17 August 2024 – 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) (Sunset Mass)

by Fr Joachim Robert

I am the Living Bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.

Dear friends,

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says this to the crowd and He tells it to each and every one of us that He is the bread come down from heaven. And we as a community of faith must and trust this truth of faith with our whole life. We must trust the Lord is indeed a God who comes to dwell among us and He is the living bread come down from heaven.

And as we look at these text of scripture, we have to go back in the Old Testament where we saw the Israelites were coming out from Egypt and as they journeyed through the wilderness, they had manna coming down from heaven to sustain them on their 40-year journey.

As we make this parallelism, as we make this connection in terms of how God in the Old Testament fulfills His promises in and through the scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ himself, we make that assent of faith.

But very often, dear friends, we may know the truth of the faith. We may recognise and we may understand it in our heads but like the Jews, we sometimes struggle and we fail to recognise Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. And sometimes we argue about the presence of God in our lives. We sometimes do not make that assent of faith because it does not jive with our own beliefs and did not jive with our own way of living.

And today’s Reading invites us to take a deep look at ourselves, in how we are living our lives. If we truly believe that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, the expression of God’s love through His love and mercy, through the Eucharist reaches out to us and gives us this opportunity to consume Him and to receive Him into our lives, must make us a transformed and a changed person.

Each and every time, dear friends we make that profession of faith, each and every time we trust that God has indeed become Man to dwell among us and He is the living bread come down from heaven, if we believe that God is truly present in the Eucharist and receiving Him, our life must be transformed, our lives changes for a new, our life is renewed by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And today as we look at the First Reading from Proverbs, we come to realise, as he says: Come and eat my bread, drink the wine I have prepared. And this wisdom that comes from God in the Old Testament is being fulfilled in the person of Christ. And this is how, dear friends, we must take a look at our own journey, at our own lives, from where we were in the Old Testament in terms of how our lives has made us draw closer and closer to this living God and after acknowledging this living God in our lives, it must make us grow deeper in relationship in this God of love.

So let us ask ourselves how have we tasted and seen the beauty of God in our lives.

Because very often, dear friends, we may be often blinded when we are in trouble, when we are in situations of life which is challenging, we turn to God. And then after turning to God, we pour out our hearts to Him. And after pouring out our hearts to Him, we must be willing to allow God to be God, to allow Him to be the God who provides for us, the God who sustains us and the God who loves us.

But sometimes, like the Jews, we often are unable to grasp. Even though God is present and working in our lives, we are unable to see and recognise His presence living among us. 

In the Second Reading of today, Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians invites us and reminds us to be careful of the type of lives we live. Because if we are not careful with the type of life we live, and if we are not able to embrace the mercy and the love of God in our lives, even though in our limited situation, even though in our sinful situation, the Lord invites us to look deeper in our lives and recognise the Spirit that is present.

And as we recognise the Spirit that is present in our lives, God leads us forward and the truth of faith, that truth of Jesus being present in the Eucharist makes us and changes our perception of things and lead us closer to a relationship with Him.

I am sure some weeks ago many of you would have known about the Eucharistic Congress in the US, where 50 thousand people came together to pray, to celebrate the gift of the Eucharist in their lives. And in that Eucharistic Congress, there was a time of prayer, a time of devotion to recognise Jesus who is truly present at the Eucharist. As you hear the testimonies of faith that comes from there, it sends out messages to the world that God is real in our lives, this God who is concretely present in our lives transforms us, molds us and shapes us anew so that we are able to embrace His love for us.

And I am sure, dear friends, in our own parish, in our own families, there are so many testimonies of how the Eucharist has transformed your life and transformed the lives of your family and our community as well.

And today, as we are reminded through the Readings that Jesus is the living bread which has come down from heaven, let us ask ourselves how has Jesus been present in your life, here and now, today. Because when we are able to recognise even in our struggles and amidst our struggles, let us take that step forward, recognising that it is Jesus who allows us to be strengthened, it is Jesus who allows us to be nourished so that we are able to reach that destiny which is in heaven, which is our homeland.

And it is not by mere motivation or positive thinking that we can reach to the eternal homeland. It is by our daily living of lives, by daily picking up our cross and following Jesus and doing every single thing for the love of God. If we are struggling in any way, the Lord invites us to put our faith and trust in Him.

And because we believe that God is truly present in the Eucharist and because we believe the Eucharist moves us forward, let us then trust our lives into His hands. Let us entrust our families into His embrace and let us entrust our community into His heart of love so that we are able to allow the Eucharist to be the center of every single thing that we do.

And if we are able to allow Jesus to be our Lord and Saviour and trust in this living bread that has come down from heaven, we should overflow with love. We ought to show that love and compassion towards one another. We ought to reach out to one another with the love that Christ has for us. 

So let us pray, dear friends, for this grace, for each and every one of us have tasted and seen the beauty of God in our lives. Let us pray that we may grow in that sweetness, that we may grow in that sight and the vision of God’s promises for us, that we are able to live an authentic Christian life.

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