SUNDAY HOMILY FOR 20TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME — YEAR B

SUNDAY HOMILY FOR 20TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME — YEAR B

HOMILY THEME: “HE WHO EATS MY FLESH HAS ETERNAL LIFE”

BY: Fr Cyril Unachukwu CCE

Proverbs 9: 1-6, Ps. 34, Ephesians 5: 15-20, John 6: 51-58

The natural order receives its true meaning only through eyes assisted by spiritual lenses. In fact, the spiritual realm is the true aspiration of the natural order. To live with eyes exclusively fixed on the natural order is to live in distortion and emptiness. In the sacraments, especially in the Holy Eucharist, the spiritual comes to us in the form of the natural to raise our fallen nature to the level and dignity of the spiritual. May we always be nourished by the merits of the Holy Eucharist; Amen.

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From the part we read today in the Gospel (Jn 6:51-58), one can perceive the obvious that it must have been an unfamiliar experience for the Jews at this stage of their encounter with Jesus in the long discourse of John 6. They could not comprehend it that Jesus offered them His body and blood as food and drink that they retorted, “how can this man give us His flesh to eat?” They could only see the man Jesus whose father was Joseph and mother was Mary and members of whose family they knew. They could not look beyond their blindfolds to see the divinity of Jesus, to see the power at work in Him, to look to the other side. God has always wrapped His blessings for us in things that may seem common and very much within our reach. This was the case with the gift of Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ. It is God giving Himself entirely to us in a form that is accessible to us for whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver.

The inability to look beyond the physical remains one of the major problems of our time as it was for the Jews. An attitude that tends to suggest that the result from the scientific analysis of matter is all that matters and that nothing counts after that. In as much as one cannot undermine the importance of scientific verification, it must however be noted that there is more to life and existence than what is physical and to what science has to offer. Overemphasis on the ephemeral has in part created amongst us one of the greatest feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness resulting in some of the atrocities that can be found in the world. In all of these, Wisdom, in the words of the First Reading (Proverbs 9:1-6), continues to build for herself a house with the ordinary things of life. This Wisdom speaks to us categorically “leave your folly and you will live, walk in the ways of perception.” It is folly indeed to consider the whole of existence in the terms of matter. Surely, no standpoint blinds one’s perceptive faculties more than this. To look beyond matter is to open our perceptive faculties and powers to the latent spiritual treasures which God brings to us through the means of material things. This helps us to understand the meaning of the word Sacrament. In fact, our faith teaches that the sacraments are visible signs of invisible realities “efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us” (CCC, n. 1131).

These invisible realities are the true goals of our life and when one is focused on them, one not only looks beyond the limitations of matter to see the workings of God in the sacraments, especially in the Holy Eucharist, one is also inspired and empowered to live above the trappings of the material world as we heard in the Second Reading (Eph 5:15-20) and to be filled with the Holy Spirit; the same Spirit that effects the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the true body and blood of Lord Jesus Christ. Within the limits of the physical human eyes, it is a wafer of bread and a cup of wine! But by the merits of Christ Jesus the Emmanuel and in the promises of God the Father and through the working effect of the Holy Spirit, it becomes the body and the blood of Christ; it is the Eucharist! To really share in the merits of this spiritual wealth, we must be humble of mind and of intellect and docile at heart.

O Jesus living in Mary, come and live in Your servants, in the spirit of Your holiness, in the fullness of Your power, in the perfection of Your ways, in the reality of Your virtues, in the communion of your mysteries and subdue every adverse power in Your Spirit, for the glory of the Father; Amen. Happy Sunday

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