Homily Sunday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

For daily readings, go to http://www.usccb.org/nab/090207.shtml

Fr. Justin DuVall, OSB, then the vice-rector of St. Meinrad School of Theology and now the Abbot of St. Meinrad, had some simple but good rules regarding eating together. Within the seminary community of which I was a part, the dining room was not to be used as just a place to grab a bite. There were no newspapers allowed in the dining room. Gym clothes, especially smelly ones, were forbidden so as not to ruin the appetite of those dining around you. The last rule was probably the best. Once fellow seminarians started filling a table, it was considered impolite to start sitting at a new table until all the seats at the first table were taken. In other words, you should not pass by a table nearly filled with people you didn’t like in order to start a new table with your friends. Thus, even if you went through the buffet line with your friends, there was a chance you would end up seated next to some people that you did not plan to dine with. And you had to make the most of it.
It is true that there is a lot of diversity among people. We love different things, and our friends are those who tend to love the same things we do. As far as hobbies go, it is hard to spend time fishing with someone who would rather be golfing, and vice versa. But eating together is different. Eating is not a hobby, at least not as Jesus thinks of it. Eating together should be a time when we practice who we are becoming as the family of God, and family destined to eat together forever in heaven. We may not want to spend a couple of days traveling with a particular person, for various reasons, but Jesus instructs us that for at least the duration of a meal, we should be able to eat and to converse with anyone. In fact, the kingdom of heaven demands that we not dine simply with those who can pay us back. Instead, we are to spend at least a significant amount of time dining with those who are unlike us in someone way.
As Catholics, we practice this first and foremost at Mass. At Mass, we are all invited by Jesus to sit in the front row, whether our habit is to sit near the front of Church or in an obscure place in the back. At the Eucharist, Jesus humbles himself to serve us and to offer a marriage proposal to his bride, the Church. We know that He is ready to wash our feet, and even more, to offer Himself as food. Because of his extreme humility, no one at the Eucharist is left in the back row.
During the course of our lifetimes, we will have the chance to eat thousands of meals. Jesus invites us to take each occasion to build up the kingdom of heaven, and to do so in an even more intense way each time that we receive the Holy Eucharist with whomever Jesus has invited to this marriage feast of heaven. Let us not simply eat mechanically to feed our earthly lives, for Jesus reminds us, that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.