibalism. This
resulted in searching out the Christians to persecute them and kill
them. Those who were afraid or those who just couldn’t believe and
found this statement “too hard” (John
6:66) returned to their former way of life. This
“food” Jesus
provides is His own flesh and blood for the life of the world, which
anticipates His sacrificial death.
Jesus tells us…invites us…promises
us that if we eat this ‘bread from heaven’ we will have His life
in us. As Catholics we believe that the Eucharist is that bread from
heaven the very body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. He
instituted the Eucharist so that He would always be present to us
through the Church till the end times. This is not a metaphor or an
image but this is Jesus truly and really present to each person who
comes to this sacrament with trust and love. Why does Jesus do this?
To draw each person closer to Himself and to nourish each person and
give each person the grace and strength needed to lead lives that are
holy. He does this through the community of the Church…a community
of love helping each person grow closer to God.
So I reflect on:
- I come each week to celebrate the Eucharist with the community of believers, am I better person because of this?
- I consume Jesus, as a result I participate in His saving action and His death on the cross. How do I participate in His death without actually dying? How do I die to my own will and participate in God’s will through Jesus?
- How is my life made better by my relationship with Jesus each week in the Eucharist? How does that relationship change me? Does this ‘change’ make a difference in other people’s lives? How and why?
- How does the Eucharist help Jesus fulfill His promise that we will never die and live forever?
Sacred Space 2015 says:
“This
is one of the most amazing passages in all of scripture. For the
Hebrews, flesh and blood meant the full person, so Jesus chooses this
dramatic way to reveal the extraordinary intimacy of His relationship
with us.
Bread
nourishes us, so Jesus uses that term to describe Himself. But
‘living’ bread is an effort to reveal more deeply how profoundly
He nourishes us. He offers us a relationship in which we can ‘abide’
in security. We need that life-giving relationship more than ever
today.”
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