For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

20th Sunday b: Bread of Life

Our first reading this Sunday is from the Book of Proverbs. I think of this reading from the Old Testament as a collection of common sense advice that a Jewish grandfather might give to his grandchildren as they get ready to go on the journey of life. 

 He invites them into a house of wisdom where there’s plenty to eat and to drink. It’s a house filled with common sense wisdom, where you learn what to do and what not to do in life. 

The Book of Proverbs is filled with short little sayings centuries old but never out of date. It’s advice about how to live and what to stay away from. It’s based on human experience that doesn’t change over the years.

Let me give you some examples:

An idle hand makes poor,

A busy hand brings riches.

A son who gathers in summer is a credit;

a son who sleeps during harvest, a disgrace.

A wise heart accepts advice,

but a know it all will trip and fall. 

Judaism accepted human experience; Christianity accepts human experience too. If you don’t do anything, you won’t get anything done. Take advantage of what’s there, don’t let  the opportunities of life slip by. If you think you know it all, you don’t. 

The Book of Proverbs is a beautiful introduction to our gospel.  Jesus, the Wisdom of God, tells the crowd that he is bread from heaven. He has come with a wisdom that doesn’t come from human reason or human experience. He doesn’t deny human reason or human experience, but he goes beyond human wisdom. He brings us the wisdom of faith. 

Those he spoke to in the gospel were descendants of a people who believed that God could free them from the slavery of Egypt and then lead them through a desert to a promised land. They believed  a power beyond human power could do this, but then they murmured in disbelief. Now, Jesus said to them,  you murmur in disbelief when I say,   “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day…Whoever remains in me, and I in him, I will raise him up on the last day. I am the Bread of life. “

Jesus claims he is beyond the manna their ancestors ate in the desert and died. He’s the “true Bread from heaven.” So “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”

Our religion welcomes human wisdom. We don’t deny science or what real human experience teaches us.  But faith brings us beyond what science or human reason can tell. In the Eucharist the Risen Jesus speaks to us. He is more than flesh as we know it. He comes with a promise of life beyond what we know or can conceive. He promises to be food for our journey from this life till eternal life. He is a friend at our side.

‘Lord, I am not worthy

that you should enter under my roof,

but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.’“

That’s our prayer preparing for communion at Mass. The words were first spoken to Jesus by a Roman centurion who came to him in Capernaum asking that his servant be cured. “I will come and cure him”, Jesus told him. The centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, only say the word and my servant will be healed.” (Matthew 8:5-13)

We make his prayer of faith our own as we approach the Lord in the Eucharist. He comes to make our souls a place of wisdom. 

Come and stay with us. Let us taste your goodness, the goodness of the Lord.”