20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
The first reading this weekend tells how Wisdom has built a house and invited the foolish (those who are not yet wise) to feast on the food that is her teaching Wisdom has spread a table of choice food and drink. She has invited the all of us to the feast. Those who eat the bread and drink the wine of Wisdom perceive God’s saving action and understand the life to which they are called as God’s own people. In the Gospel, the dialogue between Jesus and the people continues. This time they are arguing about how Jesus could possibly give them his flesh to eat. Jesus insists that if they don’t eat it they will not have life in them and they will not have eternal life.
The receiving of this gift from god becomes the acceptance and acknowledgment of the Lord’s care for us and thus, ultimately, the nourishment we need to continue the journey. There is one concrete way that the Lord helps us to make this connection that is by providing the Eucharist the bread of Life. In the bread and wine offered at Mass the risen Lord makes himself present. While the priest invokes the words of blessing (thus acting as the instrument of Christ or “in persona Christi”), the conversion of the bread and wine into the blood into the Body and Blood of Christ remains the work of God through the working of the Holy Spirit. The offer to partake in the “living bread” is God’s offer of unity with Christ and his followers. When we receive communion we don’t receive an inanimate object. This is Jesus the son of God we receive . The One Who Is who was and will be in the future. When we receive communion we take within ourselves the dynamic, powerful presence who speaks to us through the life He has given us. How great is our God. He has found a way for each of us to have continual, intimate encounters with Him.
Let us pray, for those whose access to the Gift of the Eucharist or Blessed Sacrament is not so easy whether they have left the faith or perhaps they might be struggling with it or for many they may not yet found it as we remember that Jesus has said ‘I am the Bread of life he who comes to me will never be hungry.’ This Sunday we are invited to have faith in Christ’s presence among us; we are challenged to believe that we really can live in him, and he in us. The more often we accept the invitation to communion, the more we will understand its meaning. Let us pray, for those whose access to the Gift of the Eucharist or Blessed Sacrament is not so easy whether they have left the faith or perhaps they might be struggling with it or for many they may not yet found it as we remember that Jesus has said ‘I am the Bread of life he who comes to me will never be hungry.
Fullerton T 