August 18th 2024. Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time
GOSPEL John 6:51-58
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .
Jesus said to the crowds: "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."
The Jews quarrelled among themselves, saying,
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, 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.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever."
The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ
SUMMARY
In the Gospel, Jesus almost seems to be begging us to receive him as our food. He knows how reluctant we are to receive him. Why are we so reluctant? We have a latent image of God as a latent taskmaster, someone who demands and punishes. When Jesus tells us that he wants to give himself to us as food, we are sceptical. That is because we have been nourished for far too long on the wrong kind of “bread”, the bread of relationships that do not give anything unless they receive something in return. Jesus, by contrast, asks for nothing. He simply invites us to receive his life by nourishing ourselves on him. We are weak and fragile. We need love, and God knows it. We need care, and God knows it. We need pardon, and God knows it. We need to be understood, accepted and cuddled. We are small and poor. It is not true that God has much to demand of us. Rather he has much to give us and in this Gospel he offers himself to us as our very food for eternal life.
Jesus invites us to receive the life that he is offering us. He is not demanding something from us. Rather he only wants to give, and his giving is complete
On this twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, we continue reading from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. The discourse is now entering its most intense phase. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” The first reading from the Book of Proverbs speaks of an invitation. Wisdom prepares her banquet and invites those who are simple, or lacking in understanding, to come and eat. In these beautiful lines, we are invited by the Wisdom of God to abandon our foolishness and walk in the ways of understanding. Life becomes beautiful when we accept this invitation. What is the link between these lines and the theme of the Gospel? Jesus says, “ . . 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”. These lines should not be read as a reprimand or a warning to receive communion or to go to Mass on Sunday. The main purpose of these words is not something legalistic. In fact, the true follower of Jesus can’t wait to go to Mass in Sunday because it is a joyful and beautiful banquet. If we confine ourselves to coercing people under obligation to receive the Lord Jesus, then what do we make of the Lord Jesus! This text is not a call to fulfil one’s obligations but, rather, is an invitation. It is an invitation to a banquet of an extraordinary sort.
Jesus has to beg us to receive him because he sees how reluctant we are to open ourselves to him. The problem is that we have been fed all our lives by the wrong kind of “bread”. This is the bread of relationships that only give to us if we give something in return. Jesus, by contrast, promises to give himself entirely to us at no cost.
In this passage Jesus implores us with great passion. He wants us to receive him. He offers himself to us, begging us to believe him and welcome him. His listeners cannot believe that he can be their food. In fact, there is a latent impression of God on the part of humanity, produced by our fears, that the divine being is a sort of threatening Zeus. He examines us, keeps an account of our faults, and is waiting to punish us. With Jesus we encounter another kind of reality altogether. This Messiah, the second person of the Trinity, sent by the Father, is a man who offers himself to us as food, offers himself to us as something that we are to assume and absorb. Why does Jesus have to beg us to receive him? Because we have eaten in the wrong way beforehand; because we are accustomed to the wrong kind of nourishment. We do not interpret the things that happen to us according to authentic love, but according to our traumatic experience of love. Every one of us has been disappointed in our experience of the love of others. We come to believe that no-one gives anything for nothing. Consequently we are fearful if God offers us something. We worry that he intends to make us pay in some hidden way. But this is the bread of the Father, Jesus tells us. It is not the bread that our ancestors ate, a bread that did not lead them anywhere. When Jesus speaks of the bread of the listener’s ancestors, he is referring to the manna in the desert. But he is also referring to the alternative kinds of nourishment that we, as humanity, have been fed on in the past. There is the “horizontal” bread, with all the disappointments and limitations of humanity, and then there is the bread of our heavenly Father.
The world has difficult believing in this self-emptying love of Christ, a love in which he gives himself to us as our food. We struggle to believe in this unconditional love. We present God as a taskmaster. We present the sacraments as something that must be approached according to moral or ethical rules. But Christ presents himself before us in the Eucharist as an unconditional offering.
God sends this bread to us in Christ so that we too might have the life that comes from him. This bread has eternity within it and does not simply fit in with our mentality and our way of doing things. It is something that must simply be welcomed and received by us, just as love is always a surprise that must be welcomed, not something that we have merited. The love of God is not something that we merit. It is greater than anything we can acquire by our own efforts. It is difficult to accept this fact. It is difficult to accept that Christ offers himself as food to all of us. The world does not believe in the love of Christ because it does not believe in utter gratuity. All too often we Christians have presented love not as a gratuity but as something that must be merited. All too often we have presented the sacramental life as something that must be paid for in an ethical or moral way, as something that we have to measure up to. Here, by contrast, we are face to face with love. It is not something that we approach with a sense of obligation but as a personal response, a joyful response of one who feels himself to be loved. It was not we who love first. Christ in the Eucharist reminds us of who is he before us: a pure gift, an unconditional offering. We have a latent fear of God, of his holy will, because we perceive him as someone who is demanding rather than giving. We are called, not to be suspicious of what the Lord is doing for us, but to accept his action as a gift. Only then will we begin living according to the nature that he has given us. We are weak and fragile. We need love, and God knows it. We need care, and God knows it. We need pardon, and God knows it. We need to be understood, accepted and cuddled. We are small and poor. It is not true that God has much to demand of us. Rather he has much to give us.
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