Homily: 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B
If
you’ve ever had the experience of déjà vu, you’ll know that it can be somewhat
unsettling. For those who may not have
experienced it, the phenomenon known as “déjà vu” is when one has an experience
of believing that he or she has seen something that is currently happening as
having already happened in the past. In
fact, the words “déjà vu” translate literally from French into “already seen.” For the most part, it can be a confusing
experience because it often occurs when there is no rational reason to believe
that the event had occurred already in the past. I know that I’ve had quite a few occurrences
of it in my life and each time I’ve walked away from the experience with more
questions than answers.
Interestingly
enough, for some the attempt to invoke an experience similar to déjà vu is part
of their regular routine. The Jewish
religion, for example, ritually attempts to re-create the events of the past so
that it would be as if those events were occurring again for the first time in
their midst. The Jewish Passover feast
is a perfect example of this. It is a
“ritual remembering” of the original Passover meal, recreating and in a way
re-presenting the events of that night when God slew the first born of the
Egyptians and led them out of slavery towards freedom. In other words, it is a way for them to
remember God’s saving acts in the past so as to acknowledge that God’s same
saving help continues to be with them today.
This type of remembering—of “making present again” God’s saving acts—is
called anamnesis.
You
know, I don’t think that we’d have to look too hard to see that we do this kind
of remembering all of the time.
Couples—married or otherwise—will often return to the place of their
first date on their anniversary to remember what it was like to fall in love
and to enkindle those feelings anew.
Families will gather around pictures and slide shows of holidays or
vacations together to remember the joy that they shared so as to strengthen
their bonds as a family. Even
individuals (perhaps, however, only the introverted ones) will return to that
private spot in the park or the woods where they found comfort or peace so as
to find it again. And all this to
remember—to try and “make present again”—the good moments that we’ve
experienced in our lives.
In the reading from the Book of Exodus that
we heard today, we find the ancient Israelites only a short time into their
journey out of slavery in Egypt towards the land of freedom into which God had
promised to lead them. Nonetheless, they
seem to have forgotten both the powerful miracles that God had done that freed
them from slavery and the oppressive hardships that they endured as we find
them grumbling against God and Moses: the suffering of traveling through the
desert appearing to them to be worse than what they had endured in Egypt. In order to remind them of his mighty
works—and, thus, his care for them—God provides them with miraculous food from
heaven: birds that flock into the camp at night and bread that appears from the
morning frost over the ground in the morning.
These daily miracles will occur until they enter the promised land as a
reminder of that exhilarating moment when God led them out of slavery and into
freedom.
In
the Gospel reading, we see the people who had eaten from the miraculous
multiplication of loaves and fish seek out Jesus and ask him for more
signs. Jesus uses this opportunity to
teach them that his miraculous works were not only meant to feed them in their
hunger, but also to remind them of their utter dependence on God. Jesus, in a sense, commends the people for
remembering how God provided bread in the desert for their ancestors, but then
clarifies for them that it was not Moses who provided the bread for them, but
rather God the Father—who is his Father: and who is the same Father who has
provided the “food that endures for eternal life”, his Son Jesus the
Christ. In the multiplication of the
loaves and the fish, and in this teaching, Jesus is showing the people that he,
in his very person, is “making present again” God’s saving work.
Hopefully, it won’t be too much of a
stretch then when I tell you that the Eucharist that we celebrate here is also,
in part, anamnesis. As all of you know,
I’m sure, (and if you don’t know, you’re going to learn right now) the Mass is
celebrated in two distinct parts: the Liturgy of the Word, when we hear
readings from Holy Scripture that remind us of the sacred events of salvation
history and recall the teachings of Jesus and how they apply to us today, and
the Liturgy of the Eucharist, when we celebrate the holy meal in which Christ’s
body and blood is made present to us and we offer them to God as the one
perfect and enduring sacrifice that atones for our sins. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we
read that…
Christian liturgy not
only recalls the events that saved us but actualizes them, makes them
present. The Paschal mystery of Christ
is celebrated, not repeated. It is the
celebrations that are repeated, and in each celebration there is an outpouring
of the Holy Spirit that makes the unique mystery present. (1104)
And so, this
remembering through re-enacting the events of nearly 2000 years ago makes
present for us again Christ’s enduring act of our salvation so as to assure us
that God’s saving work continues to be present to us today.
Many
of the ancient Jews missed out on Jesus their Savior because they couldn’t
imagine that God would make bread come down from heaven again. They forgot anamnesis and only remembered the
manna as something that had happened in the past and was finished. We do the same thing if we come here and
think that this celebration is only an empty ritual memorializing events of the
past that have no impact on what is happening today. But if we come here acknowledging that we,
too, are pilgrims wandering through a desert, we will find that God’s Word is
not some dead ink on a piece of paper, but a living word, ready to meet us here
and to give us guidance. And if we come
here crying out as the ancient Israelites did, “Would that we had died... in
Egypt!” then we will find that bread has again come down from heaven onto this
altar to strengthen us for our continued journey.
My
brothers and sisters, our experience in the mass ought to give us a feeling of
déjà vu. In other words, we ought to
feel as if what we experience here today is something that we’ve already
experienced before. When we do, then we
will have truly entered into the mystery of what takes place in this liturgy:
the blurring of the lines between time and eternity. May God, who always remains close to us, help
us with his grace so that we can truly see the mystery we celebrate and thus be
lead to the praise worthy of him, the offering of our selves united to his
Son’s eternal sacrifice here on this altar.
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN
– August 4th & 5th, 2018
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