Homily:
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B
Last week I spoke about the pilgrimage of thanksgiving that
I took to the Holy Land in April. I
mentioned that now, some four months removed from the trip, I was getting some
clarity on what impacted me the most during the trip. One of the highlights, I noted, was my visit
to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, which was built over the site
of Mary’s childhood home and was the place in which she received the message
from the archangel Gabriel, announcing that she would become the mother of
God’s Son. “In that place,” I reflected,
“the God who created everything, and whose existence cannot be contained even
in the vast universe, somehow encapsulated himself in human flesh.” It was an awe-inspiring moment.
I reflected on the absurdity of it all: that God, who is
limitless, would subject himself to the limits of his creation simply out of
love for what he had created. I then
went on to reflect how this Son of God then took the absurdity even further by
claiming that for anyone to have life within them they had to eat his flesh and
drink his blood. On the surface, it’s a
crazy statement and I challenged those who heard my homily to realize that this
statement from Jesus was polarizing: either he is who he says he is and, thus,
we have to give credence to what he says, or he’s a madman and we should run
away immediately. I invited them to
decide which side they were on and the criteria that I used were these: if he’s
crazy about one thing then he’s crazy about everything; but if he’s not crazy
about everything, then he’s not crazy about anything. Since we don’t think that he’s crazy about
everything, then he must not be crazy about this one thing, and so we have to
give it credence, no matter how crazy it sounds.
Therefore, when Jesus says, “I am the living bread” and
“the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” we have to
strive to believe that he is talking about the Eucharist: for the bread that we
present is not “living” bread until it is given life when, through the words of
consecration at the altar, its very substance changes and it becomes the Body
and Blood of Jesus. Although it still
appears to be lifeless bread, it is in reality the flesh of Jesus, who lives;
thus, it becomes “bread that lives” and makes it possible to eat his flesh
without becoming cannibals.
On the surface, however, this is still incredible and,
frankly, it cannot be accepted outright.
If any otherwise rational person came to you and said, “oh, and if you
really want to live you need to eat my flesh and drink my blood” you’d
immediately doubt all that you knew about the person. Accepting something like this—something that
pushes you beyond the bounds of understanding—comes only after a bridge of
trust has been built with the person who is making this claim. Just look at our Gospel reading today: “Many
of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, ‘This saying is hard; who can
accept it?’” it says. And later it goes
on to say “as a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former
way of life and no longer accompanied him.”
These disciples had been only loosely connected with Jesus and had not
yet built a “bridge of trust” with him.
Therefore, when he made this seemingly absurd claim, their fragile faith
in him was shaken and fell apart. They concluded
that he must be crazy and so they turned away from him.
The twelve Apostles, on the other hand, stayed with
Jesus. They had experienced so much more
from him and, therefore, had built a bridge of trust that supported their
faith. And so, even if they didn’t
understand what it was that he was talking about, they refused to write him off
as a madman, but instead recommitted themselves to him: “Master, to whom shall
we go? You have the words of eternal
life. We have come to believe and are
convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
Jesus knew that some of those who followed him would not
believe. And he knew that their lack of
belief would stem from a lack of openness to grace. Thus he could say, “For this reason I have
told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my
Father.” In other words, we don’t come
to this on our own. If the bridge of
trust with Jesus has been built in any of us so that we can take him on his
word, it is because of the gracious initiative of the Father. Thus Jesus can say to Peter in another place:
“Blessed are you Simon son Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this
to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”
Nevertheless, we still must open ourselves to receive it. This grace is open to all, but not all
receive it, as our Gospel—and the state of our Church—reveals to us today.
So where do we go from here? You know, I am convinced that those who leave
the Church must not be persons who believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the
Eucharist. Otherwise, how could they
walk away from it? Peter and the other
Apostles believed that Jesus was the Holy One of God and so could not be swayed
to abandon him, even when he taught such incredible things. In the same way, it does not seem possible
that someone would acknowledge the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and
yet still feel as if he or she could go somewhere where it is not.
This is not to say that all who stay believe, of course;
recent polls indicate that around 33% of you here don’t believe. Rather, it is to say that those who leave the
Church have either never believed in the Real Presence of Jesus or, if they
have believed, have turned their backs on him completely. Thus our task is either to help them to come
to belief—that is, to open their hearts to God’s gracious initiative
surrounding this—or to help them to return to belief and thus right
relationship with God. My brother and
sisters, this is an urgent task. Pope
Saint Pius X, whose feast day we celebrated last week, once said that “Holy
Communion is the shortest and safest way to heaven.” If our brothers and sisters have walked away
from this and do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist,
then there is no greater mercy and love that we can show them than to gently
lead them back to this short and safe way to heaven.
Let us make it, therefore, our task to seek out our
brothers and sisters who need this grace from the Father to believe that Jesus
is truly present in the Eucharist and to help them, with our prayers and
companionship, to open their hearts to this grace, so that we all might be
joined together at this Holy Table to feast on the Bread of Life: Our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – August 23, 2015
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