TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: John 6:51-58

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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The words of Jesus seem difficult to understand, but it is only because they are difficult to believe

Jesus words in this passage from the Gospel are so direct that they seem difficult to understand. "If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink." These words are shockingly clear and direct, but we nevertheless have trouble comprehending them. Why is this so? Because we have not developed the mental categories to grasp the concept of someone who can love us in this way. The Eucharist proclaims, shouts, cries aloud the nature of God. We are to eat bread and drink wine in memory of him, and this bread and wine have the real presence of Jesus in them. This notion is so simple that we cannot understand it, and it even seems absurd and scandalous. The idea that God places himself at my complete disposition, and becomes completely assimilated by me, is a shock to our normal way of thinking and leaves us bewildered. The immense God who created the galaxies and who cannot be contained by the universe places himself at my complete disposal! This is so scandalously beautiful that we do not have the courage to believe it. 

Our ability to believe in these words of Jesus is hampered by our difficulty in believing that God accepts us unconditionally

All of us have wounds of love. All of us have been traumatised in our relationships. We have grave difficulties receiving affection and in considering ourselves to be completely accepted by others. These wounds hamper our ability to grasp the notion that the ultimate action of God towards us is one of  unconditional acceptance, an acceptance that asks only to be believed.

"He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives for me". Certainly! Just as a child believes simply in the unconditional love of his parents for him, so we too must cling to the love of God for us and believe in it without qualifying it. These words of Jesus are not difficult but scandalously simple! The problem is not understanding them but believing in them, and Jesus entreats his listeners to believe in him. Why is it so difficult for us to believe these words? All of us latently believe that God really wants us to be food for him. We believe that God created us so that we would serve him. We think of God as being a source of authority and power who in the end requires that we do certain things for him. We go to church and listen to the Scriptures, and we constantly think, "When is the payback? What is it that I have to do to get the benefits from God that I want?" But in this Gospel passage Jesus is telling us that there is no payback! He places himself at our complete disposal and asks nothing except that we believe. We are not God's food, he is ours. Jesus has become our servant. He has died so that we can have life. This passage calls us to live with Christ without feeling that we are constantly under scrutiny, feeling that we are insufficient and unacceptable to the Lord. There is someone who loves us simply because we are, not because of how we are.

We have a choice: we can murmur against these words of Jesus and say they are absurd; or we can believe that God give's himself to us totally regardless of our actions

To refuse this love is the most foolish thing we can do. In last week's Gospel we read how the people murmured against these sayings of Jesus, closing themselves in the narrow confines of their own intellects that could not comprehend love of this sort. Instead of murmuring against Jesus' words, we must head in the opposite direction - towards the clamorous, unexpected, scandalous love of God for us. God does not keep an account of our actions, holding back his love until the account is in his favour. God is father, a father without limits, and Jesus is our servant.