Cycle B - Year II:  

19 August 2018: Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

(Liturgical Color: Green)

Readings:

First Reading:        Proverbs 9:1-6

Second Reading:   Ephesians 5:15-20

Gospel:Please Read  John 6:51-58

Jesus, the living bread!

 We used to take pride that Filipinos are known as hospitable people. But now that the nation is bitterly divided, one wonders whether the well-known Filipino hospitality is now just a myth.

Hospitality is simply an opportunity to show love and care, which is now wanting in our national consciousness at these most trying times of history because of political differences.  It is sad.

But the Good News is that our Lord Jesus Christ reveals to us the hospitality of God in this Sunday's Gospel reading, where Jesus speaks about the Bread of Life: I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." (Jn 6:51)

Now, eating His flesh and drinking His blood is not an invitation to cannibalism, as the Jews feared. Instead, in the Eucharist the bread and wine are given a new and awesomely deep meaning: they become the very person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

To our human mind, the Holy Eucharist is a mystery of faith. But we believe because

Jesus Himself teaches us this Truth. For the Holy Eucharist is the very center and source of our Christian life. Even after His ascension, Jesus chose to remain with us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, where Jesus gives His Body and Blood to be our food through our spiritual journey to the Father's house.

In other words, Jesus wants us to share in His very self while in journey in this world. That is why He gave us His Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The human flesh of Jesus continues to link us and the people of every age with the timeless sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Thus, the Holy Eucharist fills us with a lasting sense of communion with Jesus Himself and with one another.

For Catholics, the doctrine of the Real Presence asserts that in the Holy Eucharist Jesus is literally and wholly present, that means body and blood, soul and divinity, under the appearances of bread and wine.

The great St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that Jesus's presence in the Eucharist is visus, tactus, gustus. That means, our Lord's presence is not just imaginary in our mind. Because when we receive Jesus in the Holy Eucharist we actually see, touch, and taste Him. He is an "edible" God, as some theologians would say.

Thus, in the Eucharist, we deepen our relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ, not mechanically but by becoming more and more like Him over the years. We meet God in this mysterious and dramatic way: God gives Himself to us, and we try to shape our lives into a loving gift for God. 

So in heaven there will be no Eucharist as we know it here, because our bonding with God will then be complete.

A blessed Sunday to us all. And thank you for a moment with God.

Ad Jesum per Mariam!