20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Sunday 19th August 2018)
“Bread from Heaven” – John 6:51-58
Today’s Gospel presents us with the climax of Jesus’ most controversial sermon in all of the Gospels; the Bread of Life discourse from John Chapter 6. In this section Jesus makes it clear that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood if we are to have His life within us.
The day before this sermon, Jesus had multiplied the five loaves and the two fish to feed 5000 men. Jesus was at the height of His popularity in His public ministry. He has been healing people, casting out demons, delivering powerful teachings and now He feeds a multitude. The crowds who are following Jesus are beginning to wonder whether He might be the Messiah. At the peak of public recognition, Jesus delivers the Bread of Life discourse. It is the day after the multiplication of the loaves and fish, and Jesus is in the synagogue in Capernaum. The people challenge Jesus to see if He is greater than the prophet Moses. At the time of the wandering in the desert in the Exodus with Moses, God had provided the people with bread from Heaven every single day. Jesus has provided food once. Can He do it again? Jesus reminds them that their ancestors who ate the manna in the desert died. It was food that just nourished them for that day. But Jesus can offer them bread that they can eat and live forever. But their interests peaked and they asked ‘Lord, give us this bread always’. After all, who would not want bread from Heaven all of the time. Jesus responds saying that He is the bread from Heaven, the Bread of Life. The gospel tells us that the crowds are troubled by this and begin to murmur. Jesus then makes His teaching even clearer – He is the Bread of Life, and the bread that He gives is His flesh and the drink that He offers is His blood. To drive the point home even more, Jesus explains that His flesh is real food and His blood is real drink. As you can imagine there was a shock in the crowds at hearing this. The Jews were forbidden by the law of Moses to drink the blood of animals. The blood represented the energy and the life-force of that animal. So drinking an animals’ blood would signify that you would want to participate in the life of that animal. But Jesus says that it is now okay to drink His blood. He even commands that we drink His blood and eat His flesh. What He gives us in the Eucharist is His resurrected flesh and blood so that we can live forever. We can now drink His blood as it now allows us to participate in His life, which is the life of God. Jesus is saying that ‘As I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.’
In today’s Gospel we do not hear the rest of the story of how the crowds reacted to His teaching, but if you open your bibles to John chapter 6, you can find out what happens. Jesus demands that the people listening to Him, which includes us by extension, make a decision for or against Him on this teaching. As you read, you will see that most of the crowd leaves Jesus. They took Him at His word and realised that He was not speaking metaphorically or in a purely spiritual way. After all if He was just speaking symbolically, He would have gone after the crowds and told them that they misunderstood. But he didn’t. They understood what He was saying. We too must understand what Jesus is saying. The bread and wine at Mass do not represent or symbolise Jesus’ Body and Blood, but they really are His flesh and blood under the appearance of bread and wine. We do not want to walk away like the crowd does when they hear the words of today’s Gospel. Jesus truly is the Bread of Life come down from Heaven for us. We are invited to live forever by eating His flesh and drinking His blood in the Eucharist. If we do this, we can truly say with the psalm today ‘Taste and see the goodness of the Lord’.
Let us ask ourselves – do we believe that Jesus is truly and really present, body, blood, soul and divinity in the Holy Eucharist? Do we really believe that we will live forever and have eternal life through our participation in His body and blood? Or do we murmur like the crowds in today’s Gospel? Wherever we find ourselves, let us ask the Lord to increase our faith in the Holy Eucharist this week.