The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time marks the fourth Sunday of a vital lesson on the Eucharist in which we are led to consider the natural human resistance to what the Father intends to do for us in the Eucharist, by offering us the flesh and blood of his Son Jesus. To this end, it would be profitable to open our minds and hearts to what Jesus feeds us, first, at the table of God’s Word by imagining what our world would be like without the Eucharist, without feeding on the flesh and blood of our Lord.
It would be a world run by human beings but in which God is absent. It would be a wounded, crippled and restless world because of a collective refusal to let God work with them to restore it to its original splendor when it was created. We do not have to go very far, nor do we need to be very imaginative in picturing such a sad world. It is the world chosen by too many people. It is the world without the inspiration provided by the Gospel.
Now, is the United Nations (UN) the best the world can come up with without God’s help and without the inspiration of the Gospel? Or can you think of any other strictly human agency or institution that might be better than the UN? Greenpeace? ACLU? PETA? Save the whales? Amnesty International? They are all sorry travesties marred by ideologies and showing how imperfect, restless, confused, frustrated, angry, hurt people get when they are bent on running their lives and their countries without God’s light.
And, in our little corner of the world, we must admit that every time the flesh and blood of Christ are not consumed by us as the Father intended them to be consumed, we are left hungry and exhausted.
The passage from the Book of Proverbs (9:1-6) is a metaphor of how God is eager to enter our minds and hearts to change us from within so that we are well equipped to contribute to change the world. “Let whoever is simple turn in here.” (Proverbs 9:4)
This is clear.
The passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians (5:15-20) is even clearer, blunter in assessing our condition and our desperate need for God. Watch carefully then how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise … therefore, do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what the will of the Lord is. (Ephesians 5:15-17)
Finally, in the Gospel passage (John 6: 51-58) we see how frustrated Jesus’ first audience was. Their frustration is evidenced by not being able to follow Jesus’ way of reasoning. They cannot make the transition from physical feeding on bread and fish, to him, as the genuine Bread that the Father sent from heaven, for the feeding, first, on his words of life. Lastly, their frustration becomes anger and disgust as soon as they suspect that Jesus is proposing something bordering on human sacrifice and cannibalism. They know that he is sane; yet they cannot take the leap from their narrow mental categories to venture into God’s proposal to share in his very life. Hence the anger; hence, the revulsion.
What about us? Perhaps, up to now, we have fed at the table of the Sacrament without fully grasping the depth of God’s proposal in his accompanying words. Most likely, then, the result for us has been lukewarmness and hesitations, lack of enthusiasm and short-lived commitments.
Regrettably, the English word “to eat” is inadequate to convey the fulness of the Lord’s intent. A more accurate term would be “chewing or gnawing.” These are graphic, very forceful verbs; yet necessary for our correct understanding of what Jesus is teaching us about the weight and the scope of the Father’s proposal.
In our physical world, whatever we eat is processed by us and absorbed to become us, our cells, our organs, our limbs, all parts of our distinct, individual self. However, what the Father proposes through our chewing and gnawing on the flesh and blood of his Son is the opposite: he intends to make us divine, to make us what we eat and drink, to make us Jesus.
God proposes nothing short of full intimacy with and a true share in his divine nature! Simply put, this proposal shows how God invites us to shed our mere human ways of thinking, reasoning, choosing, acting and reacting to do all our thinking, reasoning, choosing, acting and reacting the way Jesus did and does. If we dare to ask the following and similar questions, it will indicate that the Holy Spirit is displaying before our eyes the full range of Jesus as the Bread of Life.
Do I realize that by chewing and gnawing on the flesh of the Lord, weekly or more often, I accept becoming as meek and humble of heart as Jesus is?
Do I have the courage to stop regressing to my habitual excuses and rationalizations and, instead, trust in the Father’s plan by being ready to love the way Jesus loved me on the cross?
Am I ready to heed the gentle inspirations of the Holy Spirit even when he urges me to deny myself and “lose my life” to find it?
Perhaps a simpler and more direct way of assessing the extent of our spiritual progress in receiving the Lord in Holy Communion, would be to compare ourselves and our inner dispositions to Jesus’ in comparable situations. Regardless of where we find ourselves on the path to becoming Christ-like, we shall never lose heart but continue our spiritual journey with full reliance on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the agent transforming humble bread and wine in the Body and Blood of Christ and he is the divine means the Father employs to transform us into beautiful replicas of his Son.
