Communion with Christ brings us true comfort

Homily: 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B

In my six-plus years as a priest, I’ve celebrated a good number of funerals.  It is a graced experience to walk with families who have lost loved ones and to help them say “goodbye” in a sacred way.  There is one thing, in particular, about celebrating funerals that has stood out to me as interesting: that as we mourn the death of a loved one and after we celebrate his or her life in the funeral liturgy, we gather to share a meal; and that this is somehow comforting to us.

Of course, there’s a perfectly good scientific explanation for this.  The death of a loved one is often stressful and full of negative feelings of loss and separation.  When we eat—especially when we eat warm food that we enjoy to eat—our body releases chemicals, called endorphins, that help relieve the stress our bodies have been under and help us to relax and so give us a feeling of comfort.  Yet, we are more than just bodily creatures.  Rather, we are also spiritual.  And so there has to be something more than just the biological to explain why eating provides comfort.  Indeed, there is.

Sharing a meal with others creates or renews spiritual bonds that last long after the food and the endorphins disappear.  Those feelings of comfort caused by eating become associated in our hearts with the presence of those with who shared the meal, and a bond, a relationship, perhaps we could even say a communion is formed.  And it is this sense of communion, I would argue, that causes our true comfort. ///

As we continue to reflect on the “Bread of Life” discourse in John’s Gospel, we come to face the notion that the Eucharist is a Sacred Meal.  Beyond—or, better yet, in tension with—the notion that the Eucharist is Sacrifice, Anamnesis, and Epiclesis, we must also hold that the Eucharist is a meal: a sacred meal in which the bonds of relationship are either forged or strengthened.

Every week, we gather around this object that is both the altar of sacrifice and the table of communion.  And every week, as we gather as a people set apart by God, we renew our relationship to one another as the People of God when we share in the meal we receive from this altar.  But this is not only a renewal of our relationships with each other.  For when we receive the meal offered on this table, we receive also Christ, who makes of himself the meal that we share, and so renew our relationship—our communion—with him, too.

The Church teaches us that this renewal of communion is actually the sole purpose of our gathering.  In the Catechism of the Catholic Church it says that “the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice is wholly directed toward the intimate union of the faithful with Christ through communion” (CCC 1382).  What this reveals is that the communion we receive in the Eucharist is first and foremost communion with Christ, and that it is through our communion with him that we experience communion with all those who likewise receive him. ///

As I mentioned last week, most of us struggle, to some degree or another, with believing that the bread and wine that we offer on this altar truly becomes the Body and Blood of Christ that we then receive in communion.  I also said that, if we have doubts, our responsibility is to bring those doubts to God in prayer and to ask him to reveal the truth about the Eucharist to us.  For those of you who heard my homily last week, hopefully you’ve been practicing that prayer.  If you didn’t (or if you haven’t been practicing it) our readings today invite you again to see the truth about what we receive from this altar

In the first reading, the author of the book of Proverbs describes a scene in which “Wisdom”-- who is the personification of the creative force of God by which he designed and ordered the world rightly (and who could be referred to equally as “Logos” or “The Word”, as in “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us...” in other words, an image of Jesus)--sets her table in order to invite those who are simple to come and receive from her the riches of wisdom.  “Come,” she says, “and partake at my table that we might be in communion with one another.”  For the ancient Jews who lived before Christ, “wisdom” was sought and valued as the way to live in communion with God.  To feast at Wisdom’s table, and, thus, to be in communion with her, was, therefore, to enter into that desired for communion with God.

In the Gospel reading we should immediately hear the connection: Jesus has set the table of his Flesh and Blood so that those who partake of it can be in communion with him: and, through him, with the Father in heaven with who he is eternally in communion.  “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.  Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”  In the Last Supper narratives Jesus will show us how he will give us his flesh to eat and blood to drink when he takes the bread and says “This is my Body, take and eat...” and the wine and says “This is my Blood, take and drink...”

My brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ presents us with this same offer today.  He desires greatly to be in communion with us and so he invites us to this table to partake of this “living bread that came down from heaven”: his Body and Blood.  And so, we should not be afraid to step forward even if we have some doubts.  Rather, we should let our “Amen” be shorthand for “Lord, I believe, please help my unbelief.”  If we can say even that much, then we can feel confident that we have the faith that we need to receive the communion that Christ so deeply desires to have with us. ///

Friends, in our grief over the scandals that continue to plague the Church we gather here in this sacred meal called the Eucharist to seek comfort in our pain.  May our communion with Christ and, through Christ, with one another provide us with the humility, courage, and fortitude to remain hopeful in the midst of darkness; and so continue to proclaim the Good News: that life beyond this life of suffering and pain is possible through Christ, the true Bread of Life.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral Parish: Lafayette, IN

August 18^th & 19th, 2018

Awaken your drowsy heart!

Homily: 2^nd Sunday of Advent – Cycle B

          Last Saturday marked the end of the liturgical year.  In the Gospel reading for the Mass of the day on that last day of the Church year, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life….” (Luke 21:34) It’s no accident that that particular reading is read on the last day of the Church liturgical year.  After 34 weeks of Ordinary Time—when we focus on growing spiritually and morally in the context of our daily lives—the Church realizes that most of us probably do have hearts that have “become drowsy”—perhaps from drunkenness and carousing, but most likely from the anxieties of daily life.  And so there is a certain genius on the Church’s part to place that reading right on the cusp of the new liturgical year.  It reminds us that perhaps our hearts have become drowsy and then it ushers us right into Advent, a season designed to help “wake us up.”

          Our first reading today from the prophet Isaiah is a beautiful reading—full of awe and wonder.  While [Name] did a great job reading it, I think it would require a method actor to really convey the joy-filled expectation that these words express.  Listen to some of these again:

Comfort, give comfort to my people,

 says your God.

 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her

 that her service is at an end,

her guilt is expiated…

And still further:

…Go up on to a high mountain,

 Zion, herald of glad tidings;

 cry out at the top of your voice,

 Jerusalem, herald of good news!

 Fear not to cry out

 and say to the cities of Judah:

 Here is your God!

These are words of great joy and expectation and are simply wonderful to ponder.  Perhaps, however, we are unable to see the joy that these words convey, at least not in our current situation.  Perhaps, even after one week of Advent, our hearts are still drowsy—tired, weary, and numb—from the anxieties of our daily lives.  Of course, one need not look farther than the newspaper to understand why: violence and drug use continue to escalate in our cities and neighborhoods, jobs continue to be scarce and an economic recovery continues to be lethargic, national politics remains, it seems, disconnected from the daily struggles of individuals and families, natural disasters, like the hurricanes that ravaged south Texas, Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands, and the wildfires that are consuming large swaths of inhabited land in California, continue to afflict us, and there are countless other reasons as well.  And so no, it’s not surprising that our hearts may have become drowsy and we are unable to relate to the awe and wonder expressed in today’s first reading.

          Yet, when we listen to the Gospel reading, we see that the Jews living during Jesus’ time also seemed to be struggling with the same problem.  Now, the Gospel of Mark is notoriously slim on narrative details and so we’ll have to read between the lines a little bit to see that their hearts were also drowsy and in need of awakening.  His Gospel begins by quoting our reading from the prophet Isaiah.  He follows it by describing John’s proclamation in the desert, calling for a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Essentially, Mark has equated the two, saying (without saying it specifically) that John’s call to repentance in the desert is the same call to “prepare the way” that Isaiah had made, centuries earlier.

          The Gospel then states that “people of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him.”  In other words, the whole Jewish nation heard of John’s proclamation and began to come to him to be baptized.  Perhaps many of them were reluctant at first, unable to see the “awe” in the awe-filled proclamation that John was making.  Eventually, perhaps through the witness of seeing others go out to the Jordan River or of speaking with others who returned from there, these reluctant ones could see that their hearts indeed had become drowsy waiting for the coming of God that Isaiah had promised.  With “hearts awake,” however, they could experience the joy-filled expectation that the coming promised by the prophet was now at hand.

          And so we encounter these readings here today in this season of Advent for the same purpose: to call us to recognize the drowsiness of our own hearts so that we too may awaken to the experience of joy-filled expectation for the second-coming of Jesus.  Just like those ancient Jews, it feels like Christ’s promised return is long-delayed, but when we recognize—as Saint Peter reminds us in our second reading today—that “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day,” it makes it easier to see that Jesus’ delay is, ultimately, for our benefit.  Christ wishes that all of us should come to repentance, as Saint Peter reminds us, and so every second that he delays—which is as nothing to him—is a gift of opportunity for us to wake up our drowsy hearts (and the hearts of others!), so as to be ready when he comes.

          My sisters and brothers, Jesus did not tell his disciples to “beware that their hearts not become drowsy” because he is an exacting master, demanding strict discipline so as never to sin.  Rather, he was instructing them—and so us through the preservation of his words in the Gospels—to remain vigilant so that they would not be “asleep”—that is, too focused on either indulgence in worldly things or on the anxieties of daily life—and, thus, miss out on the joy of witnessing his return in glory.  My sisters and brothers, this is what the season of Advent is doing for us.  It’s as if the season itself is saying, “Take comfort, for this time of suffering is at an end and the time for Christ’s return is near!”  If it hasn’t done this for you yet, then I encourage you to spend time praying with these readings in this coming week and to ask God to awaken in your heart a joy-filled expectation for his coming.  And if it has?  Well, I think the Gospel then shows us what to do.

          All of the people from the Judean countryside and the city-dwellers of Jerusalem came out to John to receive the baptism of repentance and to acknowledge their sins—to “make straight a path” in their hearts for the coming of the long-awaited Messiah, the one Isaiah promised.  We too, then, are called to repent and acknowledge our sins.  For the fully-initiated, that means the sacrament of reconciliation—or confession—and it is why the Church encourages all Catholics to celebrate this sacrament during the season of Advent.  As we hear the readings reminding us of how the ancient Jews prepared the way of the Lord in their hearts at the sound of John’s proclamation, so we too are called to prepare a pathway for Christ to come into our hearts by reconciling with both God and our neighbor through the sacrament of confession.

          Friends, beware that yours hearts do not become drowsy from the oversaturation of “Christmas Spirit” in which the world outside of these walls is drowning you.  Rather, use this time of Advent to prepare your heart well for Christ’s second coming and the best gift you will receive on Christmas day will be the joy of the Lord in your heart: the joy present to us, even now, here in this Eucharist.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – December 9^th & 10^th, 2017