Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Last week I spoke to you about God speaking to me through the scriptures about returning to the love with which I first loved God. There were two realizations that came to me: first that I needed to return to God with all the love in my heart and allow God to lead me; and second, that God concretely and really spoke to me. God did not discard me or abandon me, but rather, God actually cared enough to be present to me and draw me back. In recent times, this has been the most real experience of God’s presence in my life. I truly know that God still loves me.
We move to the fourth week of our reflection on the bread of life discourse. And today, the emphasis is on the real of presence of Christ to us. So John stresses what the Christian community has believed from the very beginning of Christianity “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”
Today, it is our turn to focus on the meaning of these words. Using all the three readings I would use three points to reflection on the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine at every Eucharist and the wisdom of doing this.
1, Wisdom v/s Folly. Let me begin with the words the people in the crowds asked one another when Jesus said that he was the bread of life. They said, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” This is a very sensible, commonsense, wise, and rational question. Even today, many people think that the Catholic belief of Jesus’ real present in the Eucharist is foolish. This becomes doubly important because both of today’s first reading and second reading ask us to forsake foolishness. Today’s first reading says, “Forsake foolishness that you may live;” and the second reading says, “Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise.“ So are we foolish to believe what we believe or are we wise in believing what is inexplicable – that Christ is truly and really present in the bread and wine.
Let me try to explain how I understand Christ’s true presence in the Eucharist. So here is an example. Just as I have more freedom, power, and authority than my dog (and my dog has more understanding and will than a plant and a plant has more life than a stone), I can both understand and believe that there is a being higher than me who has more power, authority and freedom that I do. This being is God. I can both understand and believe that this God does not alienate himself from us but that God desires to be present to us. In keeping with God’s power, authority and freedom, God can choose to be present to us in any way that God chooses. If this is true, then I can both believe and understand that God has chosen to be present to us in Jesus Christ who is really present to us in bread and wine. Scripture calls this ability to both believe and understand in God, wisdom.
What is foolishness or ignorance, then? The Psalmist says, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God above.” In other words, foolishness is to deny God God’s being. Foolishness is denying God the power, authority and freedom that are due to God. Foolishness is to deny God from being present to humanity in any way that God chooses to be present to us. Foolishness is to put limits on God, including, refusing Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” This is a wise question but foolishness is to stay on the question forever.
2. Presence
We take it for granted but the greatest gift that we have as human being is the gift of presence. Many of you know that I go home twice a year. Let me explain why I do this. I realized one day that my dad is 82. If he lives to be a hundred and if I go once a year I will see him only eighteen more times. I know that day will come when I will not have his presence. For many of us, death of a loved one is difficult not because we do not believe in eternal life, but rather, because this person is no more physically present to us anymore.
Today’s gospel tells me that God is present to us in a real way. Jesus says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” But why flesh and blood? Because we human beings can understand the real presence of our loved ones in flesh and blood. That does not mean that we eat our loved ones but that God enters a relationship with us that is deeper than any other relationship on the face of the earth; that God chooses to be present to us in a way that no other being can; that God calls us into a union unlike any other union we experience; that God chooses to live IN us and invites us to be IN God. Unless we attain this union, Christ says, “You have not life within you.”
3. The Eucharist – An invitation to Real Presence
If Christ says to us, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you,” then Christ also has to create the means to the present to us in flesh and blood. So at the Last Supper, Jesus took bread, broke it and gave to his disciples saying, “This is my body.” Similarly, he took the cup and gave it to his disciples saying, “This is my blood.” And then he said, “Do this in memory of me.” From as early as we can know, followers of Jesus gathered each resurrection day and broke bread together because they believed that every time they did this they proclaimed the death and resurrection of the Lord, until he comes again.” They believed that when they “gathered together in his name, He was there in the midst of them.” They believed that every time they broke bread, God was present to them in a real way in flesh and blood. They believed that every time they celebrated the Eucharist, Christ lived in them and they in Christ.
Today, we continue that tradition as we celebrate this Eucharist. Today, we must get beyond the question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” and both understand and believe that “This is the true bread that came down from heaven.”
As we participate in the Eucharist today, let us receive God as God comes to us in bread and wine. May we live IN him and he IN us. Amen
- Fr. Satish Joseph