Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 18, 2024
The restaurant sign read, “We have no Wi-Fi. Talk to one another.” Next time you’re dining out, take a look. Couples gaze at their phones instead of each other. Kids play on tablets so parents can eat in peace. But even without the lure of technology, we still often eat alone together. Around communal tables meant to create new friendships, strangers come and go as strangers. Fast food describes not only the food but how we relate to those who serve us: get in, get out.
This phenomenon of eating without connecting with the people around us isn’t limited to just our dining tables. Often we approach the Eucharistic table and those who gather with us around it with the same disconnection.
The Eucharist is memory in the form of food, a gift given freely, not as reward but as relationship with the One who gives it.
We might not be buried in our phones, but we bury ourselves in private prayer, trying not to be distracted by those around us. We see the same faces or perhaps a newcomer, maybe say hello, but go no further to learn their names and their stories. And when it’s time to be fed with the body and blood of Christ, we overlook the members of that same body all around us.
At Wisdom’s table there is no Wi-Fi. Just the invitation to savor the Lord’s goodness found in the bread from heaven and in our companions who break that bread with us.
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