20th Sunday of the Year B

FIRST READING Proverbs 9:1-6

Wisdom has built herself a house,
she has erected her seven pillars,
she has slaughtered her beasts, prepared her wine,
she has laid her table.
She has despatched her maidservants
and proclaimed from the city's heights:
'Who is ignorant? Let him step this way.'
To the fool she says,
'Come and eat my bread, .
drink the wine I have prepared!
Leave your folly and you will live,
walk in the ways of perception.'

RESPONSORIAL PSALM: Ps 33:2-3. 1O-15.
Response Taste and see that the Lord is good.

1. I will bless the Lord at all times,
his praise always on my lips;
in the Lord my soul shall make its boast.
The humble shall hear and be glad. Response

2. Revere the Lord, you his saints.
They lack nothing, those who revere him.
Strong lions suffer want and go hungry
but those who seek the Lord lack no blessing. Response

3. Come, children, and hear me
that I may teach you the fear ofthe Lord.
Who is he who longs for life
and many days, to enjoy his prosperity? Response

4. Then keep your tongue from evil
and your lips from speaking deceit.
Turn aside from evil and do good;
seek and strive after peace. Response

SECOND READING Ephesians 5:15-2O

Be very careful about the sort of lives you lead, like intelligent and not like senseless people. This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it. And do not be thoughtless but recognise what is the will of the Lord. Do not drug yourselves with wine, this is simply dissipation; be filled with the Spirit. Sing the words and tunes of the psalms and hymns when you are together, and go on singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts, so that always and everywhere you are giving thanks to God who is our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Gospel Acclamation Jn 1: 12. 14

Alleluia, alleluia!
The Word was made flesh, he lived among us
to all who did accept him
he gave power to become children of God.
Alleluia!

or Jn 6: 56

Alleluia, alleluia!
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood
lives in me and I live in him.
Alleluia!

GOSPEL John 6:51-58

Jesus said to the crowd:

'I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.
Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever;
and the bread that I shall give
is my flesh, for the life of the world.'

Then the Jews started arguing with one another: 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' they said. Jesus replied:

'I tell you most solemnly,
if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood,
you will not have life in you.
Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood
has eternal life,
and I shall raise him up on the last day.
For my flesh is real food
and my blood is real drink.
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood
lives in me
and 1 live in him.
As I, who am sent by the living Father,
myself draw life from the Father,
so whoever eats me will draw life from me.
This is the bread come down from heaven;
not like the bread our ancestors ate:
they are dead,
but anyone who eats this bread will live for ever.'

 Jesus wants us to live forever, now

It is amazing to think that people spend such so much time and money on beautifying themselves in order to make themselves look younger that they are.

It is funny that young girls want to look older by dressing and putting on make-up to look like adults. Older people do the same to look younger! It seems a sense of denial sets in at a certain age as people suddenly realise that they cannot stay younger, feel younger and look younger, and seek to do so ‘with a dab of cream, a tonic, a shampoo, a visit to a health spa. The craving to maintain one’s looks, to appear younger, is ultimately one that will end in defeat. This is not to say we owe it to ourselves to look after our bodies with the right amount of food, a balanced diet and regular exercise. After all, even if it is to ensure living a few extra years of life for others’ sake and serving them, that is good enough reason to stay healthy in my book.

But it is vanity that is so appealing, to be like the air-brushed models, is the ideal that is set before us, that causes so many to spend hundreds of euro each year on skincare products and the like. The fashion and cosmetics industries are cashing in big-time.

It is instructive to note that one description of a hair colouring -shampoo or a cosmetic is a ‘formula’.In myths and legends a magic potion could prolong length of days. In history people have looked in vain for the elixir of life, the ‘holy grail’, even in Irish mytholgy, Tír na n-Ōg , , the land of endless youth. In the age of discovery, Spanish adventurers toiled in vain for the golden city of immortality known as ‘el Dorado’.

Stories and films still are made that transcend the inevitability of death, or communicating with the dead, or going back in time; even cryo-preservation are vain attempts to elude the inevitable and hard truth, that in the words of Shakespeare’s Gertrude in Hamlet – ‘all that lives must die’ and ‘death comes to us all’.

This illusory and elusive search for endless youth appeals to some part of us especially at the height of our joys – we want to live forever. Even notoriety, fame and celebrity - I believe - are searches for the infinite and immortality. The hope that our names and our achievements will be noted, commemorated and celebrated. We want to be known, revered, and honoured, and above all remembered. In that way, we ‘live on’ in those that follow us.

Why is this? And what are we to make of those times, in contrast - when we wish our lives would end? That there will be, we hope, an end to current misery, loneliness, depression and pain? Both are realities in all our lives. We all have good days and bad days. On the bad days we want the good times back - and to endure. We want to live ‘happily ever after’.

[This is not to say that we cannot look or desire to look beautiful or at least be presentable out of courtesy. But we must avoid excessive care and pampering I feel or we become caught up in ourselves and it serves no good to others and can be wasteful of time and resources.]

God has planted in all of us this quest for immortality. All human desires are ultimately desires for God. This restlessness we feel with our current state is actually worth pondering. Many of the pleasures and happiness we seek are in fact quite licit – such as satisfaction in food and drink, in the pay packet, in leisure, in rest, in friendships, in celebrating rites of passage, in occasions and feasts, in marital love and childbirth – are gifts to us from the Creator. They make life worth living and tolerable at least. But lasting happiness can only be found in God – all other things are passing fancies. They are meant to serve to point towards, rather than distract us from, the ultimate goal – the very meaning of our existence (raison d’être) – eternal life with God for whom we were made.

In the Gospel passage this Sunday – Jesus repeats Himself a lot. ‘Repetition for emphasis’, was a phrase an English teacher I once knew used to say. If you want to stress a point, especially a central point, you must repeat it for your hearers. By the third hearing it will register with them.

This is the first point to be drawn from the passage this Sunday. Jesus wants us to live forever (so do we!) and in the Eucharist He gives us the means to do so.

Jesus says:

Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever;

Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life,

 ...but anyone who eats this bread will live for ever.'

The second point is that this ‘everlasting life’ begins now!

It is a continuum. We have begun eternal life already by means of the Eucharist we receive. Blessed John Paul II was quite taken by the fact that Jesus said: Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and noted that Jesus does not say ‘will have’. He uses the present tense. In other words, Jesus says ‘you have it’.

Sometimes we may have heard that term –it’s American slang –‘get a life, will you?’ We might have heard it used by someone. Usually ‘get a life’ is used to connote that we are unimpressed by someone’s annoying habits, someone’s annoying pre-occupations, or the fact that they are obsessed with something trivial or boring, and we want them need to change their ways and become more realistic or stimulating .

Jesus wants us to live forever, but are we living it now, as referred to in a line used in an excellent movie called ‘The Way’ I saw recently. A wayward son, about to go on a great adventure, is having a disagreement with his ‘boring’ father who is an eye-doctor. They are driving to the airport for the son’s flight and the father is pleading with him to settle down and make a career and home for himself. The son is undaunted, and challenges his father about his lifestyle. The father describes his work and concludes, saying: ‘it’s a living’. ‘But’, the son counters, ‘are you living it?’ It gives the father pause.

Jesus wants us to live a fully human and supernatural life now. This is a Eucharistic life. He wants to live in us and we in Him.

Jesus said to the crowd:

...and the bread that I shall give
is my flesh, for the life of the world.'

'I tell you most solemnly,
if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood,
you will not have life in you.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood
lives in me
and 1 live in him.

As I, who am sent by the living Father,
myself draw life from the Father,
so whoever eats me will draw life from me.

So if we are not receiving Jesus in the Eucharist we are dead spiritually. We are ineffective, lifeless, and certainly not living the kind of life Jesus wants. It’s as simple as that. The Eucharist is not only a pledge or guarantee that we will live forever but a sign that we are living - and living eternity - now.

That does not mean that we can now sit back and bask in the glow of the Eucharist. But rather that we live the same kind of life that Jesus lived. Jesus’ relationship with the Father – (for example ‘my food is to the will of my Father’), and all the intimate moments He shared with His Father, becomes the template of the kind of life we are to live –nourished by the Eucharist– in other words –disciples – imitators of Christ, doing the Father’s will, ministering to others. The Eucharist – the Mass and adoration - must be at the heart of our lives and vocations. Not only we do fully live – because we live Eucharistic-ally - but others we come in contact with too are meant to also - Jesus’ flesh and blood truly present in the Eucharist -  is meant to be – ‘for the life of the world.'

 We are called to become what we receive, broken and shared, and life for others. Let us now pray that the Holy Spirit will enlighten us in how to be Eucharistic ambassadors!