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Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

August 18, 2024

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Introit

Kyrie

Gloria

Collect

O God, you have prepared for those who love you
good things which no eye can see,
fill our hearts, we pray with the warmth of your love,
so that, loving you in all things and above all things,
we may attain your promises,
which surpass every human desire.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Reading (Wisdom 9:1-6)

Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. 2 She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. 3 She has sent out her servant girls, she calls from the highest places in the town, 4 “You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says, 5 “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. 6 Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

Responsorial Psalm (34:2-3,4-5,6-7)

Second Reading (Eph 5:15-20)

Brothers and sisters, 15 be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making music to the Lord in your hearts, 20 giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Gospel Acclamation

Gospel (John 6:51-58)

Jesus said to the people: 51 “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. 52 The people then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 “Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Catena Nova

Christ declared, that the Chalice of His creation is His own Blood, from which He augments our own blood and He affirmed, that the Bread of His creation is His own Body from which He gives growth to our being. So, when the mixed chalice and the baked loaf receive the word of God and when the Eucharistic elements become the Body and Blood of Christ, which brings growth and sustenance to our bodily frame, how can it be maintained that our flesh is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life? For our flesh feeds on the Lord’s Body and Blood and is His member. So Saint Paul writes: “We are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones” (Eph 5,30; Gn 2,23)…. It is this that is nourished by His Chalice, the Chalice of His Blood and gains growth from the Bread which is His Body. (St. Irenaeus of Lyons)

When Christ Himself has said of the bread: “This is my body” who could waver? And when He asserts that “This is my blood” who could be in doubt? Once, in Cana of Galilee, Jesus changed water into wine – which is akin to blood. So who could now refuse to believe it, if He transforms wine into blood? He wrought this amazing miracle when invited to an earthly marriage, so how could anyone refuse to acknowledge that He might grant the happiness of His own Body and Blood, to “the friends of the Bridegroom,” (Mt 9,15)? For His body, has been given to you under the appearance of bread and His blood, under the appearance of wine, so that, when you have partaken of the body and blood of Christ, you might be one body and one blood with Him. So shall we become Christ-bearers [“Christophers”].… If your senses lead you astray, let your faith reassure you. (St. Cyril of Jerusalem)

By eating the flesh of Christ, the Saviour of us all and drinking His blood, we have life in ourselves, we become one with Him, we remain in Him and He in us. Therefore it is for Him to enter within us, through the Holy Spirit, in a way fitting to God and to mingle with our body, after a fashion, through the holy flesh and precious blood, we receive, under the forms of bread and wine, as our life-giving blessing. Indeed…, God has exercised His condescension towards our weakness and placed all His life-force into the elements of bread and wine, which are thus endowed with the spirit of His own life. So believe in it without hesitation, for our Lord Himself has clearly said: “This is my body” and “This is my blood”. (St. Cyril of Alexandria)

Those who eat and drink the Lord’s flesh and blood live in the Lord and the Lord lives in them. A marvelous and inexplicable union occurs by which God is in us, and we are in God. Does this not fill you with awe as you listen? It is not God alone that we eat, for he is intangible and incorporeal; he can be apprehended neither by our eyes nor by our teeth; nor, on the other hand, is it simply the flesh of a man, which would avail us nothing. Rather, in a union defying explanation, God has made flesh one with himself, so that the flesh now has life-giving power. This is not because its nature is changed into the nature of God. Of course not! A comparison may be made with iron put into fire. It remains iron but displays the energy of fire. So also the Lord’s flesh remains flesh, but it has life-giving power because it is the flesh of the Word of God. And so Christ says: "As I draw life from the Father," or in other words, As I was born of the Father who is life, "so those who eat me will draw life from me," because they will be united to me and as it were transformed into me, who am possessed of life-giving power. (Theophylact)

When Christ descends sacramentally into each one of his faithful it is not simply in order to commune with him; it is in order to join him, physically, a little more closely to himself and to all the rest of the faithful in the growing unity of the world. When, through the priest, Christ says,’Hoc est corpus meum, ‘This is my body’, the words reach out infinitely far beyond the morsel of bread over which they are pronounced: they bring the entire mystical body into being. The priestly act extends beyond the transubstantiated Host to the cosmos itself, which, century after century, is gradually being transformed by the Incarnation, itself never complete. From age to age, there is but one single mass in the world: the true Host, the total Host, is the universe which is continually being more intimately penetrated and vivified by Christ. From the most distant origin of things until their unforeseeable consummation, through the countless convulsions of boundless space, the whole of nature is slowly and irresistibly undergoing the supreme consecration. Fundamentally—since all time and for ever-but one single thing is being made in creation: the body of Christ…. In the whole universe, as on earth, there is a before the Incarnation and an after. For Christ’s work of divinization to spread over the universe, it is sufficient to assume that God has raised up on each thinking planet (and continues to do so until the end) prophets and priests to whom knowledge of the redemptive Incarnation has been revealed and its grace communicated. Just like Melchizedek, a priest risen from the directly chosen tribe, they have participated, or will participate, within the unfolding of space-time, in the priesthood of the Incarnate Word; receiving the power to celebrate his sacrifice, to consecrate the Host and to administer the eucharist and the sacraments, either in prefiguration (as, on earth, before the Incarnation), or as a continuation of the Last Supper. For the universe is so perfectly one that the Son of God has only to enter into it once to occupy and permeate it in its entirety with his filiating grace. By taking a human nature, the Word was “cosmified.” He had to be born but once of the Virgin Mary to make his own and divinize the whole of creation. Just as Christ’s birth is cosmic, so are his passion and death. “Christ being raised from the dead will never die again’ (Romans 6:9) because the mysteries of Christ embrace, in their extension and their perfection, the whole development of the world which is strictly one. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

As the body desires food and drink, just so closely does our individual life desire to be united with God. We hunger and thirst after God. It is not enough for us to know him and to love him. We would clasp him, draw him to ourselves, hold him fast, and, bold as it sounds, we would take him into ourselves as we do our necessary food and drink, and thereby still and satisfy our hunger to the full…. In deepest reverence, and yet without fear, let us acknowledge the longing which God himself has planted in us, and rejoice in this gift of his exceeding goodness. "My flesh," Christ says to us, "is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed...He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him...As the Father hath given me to have life in myself, so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. To eat his flesh, to drink his blood, to eat him, to absorb into ourselves the living God-- it is beyond any wish me might be capable of forming for ourselves, yet it satisfies to the full what we long for,--of necessity long for, from the bottom of our souls…. For our sakes Christ became bread and wine, food and drink. We make bold to eat him and to drink him. This bread gives us solid and substantial strength. This wine bestows courage, joy out of all earthly measure, sweetness, beauty, limitless enlargement and perception. It brings life in intoxicating excess, both to possess and to impart. (Romano Guardini)

Each time the Mass is offered, the fruits of our Redemption are poured out anew upon our souls. By uniting ourselves with the sacred rite of the Mass, and above all by receiving Holy Communion, we enter into the sacrifice of Christ. We mystically die with the divine Victim and rise again with Him to a new life in God. We are freed from our sins, we are once again pleasing to God, and we receive grace to follow Him more generously in the life of charity and fraternal union which is the life of His Mystical Body…. The grace of the Eucharist is not confined to the moments of thanksgiving after Mass and communion, but reaches out into our whole day and into all the affairs of our life, in order to sanctify and transform them in Christ. It is clear that the Blessed Eucharist is given to us first of all that we may become perfect in charity ourselves, and then that our charity may communicate itself as a life-giving spiritual energy to other souls throughout the whole Church. Nor does Christ wait until we become perfect in love, before He makes our love bear fruit in the lives of others. It is by loving others that we grow in love for Him, and by loving Him, especially by entering deeply into the Mystery of the Cross and of the Eucharist, that we grow in our capacity to love others. In short Christ comes to us in this sacrament to finish the work His Father gave Him to do. He comes to us to fill our souls with that charity which led Him to die for us on the Cross. He comes to live in our hearts and to lead us to the one end to which all rightly ordered human activity tends: the love of God and the love of our neighbor in God. (Thomas Merton)

Homily

In this series of homilies on the Eucharistic liturgy suggested by the sixth chapter of John's, we have been guided by the Meditations before Mass by Romano Guardini, one of the pioneers of the liturgical movement, whose fruit was the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy promulgated by the Second Vatican Council in 1963 along with the reforms authorized by Pope Paul VI and which have continued to the present time. The Roman Missal, for example, is in its third edition and we spoke already about the greatly-enriched Lectionary that has opened up a richer fare of Scripture for Catholics and other denominations as well via the Common Lectionary.

Guardini highlighted the importance of silence, stillness and composure as essential for the kind of participation in the sacred liturgy called for by the Council. I would like to focus today on the Liturgy of the Eucharist and his suggestions for entering more deeply into this part of the Mass, beginning with the offering of our gifts of bread and wine:

When the Offertory prayer is spoken and the priest uncovers the chalice, we should say to ourselves: "Now the gift-offerings with which the mystery will be celebrated are being prepared. What the Lord instructed His disciples to do when He told them to prepare for the Feast of the Passover, and what the first congregations did when each believer stepped forward with his offering of bread, wine, oil, is being done now." Today all the preparations have been telescoped to the brief movements with which the priest lifts up the paten with the host and replaces it, receives the wine from the server, pours and mixes it with water, raises the chalice and puts it down again.

Here we must realize that these few gifts on the altar stand for all that was formerly given and done in preparation for the Lord's supper, and for the needs of the poor brothers and sisters in Christ; whatever is done for the least of these is done "for Me." Something else belongs with the bread and wine: the money-offering of the faithful… the money represents the abundant, personal gifts once brought to the altar. A poor representative, to be sure. How much more alive this act was when one brought bread from his own oven, another a jug of wine, a third a jar of oil. Those offerings had a form and speech of their own. Now we have only cold coin…. Hence our participation in the offering demands that this impoverished gesture be made as well as possible…. a sacrifice that we really feel.

Apart from the "collection," the important thing is how offering bread and wine, above all, represents the sacrificial character of the Christian life overall which is far more comprehensive than the Sunday "offering." All acts of loving service, the patience acceptance of life's challenges, fidelity to one's vocation and duty, the contributions one makes to society at large, our stewardship of the goods entrusted to us, all of this is there on the paten — an oblation by which is brought about a glorious exchange, that, by offering what [the Lord] has given we may merit to receive [his] very self (cf. Prayer Over the Offerings).

Moving to the Eucharistic Prayer — traditionally called the Canon — that begins with the Preface, Guardini adds

When the Sanctus has been spoken and the Canon of the Mass begins, we should remind ourselves: "Now I shall witness, indeed partake in, what the ancient Church called actio, the essential act." We must give it our full attention. As soon as silence reigns again we should say to ourselves: "The Lord's last will and testament is being executed. He said: 'As often as you shall do these things, in memory of Me shall you do them.'" What happened in the room of the Last Supper is taking place here: Christ comes. He is present in His salutary love and in the destiny which it met. The priest acts, but we must act with him by being inwardly present, by watching him every moment at the altar table, identifying ourselves with his every gesture. (Thus I bring myself to a profound consciousness of what is taking place, a consciousness that can overflow into action I can personally go up and receive the sacred food.)

After the assembly concludes the Eucharistic Prayer by affirming what has taken place through the action of the Holy Spirit, adding its Great Amen to the concluding doxology, the Communion Rite begins with the Lord's Prayer, followed by the breaking of the Bread and the holy Communion, Guardini notes at at time when receiving Communion was not as frequent as today:

Then comes the Agnus Dei. The priest says the prayer of preparation for Communion and partakes of the sacred food. He then shows the faithful the host saying: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world." And he gives it to those at the communion rail. Thus another of the Lord's commands: "Take ye all and eat this" is obeyed.

Finally, a concluding reminder:

Hence divine serving must be learned, practiced over and over again that it may become increasingly vigilant, profound, true. Then we shall be granted also that living experience which is beyond all willing and practicing. We shall be seized and so drawn into the act of salvation that we really exist in the memorial of the Lord, a work not of men, but of God. It is the imperishable reality of the salutary act God-sent in the hour of the sacred ceremony which enters the world and time ever and again. Consciousness of this divine event is doubtless the greatest gift the Mass can give. It comes, however, only when God gives it. Our task lies in the effort and loyalty of service.

Indeed, the very word liturgy means service, hence we speak of a "church service," an early description of which the author of Ephesians gives us, of a community addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in their hearts, giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father (cf. II). Amen.

Intercessions (Joe Milner; The Sunday Website)

For the Church: that we, who eat the living bread and drink the blood of life, may be united with Christ and raised up on the last day.

For the gift of Wisdom: that partaking of Wisdom’s table of the word, we may grasp the meaning and purpose of the life that God offers us.

For unity amongst Christians: that all who bear the name Christian will work toward healing the wounds of the Body of Christ and sharing common worship.

For a deeper appreciation of the Eucharist: that as we eat His body and drink His blood, we may recognize ourselves as part of the Body of Christ and continue the mission of Jesus to bring life to others.

For our nation: that leaders of government and business will be led by the wisdom of God to choose good rather than evil, honesty rather than deceit, and service rather than greed.

For all who hunger for freedom, for respect, and for meaning in life: that through the words of Christ and the witness of Christians, they may find fulfillment for the longings of their hearts.

For all who are recovering from the natural disasters and for those who are assisting them: that God will give them strength, ease their suffering and fill their hearts with hope.

For greater care and respect for God’s creation: that the Spirit will guide our choices in the use and protection of earth’s resources.

For the growth of peace, particularly in the Middle East: that leaders of nations may have wisdom and courage to find new paths to promote the good of the human family.

Wise and gracious God, you spread a table before us and nourish your people with the word of life and the bread from heaven. In our sharing of these holy gifts, show us our unity in you and give us a taste of the life to come. We make our prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen. (ICEL; 1998)

Offertory Chant

Offertory Anthem (Michael Hampel)

Lord of wisdom, Lord of truth, Lord of justice, Lord of mercy;
Walk beside us down the years till we see you in your glory.

Striving to attain the heights, turning in a new direction,
Entering a lonely place, welcoming a friend or stranger.

I am here, I am with you.
I have called; do you hear me?

Silver is of passing worth, gold is not of constant value,
Jewels sparkle for a while: what you long for is not lasting.

Rulers govern under me with my insight and my wisdom.
Those who love me know my love; those who seek me find their answer.

God the Father and the Son, Holy Spirit, co-eternal;
Glory be ascribed to you, now and to the end of ages.

Communion Antiphon

Closing Hymn (John Michael Talbot)

I am the Bread of Life

All who eat this Bread will never die

I am God's love revealed

I am broken that you might be healed

All who eat of this heavenly Bread

All who drink this cup of the covenant

You will live forever for I will raise you up

No one who comes to Me shall ever hunger again

No one who believes shall ever thirst

All that the Father draws shall come to Me

And I will give them rest

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