TWENTIETH SUNDAY
From the Gospel according to John
6,51-58
The word of God, on this TWENTIETH SUNDAY, invites us to focus our attention on the real presence of CHRIST in history, and in the life of each of us.
Jesus said to the crowd who were looking for him, and says to us today, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven.
This bread, for the Jews, was exclusively the law, the TORAH, with the commandments given by God to MOSES. All this excluded and scandalized that JESUS, son of the carpenter, could be the true bread come down from heaven, for his new image that he presented of a merciful God.
For us, as John states in the prologue of his Gospel, “The Word of God became flesh and, becoming true man, came to dwell among us”.
This is the revealed truth of faith, according to which Jesus Christ took on our poor human nature (became flesh) to remain eternally, every day, united with each of us, thanks to the mystery that theologians call the “hypostatic union”.
Thanks to this union, we believe that in the second person of the Holy Trinity, in the Son, the human nature and the divine nature subsist substantially united, eternally and inseparably.
“I will be with you all days,” Jesus says, “until the end of the ages.”
The Gospel of JOHN shows us, in this sixth chapter, the way in which JESUS decided to implement this decision, to be present throughout the centuries, in our lives.
It is about welcoming his being bread come down from heaven, through listening to the word of God, the Gospel, and, above all, in the celebration of the sacrament of the Eucharist, instituted at the Last Supper, recommending to us: “take and eat it, all of you, this is my body… take and drink it, all of you, this is the cup of my blood,… do this in memory of me, because… if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world”.
Eating His body and drinking His blood becomes a commitment, but also a concrete reality, to become true men like Him, true God and true man, crossroads of the history of all humanity.
Don Silvio Mesiti
