Homily: 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 18, 2024
My dear brothers and sisters, today the 20th Sunday in Ordinary time year B is the 4th consecutive Sunday that the Holy Mother the church presents to us for reflection a gospel reading taken from John chapter 6 which dwells on the bread from heaven that gives life to the world. Before the Church accords a special importance and emphasis on any practice, if one looks at that practice well, one will easily see that it would be embedded so much on the words and teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is always noteworthy that whenever Jesus taught about His body and blood, He did not use a coded language. In the most strongest of terms, Christ Himself emphasized eating His body and drinking His blood. Christ used clear and intelligible words in order to avoid confusion in the minds of the believers.
Through the gospel of John, we usually see that whenever Jesus was misunderstood by his listeners, either Jesus himself or the evangelist writing corrected the misunderstanding. We can give some examples: (1) In John 3:3, Jesus taught ‘very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ This created a misunderstanding what this birth actually means, and Jesus cleared the misunderstanding in John 3: 5 by saying, ‘very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.’ (2) In John 2:19, Jesus taught, ‘destroy this temple and in three days, I will raise it up.’ The Jews misunderstood Jesus, they thought He was talking about the temple of Jerusalem. In John 2:21, St John cleared this misunderstanding by saying that Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body. (3) In John 11:11, Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going to awaken him.’ His disciples thought that he was talking about ordinary sleep. In John 11:13, John remarked that Jesus had been speaking about the death of Lazarus, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.
But in the case of His teaching about the Holy Eucharist, we observe that neither Jesus nor the evangelist clarified any misunderstanding. In John 6:50-51, Jesus said that whoever eats of this bread will live forever and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. There were dispute and misunderstanding about what Jesus meant. Jesus did not clarify the misunderstanding, instead the more they murmured, the more he stressed and emphasized and repeated and shocked them with those strange words. It was at the peak of their murmuring that he reemphasized, ‘very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life and I will raise them up at the last day for my flesh is true food and my blood true drink.
We recall too that at His last supper with his disciples, Jesus took bread and gave His disciples and said ‘this is my body’ and took the cup of wine and gave them and said ‘this is my blood’, He asked them to do it in His memory. He did not tell them that this bread can stand as a symbol of my remembrance. No, he said, this is my body. From all these, we can see that Jesus wants us to understand Him literally and approach and receive the Holy Eucharist; His body and Blood with faith as He Himself instituted it. The first reading of today calls it wisdom. “Wisdom has built her house….she has mixed wine, she has set her table….come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed, lay aside immaturity and live and walk in the way of insight.’ Brothers and sisters, let us not allow any thing to take us away from this Sacrament, the Supreme wisdom from God.
