The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 19, 2012 (Proverbs 9:1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58) Wisdom

is personified here in Proverbs as a woman throwing a banquet for those invited to dine at her table. The house of seven columns suggests perfection in Semitic thought. That which they will dine on is a true banquet of meat and wine. True wisdom requires involvement, like eating at a banquet table. One has to linger there, savoring every bite. Wisdom is not fast food to be eaten on the run. Wisdom has substance and density. True wisdom is ponderous and weighty. Yet simple folk are invited to taste of Wisdoms banquet and to forsake your foolishness that you may live. How many actually forsake the foolishness is quite another matter. At a time of year when beer and brats is the order of the day, the wisdom of lingering long over a meal certainly takes on a new meaning. The link with the Gospel is not exactly smooth. On the other hand, banquets and long dinners always lead to deep religious discussions of some kind. The Jews who are said to argue here among themselves reflect the question of every age really when they ask How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Ironically, the answer to their question about this mans doings can only be answered by this same man. Jesus answer is even more graphic: ...unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Since this is the first mention of his blood in the whole passage, we must likely conclude that John is talking about the sacramental reception of the Eucharist. Matthew, Mark and Luke had specifically referred to both the eating of the bread and drinking from the cup. John had not, but since the drinking of his blood occurs nowhere else in John, it is likely that John has the sacrament in mind. The expression flesh and blood is used to describe the whole living person in the Old Testament. The absolute nature of the eating

and drinking is such, that those who do not eat and drink have no life within them. By contrast those who do feed on my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life. The graphic nature of the saying my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink is no less stark than what follows. We are what we eat. So if we eat and drink his flesh and blood we remain in him and he in us. By the same token, just as the living Father has sent Jesus and because of the Father, Jesus has life; so the one who feeds on Jesus will have life because of the Father. After the reference to the Exodus generation (your ancestors who ate bread from heaven but still died), the bread which Jesus offers brings with it eternal life. It is because those who eat this bread become part of what this bread truly is, the flesh and blood of Christ. And those who feed on Christ, who is risen, will necessarily live forever, just as Christ does. Certainly our journey in Christ requires us to balance the life we have in Christ with the eternal life we are promised when Christ will raise us with him. There will always be a certain tension between what already is and what is not yet. The Eucharist incorporates both, in a creative tension, which feeds us in the here and now and strengthens our hope for the future. Unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood we do not have life. We eat now with confidence in Gods constant care for us. But we do it also in order to remain in Christ and to have life because of him, indeed eternal life so we hope. In light of all this, its small wonder we call this sacrament a mystery. Fr. Lawrence L. Hummer