EATING THE LIVING BREAD FROM HEAVEN

SUNDAY, TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Prov. 9:1-6; Ps 34:2-3,10-15; Eph 5:15-20; Jn 6:51-58

Eating the Living Bread from Heaven

The readings before us this Sunday continue the themes of the last two Sundays. It is about the heavenly bread which comes down to earth for the life of the world. With today’s readings, the Church gently guides our minds from a too-physicalistic understanding of the bread of heaven to a more spiritual knowledge. The three readings and the responsorial Psalm use the image of food and drink to attract and hold our memory and imaginations, to lead our minds to the immaterial food that our spirits can taste and relish. The response to the Psalm says: Taste and see that the Lord is good. What do we taste, and what do we see? Ordinarily, we taste food and drink with our physical tongue, but the tasting is to confirm that the Lord is God. But how can tasting food and drinks bring us to see the goodness of the Lord? It is possible only if we know that the Lord provided the food, the goodness of which demonstrates his loving providence to us. This was how the Israelites came to recognise the goodness of the Lord in the wilderness. We read the exodus experience two Sundays ago. When the Lord fed his people with manna and meat from heaven, they witnessed the goodness of the Lord.

However, the physical eating of the manna and meat did not bring the Israelites to believe or see the goodness of the Lord, for many of them still doubted and failed to enter the rest of God. Hence, they ate and drank physically and not spiritually. The first reading leads us to understand that food and drink are more spiritual than physical. Wisdom does not set a physical table but spiritual. “Wisdom has built herself a house, she has erected her seven pillars, she has slaughtered her beast, prepared her wine, she has laid her table.” The person of wisdom depicted with feminine character is a created natural wisdom, a cognate of the Eternal Wisdom, who governs the whole of creation and orders all to God. The whole creation is like a table to which we (the naturally wise persons) are invited to eat and drink and discover the goodness and wisdom of God. Nature calls out to the ignorant to come and eat and become wise. “‘Who is ignorant? Let him step this way.’ To the fool she says, ‘Come and eat my bread, drink the wine I have prepared! Leave your folly and you will live, walk in the ways of perception.’” Though nature serves us food, the contemplation of nature is the spiritual food and drink that gives us the knowledge of God’s goodness.

The Eternal Wisdom made flesh for our salvation followed the same course of natural wisdom. He built himself a house by taking our human body; He erected his seven pillars by teaching us his virtuous and sinless life on earth and built his Church on the twelve apostles who witnessed his sinless life; He slaughtered his beast and prepared his wine by delivering his body to death and shedding his blood on the cross for us; He laid his table by instituting the Eucharistic Banquet as a memorial meal for us, through which we contemplate the mystery of the incarnation of the Only Begotten Son of God for our salvation; He has despatched his maidservants by sending out preachers of the Good News to the whole world. He confirms these in the Gospel: “Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.”

It is clear, therefore, that the real food and drink we are invited to eat and drink is the mystery of the Eternal Word Incarnate in our human flesh. We celebrate this mystery at every Eucharistic communion, the Sacrament of which is the Eucharist we receive. By receiving what is physically given and consecrated by the word of God, the Spirit leads us to meditate on the spiritual reality which the Sacraments present to us. Thus, St. Paul invites us in the second reading to approach the mystery with intelligence and wisdom and not as fools. “And do not be thoughtless but recognise what is the will of the Lord. Do not drug yourselves with wine, this is simply dissipation; be filled with the Spirit.” One who eats and drinks the Sacraments thoughtfully and meditatively eats and drinks our Lord Jesus Christ. We draw our spiritual life subsequently from his own life by understanding the love of the Father, who sends his Only Son to be our food and salvation. This understanding fills our hearts with the warmth of God’s love, the Holy Spirit, who enables us to break out into songs of praise to God our Father through his Son, Jesus Christ. This song of thanksgiving is the Eucharist that we become by our lives of love and sacrifice. “As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me.”

Let us pray: O God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things; we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire.