Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B

Reflecting on John 6: 51-58

Turn your radio on. That’s the only way to truly tune into the precise and beautiful wavelength of the Fourth Gospel. The author of the Gospel of John is determined to take his readers on a different, more intuitive, more poetic journey into Jesus’s signs, and the glory of his death and resurrection.

Take these five weeks of intense study of John 6. Did you notice, last Holy Thursday, that even though we always hear from John’s version of the Last Supper on that night, he is the only evangelist who doesn’t mention the words of Consecration? John doesn’t include them in remembering Jesus’ words and actions on the night of his arrest. Instead, it’s only John who tells us that Jesus took great pains to wash his disciples’ feet that fateful night.

Now, it’s very probable that John already knew the Synoptic (“same eye”) gospels well. The theory is that they had circulated widely in the decades after the Resurrection, so he wasn’t interested in repeating what Mark, Matthew, and Luke had already told so beautifully about the giving of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday. He chose, instead, to link the basin and the towel, where the glory of God is revealed when we serve one another.

Besides, as we see so powerfully these five weeks in the summer of Cycle B, where Mark’s gospel is interrupted so the whole Church can meditate on John’s lesson on the Eucharist, we learn everything we need in his sixth chapter. But this requires us to fiddle with the channels of our brains, quietly waiting for the John Channel to bring in the voice of Jesus, loud and clear.

How has your embrace of the Eucharist changed over your lifetime?

Kathy McGovern ©2024

Ordinary Time - Cycle B