BANQUET OF THE WORD AND BREAD OF LIFE, THE BANQUET OF LOVE.
August 2 2020
Eighteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time – A.
A Bajan proverb says, “The rambling pole-cat leaves its
house when there is a free banquet.” And an Ivorian proverb adds, “It is very appetizing
to eat when you don’t have to worry about the bill.”
We are mystically united to God in Christ. That union is
what gives us life and builds our identity. For us Christians, the mystical
union is made manifest through the reception of the Holy Eucharist, Body and
Blood of Christ. In the Eucharist and through it, God, in Jesus satisfies all
our longings and feeds all our hungers. The Eucharist is the banquet of life,
the banquet of the word, and the bread of life.
Today’s liturgy, Eighteenth Sunday in the Ordinary Time - A
is an invitation to take part in God’s Banquet and to become instruments of his
gifts. The Prophet Isaiah, in the first reading, reveals God’s promises to his
people. “I will renew with you the everlasting covenant.” But before that, the
Lord invites: “All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no
money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink
wine and milk!” It will be a feast for all who thirst and hunger for God, an
unlimited buffet.
I was given the privilege to experience many buffets in some
restaurants. I keep a beautiful memory of two particularly. One in Nairobi,
Kenya, and one here in Quezon City, Philippines. The Carnivore restaurant in
Nairobi features an ‘all-you-can-eat’ meat buffet. It is an ultimate 'Beast of
a Feast' that invites you to come in for a variety of meats including ostrich,
crocodile, and camel roasted over a charcoal grill and carved at your table. It
is an irresistible feast of meat. The other restaurant is the Tong Yang
Shabu-Shabu. It is all about eating and drinking ‘All You Can’. You are served
with a variety of seafood and meats as much as you can with only one rule, the ‘No
waste, no left-over policy’. Left-over is punished with a penalty bill.
The common element on these two 'eat-all-you-can banquet'
and that applies also to many of our restaurants is that the bill is huge and
not granted to ordinary people. The banquet of the Lord instead, has no waste
policy and no bill. It is free of charge. He says, “You who have no money,
come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost…” We,
oftentimes, waste our resources and a lot of money and energy to purchase what
gives not life. The Lord, through his prophet, makes it an inquire, “Why spend
your money for what is not bread; your wages for what fails to satisfy?”
Instead, he invites us to the banquet of life without cost. We are convened to
the banquet of his word and the bread of life.
What Isaiah prophetically announced in the first reading, is
what Jesus accomplished in the Gospel. Through the multiplication of bread and
the feeding of the five thousand men, besides women and children, the Lord
Jesus expresses God’s compassion for the thirsty and hungry people. Jesus is
the word of God and the bread of life that feeds and sustains us.
Nevertheless, to feed our needs of his compassion, God needs
our little contribution. He needs our little gifts to perform the miracle and
give it back for the needs of many. In the Holy Eucharist that we celebrate
every day, that image is manifest. Your gifts, your offerings are what the
priest, through the consecration and the eucharistic prayer, acting in ‘persona
Christi’, multiplies to feed the need of the whole congregation. If you give
nothing for the Eucharistic Banquet, the miracle cannot be effective. A Eucharist without offertory lacks of its
essence. We read that Jesus said to his disciples who were worrying about the
people, “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.”
And at the answer of the disciples, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have
here.” He said, “Bring them here to me.” If they did not bring those few five
breads, the miracle would have not been possible. This saying meets the assertion
that “giving brings about more”. For, God’s grace proves always outpouring and
overflowing when a man opens his hands to give for the needs of others. The
Eucharistic mystery is made possible not only by the actions and words of the
priest but also and above all by what you give, what you bring with you when
you come to mass.
The common and somewhat natural tendency of the human being
is to keep everything for oneself, to accumulate. We think that we will get
more by keeping. This tendency, however, is always contradicted by the
mathematics and the philosophy of God. With the Lord, you lose what you keep
egoistically and you gain from what you generously give. Keeping makes no
multiplication. It is only through giving to the needy that we multiply what we
have. And this is the arithmetic formula and the equation of God’s love.
St. Paul, in the second reading, speaks of that love. The
apostle tells us that no creature and nothing can separate us from God’s love
manifested to us in Christ. We are all subjects of that love. We have been
created by his love and to love and we are loved by Him. We can get the
evidence of that saying only when we give back that love. Love grows in the
heart that loves. It is through giving the love that you obtain love, just as
it is in showing compassion that one receives compassion. At the banquet of
God’s love, the counterpart or the payment will be love. For, love is the only
worth settlement of the bill of love.
Then a challenge to you and me, is the song of the Psalmist: “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.” If God himself opens his hand to feed us and answer to our needs, we should in return make it our obligation to open our hands and hearts to our brothers and sisters and never close our ears and eyes to their needs.
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