SO, WE ARE THE PICTURE!

Reflections on the Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proverbes 9:1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

The Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb, a French religious congregation founded in 1985 is unique for a special reason. It is the first ever contemplative community that was established to help women with Down syndrome to realise their dream of entering religious life. One afternoon in Paris, three sisters of the congregation were out to seek alms. They rang the doorbell of an apartment and were surprised to be invited by a kind man. As they sat on his sofa, each with a hot plate of lunch, the man revealed that he was an agnostic and that he had quit his job six months ago to search for the true purpose and meaning of his life. Their conversation turned to a famous icon entitled The Trinity (also known as The Hospitality of Abraham) created by the Russian artist Andrei Rublev in 1411. Created at a time when Russia was torn apart by the cruel violence and turbulent conflicts surrounding the Tarar invasions, the icon extends an unique invitation to a different future of communion.

The work of art evokes three winged figures, interpreted both as the three mysterious guests visiting Abraham and Sarah at the Oak of Mamre (Genesis 18:1-15) and as the three persons of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). They are seated around a table facing each other and sharing from a common chalice at the centre of the table. The kind man tells the sisters, “You are three as well”. They smile. And one of the sisters adds, “There are not only three persons in this icon. There is an empty place opposite to them which is empty and the third winged figure is pointing to this fourth place. Perhaps, they are waiting for a guest”. The man looked at the tea table between his chair and the sofa on which the sisters were seated. He gazed into the eyes of his guests and whispered, “So, we are the picture…” Seated with the sisters around his tea table, the man realised he was part of an eucharistic table that invited him to enter the eternal communion of the Holy Trinity.

It is this invitation that echoes in the readings of this Sunday. In the first reading from the book of Proverbs, Wisdom “spreads a table” and “calls from the heights out over the city” so we may “advance in the way of understanding” and “come, eat of (her) food, and drink of the wine (She) had mixed!”. Saint Paul, in the second reading, asks us not to content ourselves with the debauchery of the party tables of our feasts and gatherings. He challenges us to seek what “fills us with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in (our) hearts, giving thanks always and for everything”. Finally, in the gospel, Jesus tells us, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world”. Every Eucharistic celebration is a response to this invitation to communion from Jesus, the Wisdom incarnate, the bread of life, and the living bread from heaven”.

“How can he give us his flesh to eat?”, the hesitation of the Jews is understandable. What Jesus is proposing is quite strange. After all, eating someone's flesh, even as a metaphor, is biblically controversial (Ps 27:2; Zech 11:9) and drinking blood is certainly an abomination forbidden by the law (Gen 9:4; Lev 3:17; Deut 12:23). So, what to make of Jesus’ invitation? Partaking of his table and eating his flesh and drinking his blood are radical ways to respond to Jesus’ invitation to communion. He is the bread that has ‘come down’ from heaven not to become a small part of our lives but to become its entirety. He is not sharing breadcrumbs but the entirety of the ‘living bread’. He is not just a small fraction of the divinity but the undivided Godself. Just as our food and drink, he wishes to be digested, metabolised, and injected into our every cell, organ, thought, action, gesture, attitude, opinion, convictions, priorities, etc., Jesus is the living bread who, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, invites us to the communion, to the fourth place at the table, pointing to the empty seat that is eternally reserved for us. Entering this eucharistic and trinitarian communion is to realise that “we are the picture”, we are icons of God.