Formation is the product of education and practice. It’s an on-going cycle of applied learning. Without practice, it’s simply facts or knowledge. Without education action is often, and even most likely, misdirected and ineffective. The result of good formation is increased awareness. The old adage “The more you know, the more you know how little you know:” fits. Consider this as you read the question below:

Jesus said to the crowd, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life….” We can hardly blame the crowd for their shock at this statement — eating the Flesh and drinking the Blood of our Lord should cause us a bit of a shock. Yet how easy it is to show up at Mass Sunday after Sunday, receiving the Eucharist as simply part of a weekly routine.

If we really spent time contemplating the gift our Lord is offering us in this sacrament, we would be awestruck at the
love and power in this gift. Through it, our Lord is giving us the very best He has to give — Himself. Not even the greatest theological scholar or the holiest of saints can fully understand this mystery.

You sit down at a restaurant and order drinks and an appetizer. Then you order an entrée with a salad. When all of that has been consumed, you order a dessert. You leave after having had a good time, but your pants don’t fit so well now. You are so full you regret ordering all those courses. Your eyes were bigger than your stomach. You ordered what you wanted and not what you needed.

Have you ever approached a hushed group and were certain they were talking about you? It's an uncomfortable feeling to catch people murmuring about what you did, said, or didn't do. It breeds division and exclusion. In today's Gospel, Jesus invites us to just the opposite.

The reading opens with the crowds "murmuring" their doubts about Jesus after he has proclaimed himself the Bread of Life. "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? how can he say 'I have come down from heaven?'" In his response, Jesus brings up the Israelites and the manna God brought them in the desert. If you turn back to the story in Exodus, you'll see another similar word: murmuring. As the going got tough, the Israelites doubted Moses and God's plan to protect and care for them as a chosen people. Here, Jesus proposes a difficult theological concept. Jesus himself is "the living bread" and "flesh for the life of the world."

As human beings, we seem to have a wide array of insatiable desires. We long for more money, more time, and more stuff. We spend millions of dollars each year on remedies for our overeating. We look to our neighbors to see what they have that we want so we can keep up with them in the race toward happiness. We look for instant gratification only to find that our hunger for whatever it is remains intact.