2015/08/16 — 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We continue with the Bread of Life Discourse. Jesus responds to questioning by adding to what he had said, and we get another Old Testament type of the Eucharist. We are told to live wisely.


Proverbs 9:1-6 depicts Wisdom as a woman — the house with seven columns suggests that she is a queen. She prepares a banquet and issues an invitation to all, like the king who gives a wedding banquet for his son in Jesus' parable. Today's liturgy takes Wisdom's banquet as a type, a figure, of the Eucharist. To turn to Wisdom's banquet is to leave folly in favor of life (Jesus promises eternal life) and understanding.


The responsorial psalm is six of the eight verses we used last Sunday — Ps 34:2-7 — with the response from verse 8, placing our meditation on God's goodness in the context of tasting.


The second reading — Ephesians 5:15-20 — also urges us to live wisely, with understanding, not foolishly. Wisdom's banquet includes wine, but we are not to get drunk and become debauched. We should be under the influence of the Spirit and praise God— as we just did in the Psalm.


Our gospel reading — John 6:51-58 — begins with the last verse of last Sunday's gospel. Once more, the people argue. Certainly, it must have been puzzling for them to hear Jesus speak of his own flesh as the bread that gives everlasting life to those who eat it. We know how he can do it, in the light of the Last Supper, where he made the bread his body and the wine his blood. So we eat his flesh and drink his blood sacramentally.

Drinking Jesus' blood is an element that he adds in his response to the latest questioning. Jesus doesn't back down but builds on what he has said previously, insisting that his flesh is real food and his blood real drink, and that eating and drinking them confer resurrection and eternal life. In the original Greek of the gospel Jesus changes the verb he uses for eating his flesh. Through verse 53 ("Unless you eat…"), the verb is "phagein," which is eating in general. But beginning in verse 54 ("Whoever eats my flesh…"), the verb is "trogein," which means sinking one's teeth into something. Jesus' body, broken in the crucifixion, is to be eaten like the paschal lamb of the Exodus. His blood is the true blood of the lamb, which saved the Israelites from the destroying angel. (Exodus 12:21-23) It is the true blood of the covenant between God and his people. (Exodus 24:3-8)

"You are what you eat" was a slogan in the 60's and 70's. When we eat Jesus he remains in us and we in him, so that we share in his eternal life, just as he shares in the Father's life. There is an intimacy, or communion, between us and him like the communion of the persons of the Trinity.


My apology for being later than usual with this: I'm still catching up from my retreat. I hope you will find it useful.