XX Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings:
Proverbs 9:1-6
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

Thoughts for Your Consideration: by Hugo Esparza, CP

This week we are invited to attend God’s Feast. This should give us all a great sense of honor in again being reminded that God continues to call us into a mystical loving relationship with him. A relationship that will give us an eternal meaning and purpose for all we do. Yet if we consider this invitation along with the warning that Paul gives to the Ephesians we are reminded that this invitation to God’s Feast may also be a dangerous event.

…we are reminded that this invitation to God’s Feast may also be a dangerous event.

We continue hear this week Jesus’ “bread of life” discourse, as he invites us to partake of his body and blood in order to “live forever”. While most of us could not imagine that an opportunity to eat with God may be a dangerous event, the evil, as Paul reminds us, that exists in our world makes this event hazardous. Jesus reminds us that we do not only partake in his table as individuals, but we are enmeshed in each other’s life by partaking of his body and blood. He is ready to transform us with his own body and blood, which will have a great social effect as to how we live and who we are, for when we say yes to Jesus’ body and blood we are saying yes to the life of all others. In other words, we accept the dangerous and countercultural mission to let others into our life and to enter into the life of others as a result of entering in to God’s life. This call is not shortsighted. It has a mission and that purpose is for the world to have life.

…we accept the dangerous and countercultural mission to let others into our life…

The recent health-care debates around our country have sparked the worst of attitudes in a small but loud minority. There have been reports of armed people showing up in these debates as a form of intimidation and of a rhetoric that incites violence. These and other events in our world that seek to exclude people from the table of debate, political or economical power, or where, as Proverbs reminds us, “foolishness has not been forsaken”, are the opposite of God’s Feast. The table in these events has not been spread but cut off by fear, and there have been no calls from the heights over the city to summon others but shouts of warning and intimidation.

Today more than ever, we need to remind ourselves that we are not called to live in isolation but in relation with others and with God. Furthermore, while acknowledging how intertwined we are through Jesus in the reality of our world, we enter “not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity”, as Paul the Apostle reminds us.  We use the trends in our society and culture to discern and remove the causes of human suffering. Otherwise, we would just be spectators or mere actors in the great play that life is. Today we are being called to denounce the seeds of fear that cause violence and eradicate them from our political and social events and from our own person in order that the world have life.

…we are not called to live in isolation but in relation with others and with God.

Perhaps now would be a good time to recall the hope-inspired phrase of a former American President who walked us through a very difficult period in our national history. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt.