Lest the Christian life be reduced to mere words – spoken or written – Christ equates His spiritual teaching with a physical act of eating. Jesus would have us be refreshed by Him in the same delightful and satisfying way as eating food. When life becomes difficult and presents sad and complex situations, many people turn to food in both normal and excessive ways to experience relief and joy. Jesus created us to experience hunger, to long for being filled, to be unsatisfied and empty on our own. Eating is the experience of becoming one with something that I desperately need in order to live. Jesus’ major teaching is not about something difficult we need to try to understand. He teaches us that believing is like eating – it makes us one with Him and feeds our deepest need and makes us live. This experience of loving and being loved is central to Christianity. Christ’s Words, His presence, His flesh and blood, are meant to be consumed by us. We can then become divine food with Christ for the salvation of the world. The ultimate joy of being consumed out of love is the new commandment.
Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
“The end of all things,” is not something we need to fear. In the vision of God, the end is also always the beginning. By His Words, Jesus is able to destroy what is earthly and lay bare the bases of our heart. How have we built our lives? What criteria has been the ultimate deciding factor in our decisions? When we are tested, how do we respond? The Lord has not created us to crumple in fear, He has not created us so that our weakness might be our downfall. The Lord’s Words to us are sometimes a clear summons to stand firm in the face of evil, of sin, of temptation, and of confusion. We may be afraid that we will not have what it takes to come out victorious. We have seen great men fall: they have been beaten in battle, they have succumbed to the pressures of temptation and brought shame upon themselves and upon us all. Great warriors and heroes of goodness have become slaves to their own passion and lust.
Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
In today’s Gospel we see why Jesus talks about it being difficult for a rich person to be saved. We are frequently focused on the amount of things, of goods, or of money. Jesus wants us to understand that so long as we focus on the way our lives and actions appear we cannot grasp our true trajectory. Where we are headed depends on the disposition of our heart, our intentions, what we choose to value. Even the one who is exteriorly poor may end up anxious and worried about tomorrow if they are not poor in spirit. Generosity with the goods of this world must be responsible and unselfish – and that can only come from a heart that trusts in God more than in wealth. The problem with material goods is how we come to cling to them, rely on them, and get our sense of security from them.