Homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Real And Profound Means We Are United To God

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, August 18, 2024

In Christianity, there are two scandals. The first scandal is the scandal of the Incarnation. In the prologue of the Gospel of John, Jesus is described as the Word made flesh, which is another way of saying that God became human, that God, the creator of all things, has pitched his tent among us. He has become one of us, that the man Jesus is literally God, and his death on the cross literally gives us eternal life. The second scandal is the scandal of the Eucharist— that what we eat and drink at Mass called the Eucharist is not something but Someone, that bread and wine, as it appears to be, is truly and literally the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. In today’s Gospel (John 6:51-58), we continue to read the great Bread of Life Discourse. Speaking to the Jews, Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever” (John 6:51). Based on this declaration, the Church insists that the Eucharist is the food that feeds us and equips us for life in the heavenly realm. It is like a lifejacket. If you are going to travel on a boat across a sea, you have to put on a lifejacket. On April 10, 2024, a young and popular actor in Nigeria named Junior Pope and three other actors died while they were returning from a movie set. How did they die? The boat they were traveling in across the River Niger capsized. The actors who survived the accident were those who wore lifejackets. The Eucharist is like a spacesuit. You have to wear it if you are going to walk in space. Life is a journey. And on this journey, we need nourishment. We need sustenance. No other food can offer and guarantee us all these but the Body of Christ. Moreover, Jesus knows the brunt of this journey of life. He lived it himself. So, he journeys with us. He goes before us and offers himself to us as our nourishment and support.

When the Jewish crowd heard Jesus declare himself as the “living bread that came down from heaven” they resisted him: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they quarried. Why did the Jews react negatively to his sermon? Littered in the Hebrew Scripture, which is the Old Testament, is the prohibition of eating meat with blood. In Genesis, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the eating of meat with blood is obviously forbidden. The blood of an animal was seen as its life. So, it was not only disgusting for Jews to eat raw meat, it is against their law. Now, if the consumption of animal flesh and blood was forbidden by the Jewish law, how much more human flesh and blood? Yet, that’s what he says. Jesus was given every opportunity to render his word more acceptable by making them metaphorical and symbolic. In the Gospel of John chapter 3, we read of Jesus meeting a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews named Nicodemus. This man came to Jesus at night for fear of being seen by fellow Pharisees. In their conversation, Jesus told Nicodemus about being born again: “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3). Because he took Jesus’ words literally, Nicodemus wondered, “How can a person once grown old be born again?” Of course, Jesus corrects him for taking his words literally, when he says, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” So, we have an account of Jesus in the Bible clarifying himself when he was misunderstood or taken too literally. 

In our Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus’ speech was also taken literally. When he said, “The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world,” the Jews became more angry and agitated, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they asked. They understood what he was talking about. They took him literally and resisted him. Rather than clarify his statement, Jesus doubles down: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Jesus was given the chance to render his language as a metaphor but rather than do so, he raises the temperature. He makes it more vividly realistic and if you want, more appalling. To rob it in, he adds, “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” Moses, Elijah, the Buddha, Mohammad, or any religious founder ever spoke that way. What does this tell us? It communicates profoundly that Christianity is not primarily a system of ideas or moral recommendation. Jesus is not one teacher or guru among the many. Christianity is a relationship to Jesus. It is an organic friendship with him. We remain in him and he remains in us. What is the means by which we remain in him and he in us? It’s the eating of his Body and the drinking of his Blood. So, see the Eucharist as the most profound, the most supreme and the most real way of remaining in Jesus and Jesus in you. Even if you don’t really understand the Church’s teaching on Transubstantiation, which says that in the great act of consecration, the substance of the bread and wine— that is to say, their deepest and core reality change into the Body and Blood of Jesus, even as the appearances, accidents, species of the bread and wine remain, look at the Eucharist as the real and concrete way you remain in Jesus and Jesus remains in you. The Eucharist is finally the means we find union with God. 

In the sixth chapter of John, we find the main reason why up and down the centuries, the Catholic Church continues to resist all attempts to soften the words of our Savior, to turn them into a mere symbolic speech. It is precisely because he is who he is. This change can be effected at the deepest level. Check this out! Anyone of us can effect a symbolic change. There is a red cap of my late father in my possession. My dad died on June 11, 1984, that is 40 years ago. But I still have the same cap he wore, and I consider it the symbol of my father. We can read sermons and writings of great saints. We can read speeches of great political figures in the history of the country. We can even mimic the way they spoke and then conclude that these speeches offer us the spirit of those great figures. That’s fine. We can all effect symbolic changes, but God by his speech effects being at the deepest level because God’s speech is the means by which the world comes into existence. Jesus Christ is not one human being among the many. He is the Word made flesh. Therefore, whatever he says is. His speech is not descriptive but creative. The Eucharist is the means by which we are united to Christ and therefore to the Father. If you get this and understand it, I tell you, you will never miss Mass for the rest of your life. 

May God give you his peace!