Gospel according to Saint John 6,51-58:

Jesus said to the crowd: «I am the living bread which has come from heaven; whoever eats of this bread will live forever. The bread I shall give is my flesh and I will give it for the life of the world». The Jews were arguing among themselves, «How can this man give us flesh to eat?». So Jesus replied, «Truly, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood live with eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. My flesh is really food and my blood is drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, live in me and I in them. Just as the Father, who is life, sent me and I have life from the Father, so whoever eats me will have life from me. This is the bread which came from heaven; unlike that of your ancestors, who ate and later died. Those who eat this bread will live forever».

The Eucharist: Feast of Wisdom

Luis CASASUS President of the Idente Missionaries

Rome, August 18, 2024 | XX Sunday in Ordinary Time

Prov 9: 1-6; Eph 5: 15-20; Jn 6: 51-58

Most of us (not all, not always), when we commit a sin or an offense to a person, regret not having had a clearer vision of the consequences of our action, and sometimes we learn with pain some of the wisdom that we lack. Haste, or our character, causes us to act without a minimum of consistency or gentleness.

So it happened to a man who was desperately late for an important appointment as he pulled into a subway parking garage. He jumped out of the car and opened the back door to grab his briefcase. Just at that moment, an employee approached him and explained that each owner had to park his vehicle in that garage. Since he was in such a hurry, he quickly got into the car, rolled down the window and said: Okay, which way do I have to go? The attendant looked out the window and replied: Down the ramp and to your right, sir… but first you’ll have to get into the front seat of your car.

It is sometimes said that with age we gain wisdom, the ability to make the right decisions. Perhaps that is why Mark Twain once said: Life would be infinitely happier if we could be born at 80 and gradually approach 18. That observation inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, made into a film in 2008, which tells the story of an old man who begins to age “backwards” and becomes progressively younger and younger… until he reaches childhood, where he can take advantage of what he has learned in his years as an adult and an old man.

But today the Readings speak of different Wisdom. What we modernly and vulgarly understand by “wisdom” is the accumulation of knowledge or experience; the more we know, the wiser we think we are; it is difficult to resist this temptation. Thus, many people pride themselves on being wise enough not to feel the need for a God, nor for a teacher to guide them.

The Book of Proverbs, which we see in the First Reading, personifies Wisdom and Foolishness as two women: a lady and a prostitute (Prov 9). Each has built a house, prepared a banquet, and invited guests to come and partake of the meal each has prepared. While wisdom’s banquet of meat and wine results in life for the participant, Foolishness’s offering of bread and water leads only to death.

One may wonder if there is such a dull person as to choose Foolishness over Wisdom. But since the banquet of Wisdom requires a long period of learning and sacrifice, the lure of the quick pleasure offered by Foolishness easily ensnares many.

We generally want to satisfy our desires right now and not later. There is a psychological discomfort associated with self-denial. From a purely biological perspective, our instinct demands that we take advantage of the reward at hand, and resisting this instinct is difficult. Evolution has endowed people, like animals, with a strong desire for immediate rewards. In all prehistoric human environments, food availability was uncertain. Like other animals, humans survived if they had a strong tendency to take the smaller, immediate reward and skip the larger but delayed reward. Our tendency is often to behave like animals or cavemen, even if we do so with advanced technology.

Many will remember a well-known study conducted in the 1960s, which explains a lot about why delaying gratification is beneficial. In the experiment, children were placed in a room with a tasty bonbon on a plate. The researcher gave the children an easy instruction: You can either eat the bonbon now, or wait 15 minutes and you’ll get two of them. The researchers found that the children who were able to wait for the second bonbon without eating the first one did better on tests, had better health and were less likely to have behavioral problems.

That also explains why Yahweh instructed Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It seemed to them a direct path to Wisdom, but Wisdom is only attained in obedience and trust, both to a teacher and especially to God. They did not have that virtue, that quality that demands and is linked to Wisdom: patience, knowing how to wait, not rushing to pick a fruit that is neither ripe nor digestible.

Every morning, afternoon and evening presents many powerful reasons to be impatient. A long line. Information that takes too late about the health of a loved one. A goal not materializing fast enough. The people under my care don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Rejection. Disappointment. How to deal with it all? And, to top it all off, one of the phrases we say and hear most often is: Be patient!

As the Second Reading says, the excess of wine (and other substances) and the haste in exposing my judgments or satisfying my desires, pretend to be the way to a happiness without patience, like the one sought by the worshippers of the Greek god Dionysus.

As St. Paul reminds us, contrary to what many proclaim today, the dilemma is not between happiness and frustration, but between life and death. That is why Jesus ends his discourse today by saying: Whoever eats this bread will live forever. They may be difficult words to understand, like all the words we hear in this Gospel text, but he does not sugarcoat them or relativize them; on the contrary, in a violently provocative way: Do you also want to go away? Peter’s famous response is that of someone who has embraced Wisdom, beyond mere intellectual understanding: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life (Jn 6: 67-68).

There is no time or possibility of explanations. What is immediate and possible is to listen to the Master. Understanding, analysis, reasoning, will come later.

—ooOoo—

I would like to propose a simple story to meditate on with attention. This, for three reasons: it expresses, without theological or scientific terms, the origin of the essential value that the Eucharist has for us (beyond beliefs); it is a true story; and it is an image of how we can be authentic nourishment for our neighbor.

At the end of a difficult operation, a severely wounded soldier was told by doctors that there was a good chance of recovery if the patient made the effort to eat properly. But the soldier would not eat anything. The nurses and the nuns tried everything, but he refused to eat and only drank water and sometimes a little juice.

One of his companions sensed why the soldier did not eat: he was homesick. So his friend, since the hospital was not far from the soldier’s home, offered to bring the young man’s father to visit him. The commanding officer approved and the friend went to the parents’ house. As the father was about to leave for the hospital, the mother wrapped up a loaf of freshly baked bread for her son.

The patient was very happy to see his father, but he still did not eat, until the father said to him: Son, this bread was made especially for you by your mother. The young man was encouraged and began to eat.

If we are aware of where the Eucharist comes from, even if we do not understand much more, we will be in the situation of that soldier, who felt strengthened directly by his mother. Certainly, no one else could give him that strength, which through the bread signified her maternal presence. The others, experts in health and well-intentioned, could not make him understand the importance of his eating, how decisive it was for his life.

Wisdom is acquired, as the First Reading explains, by being with the one who is wise. The Eucharist is truly the Feast of Wisdom spoken of in the Book of Proverbs. By eating the Body and drinking the Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we unite ourselves to the person of Christ through his humanity. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. By being united to Christ’s humanity, we are at the same time united to his divinity.

Nothing that Christ does is superfluous or unnecessary. We all need to transform our deepest feelings, our beliefs and our most cherished memories into something tangible. That is why in all religions there is liturgical music and in all the arts there are representations of divine and human love.

That’s why we blow out the candles on our birthday cake, to represent that the years gone by don’t count as much as the very special moment of our birth. That’s why we carry the picture of the people we love in our wallet or cell phone. That is why there are the gifts, the caresses, the hugs, the candles that many place before the image of a saint. All the Sacraments are oriented to satisfy this need, but the Eucharist has a special characteristic, which Jesus summarizes in a simple way: Do this in memory of me. Of course, he is not speaking only of an emotional remembrance or an effort of memory; it is about making his presence alive in us, with the passion that the first Christians did and that we see reflected in the report of Pliny the Younger to the emperor Trajan;

The Christians have the custom of meeting on a fixed day before sunrise, singing among themselves alternately a hymn to Christ as to a god, to commit themselves with an oath not to commit crimes, robbery or banditry, nor adultery, to keep their word, not to refuse a deposit demanded by justice. Once these rites have been performed, they are in the habit of separating and coming together again to take their meal, which, whatever they may say, is ordinary and harmless.

May we, personally and in community, be heirs to that faith and passion for the gift of his incarnate presence that Christ makes to us. As history and our own experience prove, it is something that moves and brings many people of good will closer to God. Let us approach the Eucharist with enthusiasm, just as we embrace or kiss a loved one with intense affection, not out of habit, obligation or protocol.

Let us also remember that the wine on the altar, the Blood of Christ, gathers all the suffering and pain of the world, not forgetting that wine represents joy, which should console us by reminding us that God fills with meaning and fruitfulness the misfortunes that burden every human being and that so often we can neither understand nor cope with.

_______________________________

In the Sacred Hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

Luis CASASUS

President