19th Sunday in Ordinary Time – a reflection by Fr. Leo
Today’s Gospel continues the theme of the last two Sundays. Jesus proclaims himself the bread of life whose presence conquers death. The Eucharist we celebrate is our way of celebrating this life giving presence of God. We consume the Bread and Wine so that we might become one with the presence of God administrating God’s love and mercy and healing to one another and to the world.
St. Paul makes it clear that the first place for us to practice the “presence” of God is in our relationship with other people. As imitators of God we are to remove bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling and malice from our relationships and replace that with God’s compassion and forgiveness.
Paul also suggest that becoming Christ may mean handing ourselves over like Christ as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma. To make compassion our response, we will need to check our desires for revenge and our holding of resentments. Not to live in bitterness and anger requires rising above them to a higher level of the spirit. To see the purpose of our interactions with people isn’t to be right or superior but to build each other up in Christ.
To get to that “Spiritual” place isn’t a matter of stuffing our true feelings, but a matter of uncovering deeper feelings through meditation and prayer. I know of no other way to become Christ-like and to bring the Eucharist we celebrate to a full reality in our lives, than a continual practice of a deliberate spiritual life.
When we pray we grow in our God-consciousness and begin to see as God sees. This makes possible a way of life, a life of action in line with the love and compassion of Christ.
A practical place for us to start this week in our quiet time is to reflect on our relationships with people in our lives. What do we think and feel about those people? Then we can ask why we feel the way we do. Our reflection may lead us to recognize some healing we may need in how others have treated us. We can pray for that healing and find ourselves in a different place as we go forward in our dealings with others.
Prayer makes us one with the Lord and that becomes the foundation of our relationships with everyone else. Building our relationships with others also makes real our relationship with God. In the process the fruits of the Spirit comes forth to be a blessing and source of peace for all.
This week let us take time to pray. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to be our teacher and healer. “Come, Holy Spirit, be our Wisdom. Make us one that your peace may reign in our hearts and the hearts of all humanity.”