bread of life
The Wisdom Of God
20th Sunday Ordinary Time
Fr. Peter Robinson
Preached: August 18, 2024
One of the pleasures at our weekend masses is noticing how often the Lectionary readings fit together. Obviously, a great deal of scholarship (and prayer) have gone into the Lectionary’s current form. For example, did you notice that (on Sundays) we follow a three-year cycle of Bible readings — from the OT, the Psalms, from the NT, and then a Gospel text; whereas on weekdays, we follow a two-year cycle. At Sunday mass, we read through one Gospel per single year. We Catholics are truly “people of the Book” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
In today’s OT reading, we turn in the OT to Proverbs 9. Here, God’s divine Wisdom is represented as a beautiful woman. Why? Perhaps because the word “wisdom” is in the feminine gender in both Greek and Hebrew. Whatever the reason, this lovely woman, Wisdom, invites to her banquet all who are willing to come. There is only one qualification, though: If you wish to RSVP with a yes, you need to be simple and open to learning (that is, people whom Jesus called “meek and humble of heart”).
You see, when the Israelite refugees returned from 70 years of Exile in Babylon. They found Jerusalem and the Temple utterly devastated. Think, for a moment, of those grainy black-and-white photos you have seen of European cities after WW 2. The returning Israelites realized that they could NOT rely on their own strength and wisdom. They had to turn to God in humility and confidence. And therein lies a lesson — God can use your most devastating experiences to make you a more spiritual person, more like Jesus himself.
Now, I know we are still several months out from Christmas. But think of the Bible readings we have all heard about the birth of Christ, where all the characters are poor and ordinary folk. Think of the parents of John the Baptist and of Jesus … of the shepherds … of the senior citizens, Simeon and Anna in the Temple. Then Jesus arrives, and whom does he meet with? He scandalizes the religious leaders by dining and relaxing with his disreputable and disadvantaged friends. And Jesus still does so — look around at all the ordinary people here right now. These he invites to the banquet of the Eucharist, including even me! We simply come acknowledging our times of helplessness and need.
Think then of the Jesus we see in our Gospel reading from St. John. Here we see Christ as the Wisdom of God. It is Christ, who must be accepted and believed. It is Christ himself, who is the sacrament of the bread of life
Now, I think we would all agree that we are very diet-conscious these days. It is quite obvious that the food we eat affects us. So, please take this spiritual insight with you into this coming week: By eating Christ (sacramentally) we are assimilated into him. As the saying goes, “we become what we eat.”
However, this truth is also critical: If I am feeling sick, food does me no good — it can even do me harm. So, if I eat Christ sacramentally without wanting to be moulded into him, it does me no good at all. St. Augustine made that point 1600 years ago: That if we consume Christ in the mass in an unbelieving manner, then the Host passes through us like any other piece of bread.
Clearly, the same applies to drinking (sacramentally) the blood of Christ. Blood is the sign of life – if there is no blood, there is no life. This means that, if I receive Christ’s blood I take on his life, his divine life … as the gift of God. But that privilege has alarming side-effects: It means I share Christ’s life with other Christians. We all live with the same life’s blood. So, do I really share my life, my talents, my goods with others in our parish … knowing that I share the same bloodstream with my sisters and brothers at mass?
Let me close with a challenge by Venerable Fulton Sheen. He was a beloved American bishop, who died in 1979. And hold in the back of your mind the image of Lady Wisdom as I read the quote:
“When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.”
Mary, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us …
Do You Complain A Lot?
18th Sunday In Ordinary Time
Fr. Mark Gatto
Preached: August 1, 2021
Are you a complainer? Are you someone who does a lot of complaining? In our first reading from the Book of Exodus we are told that the Hebrew people were complaining. They had been liberated from an oppressive situation in Egypt and were on a journey back to their home land. Through the leadership of Moses, they were set free by the hand of God.
But, the journey was long and difficult. It was through a wilderness in which they were beginning to experience hunger. So, despite the great gift of liberation from slavery, we see them complaining to Moses and to God. Some translations say they were grumbling. Are we like the people of Israel? Despite the gift of life and the gift of salvation through Jesus, are we complaining a lot on our journey of life on the way to heaven?
I heard a story from J.D. Salinger’s book, Frannie and Zooey. In one scene Frannie comes home from college a nervous wreck. She had made a well intentioned but misguided effort to explore the depths of religious mysticism and it left her extremely tense. Her mother saw this when she got home and showed her concern and care by bringing her a cup of chicken soup. But, though she knew her mother was trying to comfort her, the offer of the chicken soup annoys her, and she lashes out at her mother.
Frannie’s brother confronts her and tells her that her approach to religion is all wrong. He says to her, “I’ll tell you one thing, Frannie. If it is religious life you want, you ought to know that you are missing out on every single religious action that’s going on in this house. You don’t have sense enough to drink when someone brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup, which is the only kind of chicken soup that Mom ever brings to anybody.”
Does our religion make us miserable and harsh? Does our religion result in us being people who are complaining all the time, grumbling? Our faith should make us people who are grateful, who express gratitude more than complaining and grumbling. When we spend our time complaining we often fail to recognize the grace of God coming to us in the simplest ways in our life.
God fed the hunger of the people of Israel with that bread from heaven that they called Manna. God feeds our hunger with the true bread from heaven, Jesus, the bread of life. But we need to recognize Jesus the bread of life in this Eucharist, in simple bread. We also need to recognize Jesus present in the poor, who are often rough and difficult. We need to recognize Jesus present in the church, for he says that where two or three gather in his name, he is there among them. The church can often be very messy and it can be hard for us to notice Jesus in a simple parish.
When life is difficult, when we experience loss in various ways, when we experience the mess of the church, or our personal failings and disappointments, it can be difficult to notice the grace of God in our life.
Jesus comes to us as the Bread of Life. We need to do less complaining and grumbling, spend more time expressing gratitude. Then we might be able to notice the grace of God in the simple moments of everyday life. In an ordinary Mass, in our sometimes frustrating family, in our messy church and parish, even in our sometimes difficult life.