In Act 5, scene 5 of Shakespeare’s Scottish play, the man who has become king through treason and murder, Macbeth, learns that his wife has just killed herself in madness and despair. And Macbeth’s reaction to his wife’s suicide conveys the black nothingness at the heart of all sin: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Friends, that is nihilism in a nutshell, and that carnal approach to life, centered on the autonomous imperial self, always leads to emptiness, despair, and death, whether of the debonair, libertine, or murderous variety. But the way of emptiness and death is not the only path on which we may walk. Hear the Word of God in our first lesson from the Book of Proverbs:
“Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven columns; she has dressed her meat, mixed her wine, yes, she has spread her table … she calls from the heights out over the city: ‘Let whoever is simple turn in here; to the one who lacks understanding, she says, Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed! Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding.’”
Forsake foolishness that you may live. That is the path of understanding, and it is the same wisdom conveyed by Saint Paul to the Ephesians in our second lesson: “Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore, do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord.”
Saint Paul knew that since the beginning of the human story and our Fall from God’s grace, men and women have argued about what constitutes a good life in order to know both how and why to live. And the long history of our race is the drama of constant competition between wisdom and folly, both in each heart and in every society.
To the question “What is a good life?” the world proposes its own carnal answers. But Holy Scripture teaches us that the source of all wisdom, goodness, truth, beauty, and grace is the eternal and omnipotent Word of God, the Word who made all things from nothing and who in the fullness of time took flesh of the Virgin Mary and was made man.
The incarnate Word came to redeem us from the grave by destroying sin and death, and this he did by freely suffering and dying in our place and at our hands so that by rising from the dead he could reveal the Resurrection and give us a share in his divine glory through his union with our humanity, the wondrous exchange.
That is the Good News of redemption, the Gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ which is freely given to us by God’s grace, a gift that we receive and accept through faith, hope, and love. But this gift is not a matter of words only. The Gospel is not merely a proposition that we must accept as true, in the way we grasp the truth of a mathematical theorem, so that we can pass a divine test by giving the correct answer to each question. And so in today’s Gospel we read that:
“Jesus said to the crowds: ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.’” Friends, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is revealed to us in both Word and Sacrament, and so even Holy Scripture is not enough by itself to nourish us unto everlasting life. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us full grace and truth, and so our relationship with the living God is an incarnate reality which embraces the entirety of the human person: spirit, soul, and body.
Consider: Telling your children that you love them is essential to their flourishing, but so too are feeding and clothing them, providing care when they are sick, and offering discipline when they misbehave. Parents build a home for their children in which truth and love are the very ground of their existence, and in that home the communion of the family is not a concept or an abstraction. It is a living reality. And so it must be for our communion with the living God.
God the Father’s love for us is unconditional and everlasting, and precisely for that reason his eternal plan for our happiness and holiness always included provision for every part of our nature, including our bodies. The words of Holy Scripture are a divine gift that we must receive in the obedience of faith if we are to be saved, but those words are just the beginning.
Because we are not disembodied souls and never will be, the Gospel also comes to us through the seven sacraments of the New Covenant. Bread and wine, oil and water, spoken words and the touch of a human hand - these are the created things which by the action of the Holy Spirit become the ordinary means of grace to convey the life of the new creation to all who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
In this same way, the divine banquet of holy Wisdom in Proverbs prepares us to understand the wedding feast of the Lamb, the Most Holy Eucharist. And so it is too with all the types and figures of Christ in the Old Covenant.
The spotless lamb offered by Abel, the bread and wine offered by Melchizedek, the ram crowned with thorns offered as a substitute for the sacrifice of Isaac, the seder supper of Israel with the Passover lamb and the blessing cup of salvation, the manna in the desert, and the bread of Presence in the Tabernacle and Temple: all of these types and others prepare us to understand the bracing words of the Word made flesh.
“Amen. Amen. I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”
Friends, these words are strange and deeply disturbing. And if after a lifetime of hearing these words and receiving Holy Communion we no longer find the idea of eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood disturbing, then that makes us strange, strange both to the world and, sadly, to not a few of our Protestant brethren who do not share our faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Perhaps that makes us just the right kind of weird.
In any case, it is no wonder the those who first heard these words quarreled among themselves and said “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” But to understand this divine teaching and receive this supernatural gift, we must not think in carnal ways, relying on the folly of human wisdom to guide us. Instead, we must think in spiritual ways, relying on the wisdom of divine folly.
Consider: Wisdom invites us to the divine banquet saying “drink of the wine I have mixed,” while Saint Paul must caution the carnal Ephesians “do not get drunk on wine, in which lies debauchery.” But how do we grasp these distinctions? Paul explained it to the Christians in Rome this way: “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” (Romans 12:1-2)
The Greek words in that passage which we render as spiritual worship are logiken latreian. Latria or worship which is characterized by the logos. Logical worship. Reasonable worship. Rational worship. Spiritual worship. Christians are not vampires, and the Eucharist is not cannibalism, though such ludicrous charges have fueled black legends and carnal misunderstandings for centuries. No, because of the sacramental economy of salvation, we can offer spiritual worship in our bodies as a sacrifice pleasing to God the Father through Christ Jesus.
And this is how the conundrum is resolved: the Lord Jesus does give us his flesh and blood to eat and drink unto everlasting life, but he does so in an unbloody way, in a sacrament, in a divine mystery which unites us to his suffering, death, and Resurrection by grace through faith, hope, and love. And by that union of grace we can then be lifted up out of the death trap of nihilism and liberated from the tyranny of the autonomous imperial self.
But to find such life and liberty we must be willing to turn away from all false gods like wealth, pleasure, power, and honor, and we find the strength to turn from false gods in true divine worship and in the sacraments of Christ, especially the Most Holy Eucharist.
And so Saint Paul exhorts the Ephesians to “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks … which means offering Eucharist … giving thanks at all times and for all things to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
This is the text of my homily for 18 August 2024, the 20th Sunday of the Year.
Fr Jay Scott Newman
P.S. My classmates and I from the Pontifical North American College in Rome were ordained deacons at Saint Peter’s Basilica on 19 December 1992, and then five days later several of us assisted in the distribution of Holy Communion at the Christmas Midnight Mass celebrated by Pope Saint John Paul II. The candid picture above was taken of the pope by a photographer for L’Osservatore Romano and happened to catch me in the background.