Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)
August 01, 2021 11:00 am · Sergio Muñoz Fita
The discourse on the bread of life is the great teaching of Jesus on the mystery of the Eucharist. After performing the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes that we heard last Sunday, Jesus returns to Capernaum and begins a conversation that originates with the initial question, "Rabbi, when did you get here?” The Lord's answer orients everything he will say later. The Lord comes to tell them, "You seek me because I have fed you with a food that gives you a perishable life, but there is another, better life, eternal life. That is the one you must seek above all else, the supernatural life that I give you". At the end of today's Gospel, Christ affirms that he himself is the bread of life that fully satisfies because he gives us the only life that never ends.
We have spoken over the last few weeks of our vocation as signs of contradiction. We have said that everything begins with our participation in the very life of Jesus. That life, which we receive in Baptism and which is nourished in the Eucharist, is rejected by many because, like the Jews in today's Gospel, the world is concerned with the life that is here and now. Christ has come to give us eternal glory and we eat that glory in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is also a sign of contradiction, and it was so from the very beginning. We all remember how this discourse of the Bread of Life that we have begun to listen to today ended. In three weeks time, we will come to the final outcome of this page of the Gospel and we will hear these words: "After hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” (...) As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” (Jn 6:60, 66-67).
It should not surprise us then that a similar situation is being experienced today in relation to the Eucharist. For example, when the Church teaches the conditions for reception of Holy Communion, there are those who use the same words of the Gospel and say: “This saying is hard; who can accept it?" What we must ask ourselves this evening is whether we too are ready to be signs of contradiction by defending the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament and by reminding our fellow human beings that, as St. Paul writes in his First Letter to the Corinthians, whoever eats the Body of the Lord unworthily “eats and drinks judgment on himself.” (1 Cor 11:29).
I would like to dwell more on this, but for today let us remain with the teaching of this Sunday's readings and thank God for having given us this bread from heaven, the bread of angels, which nourishes us on our pilgrimage through life. Let us also say: "Lord, give us this bread always" (Jn 6:34) and let us feel a real hunger to receive Jesus in the Mystery of the Eucharist. Let us make the effort to make our whole life revolve around Sunday Mass and even daily Mass, if that is possible. Let us not get so caught up in this world that we neglect our love for the Lord who invites us to eat his Body every weekend. Let us also not fall into the trap of thinking that the Mass heard or followed at home, is the same as being in the Church, because it is not the same. How can you be satisfied with a Mass where you cannot receive Holy Communion? How can that be the same? If the Mass is a banquet to which the whole family of God is invited and is an act of adoration that we offer to God united as brothers and sisters how can following from home be the same?
Let us ask the Lord for the grace to become signs of contradiction also through our love for the Eucharist. Let us do so with the prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose feast we celebrate today, and of St. Francis of Assisi, which we prayed at the beginning of this series of homilies:
“In order to imitate and be actually more like Christ our Lord, I want and choose poverty with Christ poor rather than riches, opprobrium with Christ replete with it rather than honors; and to desire to be rated as worthless and a fool for Christ, who first was held as such, rather than wise or prudent in this world.” (Saint Ignatius of Loyola)
“May the fiery and honey-sweet power of your love, O Lord, wean me from all things under heaven, so that I may die for love of your love, who deigned to die for love of my love.” (Saint Francis of Assisi).