Father Rick Bolte's Homily

B: 20th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Sometimes it seems God is prejudiced against us.  God seems to have a preference for the poor and blesses them.  Now in today’s first reading from Proverbs we are told that Wisdom invites the simple who do not understand.  We like to pride ourselves on our intelligence and knowledge.  We use our intellectual abilities to try to understand how things work and be able to be successful in the world.  And we are people who have had success in business, in the financial world, in caring for our homes and families, etc.  Now it seems in God’s eyes these efforts are counterproductive as the simple who lack understanding have preference.

But it’s really not about God rejecting us or even putting barriers in front of us.  Rather it is God acknowledging how our overdependence on our intellectual abilities can get in the way of our receiving Wisdom.  We rely so much on our intellectual abilities to navigate our way successfully through the world that we ignore whatever we cannot understand or control.  By our prideful focus on our ability to think our way successfully through the world, we exclude those things which are not fully available to our intellectual understanding and control.

One of the most obvious is our relationships.  We are a mystery to ourselves and others.  It is a mystery why we love one another, especially the self-giving love that asks nothing in return.  When we try to live our lives too intellectually, we try to figure out relationships and even use them for our advantage.  When someone loves us without expecting a return, we don’t receive it as the gift it is but wonder why they would do that.  Intellectually we can usually come up with some advantage for the other or just consider them to be fools.

Our God is a mystery.  God refuses to give Moses his name lest he think he understands God.  Jesus spoke in parables lest we hear and understand.  Jesus speaks in today’s gospel of the Eucharist and the people cannot rationally make sense of it.  A mystery is something we can know experientially but never fully define intellectually.  The Eucharist remains for us a mystery.

When Jesus says, “This is my Body, my flesh is true food” and “This is my blood, my blood is true drink,” we often try to intellectually explain it.  Intellectually we go in the direction of symbolism, “it just like his Body and Blood” or just a reenactment that reminds us of what happened.  Perhaps this is why many of our Protestant brothers and sisters went this way.

For us to participate in the Eucharist is to dare to believe that God wants to physically mix his body and blood with our body and blood.  This is God uniting with us despite our sinfulness and weaknesses.  This is the awesome gift of God’s overwhelming love for us.  It is almost impossible to accept intellectually.  Only as we have been able to experientially accept the gift of love from others can we even begin to accept this amazing gift of love from God.  Our minds want to keep trying to deserve it or earn it.

In our culture we pride ourselves on our intelligence and knowledge.  For wisdom to invite the simple and those without understanding to her banquet seems a rejection of us.  But rather it is a warning that we can be so caught up in the power of our mental capacities that we ignore this most essential reality of our lives.  Christ gives us his Body and Blood as a way to unite with us.  This profound love that doesn’t require our earning it can’t be experienced as a mere symbol or recollection of past events.  We must let go of our prideful need to intellectually understand and allow the mystery of the Eucharist to touch and transform us!