Proverbs 9:1-6 / Ephesians 5:15-20 / John 6:51-58
Ever since the earliest human beings uttered a sound from their mouths in order to express something, the art of communication was born.
And that art of communication is constantly evolving and refined, from the oral to the written, together with the tools of communication, like letters, telephone, emails and video-conferencing.
But even with modern and advanced means of communication, there are those perennial problems of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Although miscommunication and misunderstanding can be serious problems, there are also funny sides to it, like this one:
Wife asked her husband to give her the newspapers.
Husband: How backward you are! Technology has developed so much and you are still asking for the newspapers? Here, take my iPad.
Wife took the iPad and with it slammed it on a cockroach.
Husband fainted!
Moral: Whatever the wife ask, give her without arguing. Show your smartness in the office, not at home, otherwise there can be serious consequences.
Also, words may not be necessarily understood at face-value. When the mother or wife says “Fine”, better think again – it may not be that fine at all.
Or when the boss says “Up to you”, it actually means that you better ask him, because it is up to him, not up to you.
So with all the complexities of miscommunication and misunderstanding, we may get an idea of what was going on between Jesus and His listeners in the gospel. Well, actually not what was going on, but more like what was going wrong.
For the past couple of Sundays, we heard Jesus saying that He is the bread of life. His listeners understood it as ordinary bread, though they would have wondered why Jesus calls Himself the bread of life.
But in today’s gospel, Jesus goes on to say that the bread that He shall give is His flesh for the life of the world, and that His flesh is real food and His blood real drink.
That really stumped His listeners and hence their objecting question: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat.” Yes, how can it be possible?
On the logical and rational level, there seems to be some kind of miscommunication and a lot of misunderstanding. As it is said, the longest distance between two people is misunderstanding.
But Jesus said what He meant and meant what He said, and both in the literal and mystical sense.
While His listeners understood the bread in the ordinary sense, Jesus was talking about His flesh as bread in the mystical sense.
Because human intelligence can only grasp that much about the bread that Jesus was talking about. It was a case of understanding a bit and misunderstanding a lot.
And that was why the listeners asked that question “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They have come to the edge of the cliff of their understanding, and they can’t go further, and they won’t go further. They just cannot believe it.
But we believe, and hence we can understand what Jesus said about the bread that He gives is His flesh. And that’s why when we come forward at Holy Communion to receive the Body of Christ, we respond with an affirmative “Amen”.
Yes, we believe that we are receiving the Body of Christ, we are receiving the flesh that is from the Heart of Christ.
But it is not just mere human intelligence and logical understanding that led us to believe. It is by the gift of faith and divine guidance that led us to believe.
And if we truly believe, then we would be coming for Mass every day to partake of this Divine Bread, so that our faith will be strengthened and we will let Divine Wisdom guide us to recognize the will of the Lord and to live our lives according to that will.
The will of God is that we come into communion with Him through Jesus our Bread of life, so that we can be in communion with the people around us.
But communion can only happen when we address the problems of miscommunication and misunderstanding. So we have to think before we talk. And there is a rather funny logical way to it:
If the person is junior to you, count to 10 and then talk.
If the person is equal to you, count to 30 and then talk.
If the person is your senior, count to 50 then talk.
But if the person is your mother or your wife, keep counting; better not talk.
The logical way is counting. But the mystical and spiritual way is praying.
And what better way to pray than to come for Mass daily.
When we believe that Jesus is our Bread of Life and when we come into communion with Him, we will live in Him and He in us.
Then we will be ready to face the miscommunications and misunderstandings of life and bring about an understanding and a communion.