On August 22, the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Pope Francis devoted his Sunday Angelus address to John 6:60-69, the Gospel reading of the day, in which Jesus (as the Pope noted) “revealed that the bread He will give is His body and blood.”

“Jesus’ words enkindled great scandal: He was saying that God decided to manifest Himself and accomplish salvation in the weakness of human flesh,” the Pope said. “It is the mystery of incarnation. The incarnation of God is what provoked scandal and presented an obstacle for those people —but often for us too.”

Pope Francis added, “And this ‘scandalousness’ is well represented by the sacrament of the Eucharist: what sense can there be, in the eyes of the world, in kneeling before a piece of bread? . . . The world is scandalized. . . . Let us ask for the grace to let ourselves be provoked and converted by His ‘words of eternal life’. And may Mary Most Holy, who bore her Son Jesus in the flesh and joined herself to His sacrifice, help us to always bear witness to our faith in our real lives.”