18 August 2024 - ^20th ordinary Sunday “B”

Prov. 9, 1-6; Eph. 5, 15-20; John 6, 51-58

Homily

One of the differences between a banquet and an ordinary meal is that a person is normally invited to a banquet. Normally, a person does not go to a banquet without having received an invitation, and he or she responds to the invitation even if he or she cannot go. In the Gospels of the last three Sundays, we have heard Jesus inviting us to a banquet that He has prepared for us. Today, in the first reading, we hear Wisdom's invitation to come to a banquet that she has also prepared for us.

All this reminds us of a fundamental truth, of which all the great prophets and mystics were well aware: namely, that in the spiritual life, in our Christian life, everything begins with an invitation, a call, a vocation.

The life of prayer and the mystical experience are not something we can achieve through our own personal efforts. It is a call that comes from beyond us. This call may have taken a dramatic form, as in the case of some of the great prophets, for example Isaiah and Jeremiah, or in the case of Paul, blinded by a ray of light on the road to Damascus. In other cases it is only the voice of a gentle breeze, like the one in which God manifested Himself to Elijah.

The Christian spiritual experience begins and ends with the experience of being loved and the invitation to love in return. ‘Let us love - says St John - since He (God) first loved us.’ The secret of the phenomenal energy of a Saint Paul, a Saint Bernard or a Saint Teresa of Avila lay in their conviction of being loved. The first thing in the life of a Christian is not to love, but rather to receive love. Our love - whether for God or for others - can only be a response to God's love for us. The condition for this is trust, faith in the person who loves us.

It is also important to consider the context in which these words of Jesus are set in John's Gospel. We know how this Gospel is constructed: a series of signs, each followed by a discourse. In chapter 6, we have the sign of the multiplication of the loaves, after which the crowd wants to crown Jesus as king; then Jesus walks on the lake. Then come the two discourses on the bread of life, one of which we heard last week and the other today.

To the crowd, who did not understand what he was saying, Jesus finally declared very clearly: ‘I am the bread of life... My Father's will is that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life...’. The people murmur... Jesus says again: ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world’... The word ‘flesh’, stronger than ‘body’, puts all this teaching in the context of the Incarnation. The Son of God became the Son of Man.

In fact, the whole context of this teaching is that of faith. The original meaning of this story was about the need to receive Jesus' message with faith. Then, in the first transmission of the Gospel, the story was linked to the reception of Eucharistic food. This link between the two elements invites us to re-examine the way we think about the celebration of the Eucharist.

If we come to the daily Eucharist in much the same way as we go to the petrol station to fill up our car, the Eucharist becomes a simple rite in which we think we are replenishing our spiritual strength and energy. If this is our attitude, we should not be surprised if, after many years of this practice, we find ourselves at the same point in our spiritual journey.

If, on the contrary, we encounter Christ every day in a relationship of faith, contemplative prayer and active charity towards our brothers and sisters, then, yes, the Eucharist will be a sacramental expression of this faith and love, and will nourish them.

Armand Veilleux