Today's readings: Proverbs 9, 1-6; Ephesians 5, 15-20; John 6, 51-58.

Contrary to the other three Gospels, in John the Eucharist is not given in a narrative framework but in the form of proclamation. Considering on the one hand the importance the Scriptures give to the table of the Lord and, on the other hand, the reluctance of modern day people to come to this table and understand its significance, we need to be very serious about what's happening in our churches and in our religion.

It would not be far from the truth if we were to say that it depends from the significance we attribute to the Eucharist that Christianity stands or falls.

From the fourth century we read how the early Christians replied to whoever raised queries about the meaning of this Sunday gathering : "Without the day of the Lord, we cannot live". Cardinal Ratzinger had once commented on this, saying that for the early Christians, it was not a question of choice between one precept and another, but rather of a choice between all that gave meaning and consistency to life and a life devoid of meaning.

How can we address the new dechristianised and desacramentalised world? Jesus in today's Gospel speaks crudely of eating his flesh and drinking his blood and suddenly makes the Jews argue about what he could really be meaning by that.

We ourselves still argue today about what at the end of the day is the meaning of all this fuss about this 'sacred wafer' and its real connection with life's issues and problems.

Jesus' words can still meet resistance on our part and in our minds just as with the Jews. Confronted by the confusion in the minds of his audience, Jesus at no point retracts from what he said at a first instance. In a world which has become so scientific and rationalistic, how can we continue to speak sensibly of an alleged miracle that happens repeatedly on our altars whereever and whenever the Eucharist is celebrated?

Jesus is very clear: "If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you". Yet we live in an age when more people are becoming estranged to coming for this table of the Eucharist or to observing the day of the Lord. Our age seems to have myriads of other sources from where to draw life.

For many, even among Christian believers, Jesus is only one source among others. Yet on this Jesus insists on not being politically correct : simply there is no life outside him. Apart from him, as Paul warns, and perhaps without knowing it, we may be living dissipated lives.

In all this there is one big challenge: to make Christianity again relevant for modern pagans. We may be asking so many questions in life without bothering about the inner thirst of the spirit inside us. In the first reading from Proverbs we are invited to leave our folly so that we may live. It speaks about wisdom. And that is what wisdom is : practical truth, truth for living, a road map.

Folly, on the other hand, may be not realising that truth is for living, that if there is anything our civilisation needs in order to survive the threat of moral and spiritual and perhaps physical destruction, it is to return to safe and simple truths to which we, as sophisticated sceptics, have turned our back.

Proverbs, as Jesus in the Gospel, points out to the only two alternatives we have : the way that leads to life and health, and the way that leads to destruction. As Henry David Thoreau, poet, historian and philosopher who despised newspapers used to say, "Read not the Times; read the eternities". That's exactly what Jesus is inviting us to do when he seeks to redirect our ways to focus more on the deep interrogations of the spirit.