TWENTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2024)
Readings:
Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalms 34:2-7
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58
Our cycle of readings this year will keep our sights focused on John’s Bread of Life discourse for two more weeks, after which we will return to segments of Year B’s primary gospel, the gospel of Mark. In the meantime we are meant to delve more deeply into Jesus’ understanding of the Eucharist through the lens of the evangelist John. John presents us with a very visceral approach to the Eucharist, so visceral in fact that we almost expect Jesus to correct the Jews’ question “how can this man give us his flesh to eat?” We half expect Jesus to respond to the Jews, ‘no, no, I really didn’t mean that. You have it all wrong!’ But Jesus doesn’t do that. On the contrary, He digs in deeper, telling the Jews “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” One can almost see the listener’s eyebrows raise and their eyes glaze over, so impossible is this language capable of being understood. Yet, Jesus is conveying a real truth here, one that all Christians are meant to try and understand, regardless of how difficult the language is.
The Eucharist, with all deference to Zoom Masses, is, by its very nature, meant to be consumed. Jesus is not talking about cannibalism, of course, but He is talking about an intimate process where He becomes the very force of a life well lived. It is not unlike the ordinary nourishment we are so accustomed to ingesting. Food is taken in and, what is useful, becomes part of every element of our bodies – our skin, our bones, our teeth, our organs, etc. There is no longer any possibility of separating that nourishment from our very being. Likewise, this is what Jesus is trying to say about His body and blood. When we “eat of His flesh” we receive Jesus, we trust Jesus to show us the way, we believe in Jesus as God’s only Son, we believe in Jesus’ power to save us from our sins. While bodily nourishment keeps us alive until such time as we die, our feasting on the body and blood of the Lord assures us that we will never die, for “eating the bread come down from heaven” assists us in this world to continue striving for the “living bread” which is the bread of eternal life. Those who with faith consume the body and blood of the Lord are assured of the promise of eternal life.
The most recent Eucharistic revival of the American bishops was filled with processions and moments of adoration, and rightly highlighted the “real presence” of Jesus in the Eucharist. But the main object of the Eucharist is to be consumed, not paraded around or stared at, but to become such an integral part of us that it causes us to be ‘other Christs.‘ Just as regular food provides us with the strength to go on living, the Eucharist provides us with the strength of living for Christ, doing the works of Jesus, living our lives as He lived His. “Unless we are given a way for Jesus Christ to be inside us, we will turn Christ into an abstraction” (Magnificat).
Let us never underestimate the power in each and every Eucharist that we are privileged to celebrate. There is no place on this earth that we draw as close to the God we worship than when we eat God’s flesh and drink His Blood in the Eucharist. May we never fail to be grateful for such a marvelous gift.
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