August 18th, 2024 – Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Fr. John Edmunds, ST (@8:20 in video)

TWENTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – B
Proverbs 9:1-6
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

A childhood memory: I come home from school and find some Utz potato chips that I happily start munching on. My mother sees this and says, put those chips away. You’ll spoil your supper. I try to reason with her that I’m hungry now and I like chips better than the broccoli she has planned for us so why should I wait for supper. She answers, because supper will be real food. I think, but only mutter under my breath so my mother can’t hear me: chips look like real food to me. The real food that my mother was offering was designed to keep me energized and healthy and growing in ways that the chips could not. Real food does more than fill you up, it helps you to thrive. Jesus, when talking about the gift of the Eucharist, his body and blood that we receive in Holy Communion, describes it as real food. “My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” Eucharistic food is also designed to keep us energized and healthy and growing, to help us to thrive. For Catholics receiving Communion lies at the heart of our faith. We believe it gives us a real connection with Christ. The 2000-year gap between when he walked the dusty roads of Galilee and we walk the mean streets of Chicago has been closed. Jesus is really present to us as we share together in the meal which he left us. We’re in the realm of mystery here.

Another expression from my mother: you are what you eat. She was urging us to eat nutritious things so that we would stay healthy. Jesus urges us to eat the “living bread that came down from heaven” so that we too will live not only in good health but even for eternal life. There is one major difference, though, about eating a healthy meal and eating the Eucharistic Banquet. When we eat broccoli and chicken and rice and, yes, chips, we assimilate them into our bodies. We transform the nutrients present in the food we eat to build ourselves up. With the Body of Christ in the Eucharist the process is reversed. Instead of our assimilating Christ into us, we are assimilated into the Body of Christ. We are what is transformed. We receive the Body of Christ in order to become the Body of Christ. As St. Paul put it, “It is not longer I that live but Christ that lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Or as Jesus puts it: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them.”

Becoming the Body of Christ is not just something that happens to individuals in splendid isolation, it happens to us together, to us as a Church. All those who receive Holy Communion are supposedly transformed into the Body of Christ. What do we see instead? Today in Russia, today in Ukraine, soldiers are receiving Holy Communion. Today there are Democrats in Blue states and Republicans in Red States who are receiving Holy Communion. Today in Texas Venezuelan refugees and Border Patrol agents are receiving Holy Communion. If the Eucharist is what makes us one in Christ where is that unity? Why is there war and division and hatred and animosity and hostility even among those who are supposed to have been transformed by their reception of the Blessed Sacrament into the one Body of Christ? Here is where the analogy with eating healthy food breaks down. We don’t need to do anything to assimilate the nutrients in that broccoli. It just happens. But becoming assimilated into the body of Christ does not happen automatically. We must become who we receive. We must participate in the process.

You’d think after two thousand years we would be better at this, that Christians would have been transformed into the kind, loving, forgiving, generous people that Jesus calls us to be. I’m reminded of a quote from an English writer in the early twentieth century: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” Becoming who we receive, becoming the Body of Christ, becoming transformed into the divine image is difficult because it runs directly contrary to how we ordinarily operate. St. Paul in the epistle to the Ephesians for today gives us some concrete steps we can take so that our transformation into the body of Christ can proceed as God intends. He says we need two things: attitude and gratitude.

Attitude: “Watch carefully how you live [and] Try to understand what is the will of the Lord.” Did you notice how during the Olympics the constant drumbeat was on how many medals an athlete had won, how many golds a country had accumulated. That is a reflection of the attitude we ordinarily possess: what’s in it for me. If we are to become the Body of Christ we must shift our attention from doing what I want to doing what God wants. It takes prayer, counsel, discernment but only when our attitude points us toward the will of the Lord in all things will our transformation into Christ be complete.

Gratitude: Give thanks always and for everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. The idea of giving thanks is one we’re accustomed to – when good things happen to us. I won the lottery, thank you, Lord. The doctor said I am healthy, thank you, Lord. However, St. Paul says “give thanks always and for everything.” Everything? Yes, because everything is a gift. Being able to put two feet on the ground today was a gift. Taking a breath is a gift. Being born is a gift. The word “Eucharist” is derived from the Greek word for “thanksgiving.” Realizing that everything is a gift and giving thanks for it helps to transform us into the Body of Christ. Attitude and gratitude are the seasoning on the real food of Jesus that