Prv 9:1-6
Eph 5:15-20
Jn 6:51-58

Bread. An ordinary, simple part of daily life. It can take a few different forms. In my part of the world it can be a biscuit for breakfast, a roll with dinner, or slices of bread for a sandwich at lunch. How many times a day do we eat bread and how often do we really think about it? Maybe when we run out of it. It’s just there, ordinary, simple, a ubiquitous part of life. When Christ chose a way to be with us, to remain with us, why not choose bread? Christ chose bread as the way to stay with us because it is such an important, yet ordinary part of life. Christ didn’t have to explain the importance of bread to people. Yet he took this simple, ordinary item and raised it to sacredness.
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
Christ becomes our bread, becomes the staple of life that we need more than we realize. The ordinary, the simple, becomes Christ, becomes sacred, becomes a way for us to encounter the sacred. We gather at the Eucharistic celebration and we eat the sacred bread that is no longer bread. We take Christ into ourselves, and we who are ordinary, we who are simple, are elevated. We take God within us and we are lifted to the sacred, we become more than what we were, we become one, truly one in Christ. We leave, carrying that oneness with us, to invite the world to join with us, with us as one in Christ.

Deacon John
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Aug. 16, 2009