THE EUCHARIST AS MEAL, SACRIFICE, AND COVENANT.

June 3^rd, 2018: Corpus Christi, Year B: Heb. 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16. 22-26.

AIM   To enhance the hearers’ ability to worship by explaining the meaning of the Eucharist.

 

          Most Catholics over sixty can still remember “the old Mass.” The priest had his back to the people most of the time. This didn’t make much difference, since the Mass was largely silent. The little we could hear was in Latin, so we couldn’t understand it.  Here is how the Mass of those days is described by the American Jesuit, Cardinal Avery Dulles, who died in December 2008 at the age of 90. Raised a Presbyterian, he became a Catholic as an undergraduate at Harvard. 

          “There was little external unity to be discerned,” Dulles wrote about his early experiences of the silent Latin Mass. “The priest ... carried out his tasks almost as though he were alone. The congregation, for their part, were not watching with scrupulous exactitude the movements of the celebrant. Some, on the contrary, were reciting prayers on mysterious strings of beads, which Catholics call rosaries. Others were thumbing through pages of prayer-books and Missals, which, for all I knew, might have been totally unrelated to the Mass. Not even a hymn was sung to bring unity into this apparently dull and disconnected service.” (Avery Dulles, A Testimonial to Grace [Sheed & Ward, 1996] p. 63)  

          Unaccustomed to Catholic ways, the young Avery Dulles failed to perceive that in what he called “this apparently dull and disconnected service” there was one point of unity. In the middle of the long silence the ringing of a bell or gong heralded a dramatic climax. Suddenly the church was hushed. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on the priest’s back, as he raised above his head the host which he had just consecrated.  A moment later the bell rang again as he elevated the chalice with the Precious Blood.  Children in Catholic schools were taught the words which the priest whispered in

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Latin just before the elevation of host and chalice: “This is my body ... This is my blood.”

          Jesus spoke those words, of course, at the Last Supper. Actually, Jesus said more than that. He embedded each of those statements in a command: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it. ... Take this, all of you, and drink from it.” Those words show that the Eucharist is a meal. The important thing about the consecration of the bread and wine is not merely that Jesus comes to be present on the altar; but that he is present as food. Just as bread exists not merely for its own sake, but to be eaten, and as wine exists to be drunk, so Jesus offers us his body and blood in the Eucharist as our spiritual food and drink.

          The Eucharist, however, is unlike all other meals: it is a sacrificial meal. At every Mass the priest, acting in the name of Jesus who is the true celebrant of every Eucharist, repeats not only Jesus’ words over the cup, “This is my blood,” but also the words he immediately added: “It will be poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.” For Jesus, as for all those steeped in the Jewish scriptures he loved, the pouring out of blood symbolized the offering of a life. Jesus laid down his life for us on Calvary, offering to his Father a perfect, unblemished sacrifice for the sins of all humanity in all ages, our own sins included.

          Our second reading says that Jesus offered his life on Calvary “once for all.”  That is important. There is no repetition of Jesus’ sacrifice in the Mass. Rather it is sacramentally commemorated. This means that in the unseen, spiritual realm Calvary becomes, for us, a living, present reality.  We express this in the third eucharistic acclamation, based on some words of St. Paul: “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory.” (Cf. 1 Cor. 11:26)

The Mass, therefore, is a meal, but it is also a sacrifice.

          Finally, this sacrificial meal is also a covenant. At every Mass we repeat words from today’s gospel: “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.” A covenant is a solemn pact which unites those who make it.  The marriage vows are a covenant, uniting husband and wife “in one flesh,” as the Bible says.

          When, in obedience to Jesus’ command at the Last Supper, we “do this’ with the bread and wine — sharing the one bread and drinking from the one cup — we are united in fellowship with the Father, in the love of his Son, who is present in the Eucharist in and through to power of his Holy Spirit. United in this way with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are also joined in fellowship with all other sharers in this sacrificial meal and covenant.

          Another way of stating this is to say that it is the Eucharist which makes us Church; for the Church is the fellowship of those who are united with God, and with one another. The Mass is not a form of private prayer — “the soul alone with God.” It is the common banquet of all God’s people. The Greeting of Peace which we exchange before coming to the Lord’s table is not an intrusion on our personal prayer.  It is the acting out of one of the Eucharist’s essential aspects.

          In the Eucharist Jesus nourishes us with his body and blood. At every Mass we are present spiritually, but truly, in the Upper Room, and at Calvary — with but one exception: we cannot see Jesus with our physical eyes, only with the eyes of faith. Whenever the Holy Sacrifice is celebrated, all the benefits of Jesus’ one, unrepeatable sacrifice become available to us. In this sacrificial meal we become sharers in Christ’s “eternal covenant” which unites us sinners with the all-holy God, and with one another. So much drama, so much wonder, so much spiritual treasure!  Are we really aware of it when we come to Mass?  Do we truly worship?

          To encourage us to worship with greater reverence and devotion, I would like to conclude with something I heard a few years ago at a priests’ conference from Dr. Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy at Boston College. Formerly a Presbyterian, Peter Kreeft has been a devout Catholic for many years. He tells about taking one of his students, a Muslim, to Mass, something the student had never witnessed before. Afterwards they discussed what they had just experienced. The Muslim student asked Dr. Kreeft:

“Do you really believe that the bread becomes, through consecration, the body and blood of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ?”

          “Certainly,” Dr. Kreeft responded. “That’s exactly what we believe.”

          “And do you believe,” the student continued, “that at consecration the wine becomes the precious blood of Jesus Christ?”

          “Of course,” Dr. Kreeft answered once more. “That is what we Catholics believe.”

          “If I believed that,” the Muslim student told him, “I would never get up off my knees.”

          What a lesson for us Catholics!

"BY WHAT AUTHORITY?"

Homily for June 2^nd, 2018: Mark 11:27-33.

          In Jesus’ day, and still in rabbinical schools today, it was common to settle disputed matters by asking one another questions. That is what is going on in the gospel reading we have just heard. “By what authority are you doing these things,” the religious authorities at Jerusalem ask Jesus. They want to know who had given Jesus the authority to cleanse the Temple, as Jesus has just done. Jesus responds with a counter-question: “Who gave John the Baptist the authority to baptize?”

          His critics recognize at once that whatever they answer, they will be in trouble. If they say that John preached and baptized by God’s authority, Jesus will ask them why they did not believe John. If the critics say that John the Baptist’s authority came from himself only, they will incriminate themselves with the people, who regarded John as a prophet sent by God. The critics take the safe way out by saying simply: “We do not know.” To which Jesus responds: “Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

          What does this tell us? It tells us that we cannot demand from God explanations which make sense to us of things we do not understand -- injustice and suffering, for instance. The Old Testament book of Job is about a man who demanded this of God. Job is an upright and good man who suffers a series of major calamities. Why has all this happened to me? he asks God.  

Job receives no answer – until finally God appears and asks a series of questions which Job cannot answer. Where were you, Job, when I made, the sea, the land, the stars of heaven; the birds, the beasts, and man himself? The point of these rhetorical questions is to make Job understand that there is no equality between man and God. The book ends with Job accepting that he, a mere man, cannot demand answers of God. “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand,” Job confesses. “I had heard of you by word of mouth. But now my eye has seen you. Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.” (22:2-6).

          Jesus never promised that all would go well with us, or that we would understand when it does not. He promises one thing only: to be with us in good times and bad; and when we encounter suffering and injustice to give us not understanding, but the strength to go on.

INSTRUCTION ON PRAYER.

Homily for June 1^st, 2018: Mark 11:11-26.

          “My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” we heard Jesus saying in the gospel reading. “But you have made it a den of thieves.” He took this second phrase  from the prophet Exekiel (7:11), who uses the uses the words to remind people that worship and prayer can never be a form of barter with God: ‘I’m giving you this, Lord, so you will give me that.’ God is generous with his gifts – far more generous than we are. But nothing that we give God can put him under obligation. God gives his gifts in sovereign freedom.        

          Jesus gives this teaching in connection with his cleansing of the Temple at Jerusalem, for Jesus’ people the earthly dwelling place of God. Mark tells us that Jesus “did not permit anyone to carry anything through the Temple area.” The Bible commentators concede that the meaning of this sentence is unclear. They suggest, however, that Jesus may have issued this prohibition to remind people that the Temple area was set apart for God, holy. They must not use it as a shortcut as they went about their daily errands. For us the words are a reminder that church buildings are holy. Our conduct in church must always reflect reverence for the God who dwells here, especially in his consecrated body in the tabernacle.

          Jesus goes on to give an instruction on prayer. If we want the Lord to hear and fulfill our petitions, we must pray with faith. “All that you ask for in prayer,” Jesus says, “believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours.”  He adds another requirement: “When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions.” The words are an echo of others which we pray daily, in the one prayer that Jesus has given us: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

          Starting just days after his election, Pope Francis reminded us of something he has repeated often since in various forms: God never grows tired of forgiving us. It is we who grow tired of asking for forgiveness.

"THE INFANT LEAPED IN HER WOMB."

Homily for May 31^st, 2018. The Visitation, Luke 1:39-56.

Luke’s gospel tells us that when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her that God wanted her to be the mother of God’s son, Gabriel also told her that Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, though far beyond child-bearing age, was also, as our British cousins say, “in a family way” – six months pregnant, in fact. With characteristic generosity, Mary decides to go and visit Elizabeth. She couldn’t start right away. It was a man’s world. A woman, especially a young teenager like Mary, could not travel alone. She must have at least one chaperone.  

When Mary arrives at her cousin’s house and greets her, Elizabeth, as we have just heard, “cried out in a loud voice and said, ‘Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. … At moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.’” Doctors tell us that a new mother (and Elizabeth, though old, was pregnant for the first time) usually begins to feel her baby moving in her womb during the fifth month of pregnancy. Thereafter the movements become increasingly frequent and intense. Considering the time it would have taken Mary to reach her, Elizabeth is now in her seventh month at least. Her baby is now very active. Moreover, medical science has discovered, fairly recently, something called the “startle response,” when the baby moves on hearing a sound outside the mother. The child in Elizabeth’s womb, who would become John the Baptist, was reacting to the sound of Mary’s loud cry, greeting with joy, as his mother said, the approach of his younger unborn kinsman, Jesus. How marvelous are God’s works!

With the words, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled,” Elizabeth acknowledges her failure to believe that a woman as old as she was could conceive. And Mary responds with words that proclaim the reversal of normal worldly expectations. She praises God for scattering the proud, casting down the mighty, raising up the lowly, feeding the hungry, while sending the rich away hungry.  

Three decades later her Son, in his Sermon on the Mount, would speak remarkably similar words, calling blest (which means happy) the poor in spirit, the sorrowing, the lowly, those who hunger and thirst for holiness, the merciful, the single-hearted, the peacemakers, those persecuted for holiness’ sake, and all those insulted, persecuted, and slandered because of Him who spoke these words. (Matthew 5:3-12)

Truly marvelous are God’s works, wonderful indeed!

"THE SON OF MAN CAME TO SERVE."

Homily for May 30^th, 2018: Mark 10:32-45.

ATeacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you,@ the brothers James and John say to Jesus. When he asks what that is, they respond: AGrant that in your glory we may sit one at your right hand and the other on your left.@ Despite their presumption, Jesus does not rebuke them. Instead he asks:  ACan you drink of the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?@ AWe can,@ the brothers reply lightheartedly. 

The cup Jesus refers to will contain, this time, not water but blood. Patiently Jesus explains that this whole contest for power and honor is totally unacceptable among his followers. AWhoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.@ Jesus reinforces this teaching with his own example: AFor the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.@ The first citizens of God=s kingdom are those who, like Jesus himself, seek not to be served, but to serve.

The quest for recognition and honor continues in the Church today. It has given rise to the saying in Rome: “If it rained miters, not one would touch the ground.” Recognition and honor are not bad in themselves. We all need them to some degree, to prevent becoming discouraged. They become evil only when the quest for them takes over and becomes central in our lives. Then we inevitably experience disappointment and frustration – because we find that we can never get enough. To find the joy that the Lord wants for us, we must live in the spirit of the evangelical hymn that goes like this


          Take my life and let it be / Consecrated, Lord, to thee.

          Take my moments and my days / Let them flow in ceaseless praise

          Take my hands and let them move / at the impulse of the love.

          Take my feet and let them be / Swift and beautiful for thee.

          Take my voice and let me sing / Always, only for my King.

          Take my lips and let them be / Filled with messages from thee. 

          Take my silver and my gold / Not a mite would I withhold.

          Take my intellect and use / Every power as thou shalt choose.

          Take my will and make it Thine, / It shall be no longer mine.
          Take my heart, it is Thine own, / It shall be Thy royal throne.

          Take my love, my Lord, I pour / At Thy feet its treasure store.
          Take myself and I will be Ever, only, all for Thee.

THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD -- WITH PERSECUTION.

Homily for May 29^th, 2018: Mark 10:28-31.

          “We have given up everything and followed you,” Peter tells Jesus at the beginning of our brief gospel reading. Peter’s words immediately follow Jesus’ command to the rich young man in yesterday’s gospel reading: “Go sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.” 

          In reminding Jesus about what he and the other disciples had sacrificed in order to follow Jesus, Peter was implying the question: ‘What reward will we have?’ Jesus responds by saying, in effect: ‘You will receive, already in this world, a hundred times as much as whatever you have given up for me; and in the world to come eternal life.’ Jesus qualifies this promise with the words, “with persecution.” The persecution which those two words foretold would start not long after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to heaven. It would continue, with varying intensity, for three centuries more.

          Today it has returned: in the Middle East and parts of Africa, where the age of martyrdom has returned with an intensity, cruelty, and brutality not seen since antiquity. The persecution we are witnessing in this and other western countries has not reached that intensity – yet. But it is there nonetheless. The late Cardinal George of Chicago was referring to this persecution in his oft-quoted statement to a priests’ gathering a few years ago: “I expect to die in my bed. My successor will die in prison. His successor will die a martyr in the public square.” Too often omitted, when those words are quoted, is the cardinal’s concluding prophecy: “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization as the Church has done so often in human history."

          We pray therefore in this Mass, as Jesus has taught us to do: “Deliver us from evil.”

"ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE FOR GOD."

Homily for May 28^th, 2018: Mark 10:17-27.

          “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God,” Jesus says. Note the effect of these words on Jesus’ disciples. Mark tells us that “they were amazed at [Jesus’] words.” Why? Because their Jewish faith told them that wealth was a sign of God’s blessing. Jesus had just contradicted a fundamental teaching of their faith. No wonder they were amazed – and no doubt totally confused as well.

          Their confusion is clear from the disciples’ question: “Then who can be saved?” By responding, “For men it is impossible,” Jesus is saying that while we cannot be saved without effort on our part, human effort alone is insufficient. Salvation is always God’s gift. That is the meaning of the second part of Jesus’ answer: “All things are possible for God.”

          The whole second part of our gospel reading is Jesus’ commentary on the man who has asked him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ response to the man’s question, “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor,” is personal to this particular man. Because of the man’s earnestness, he recommends renunciation. To most of us Jesus recommends not total renunciation but detachment – not clinging to what one has but living with open hands and an open heart: being a Giver rather than a Taker.

          Which are you? If you are a Taker, I’ll promise you one thing. You will always be frustrated: because you’ll never get enough. It is only the givers who have joy in their hearts – the joy which, like salvation, is the gift of God, the giver of every good thing.

          This still leaves us with the question: If salvation if God’s gift, what is the point of all our sacrifices and good deeds? The answer is simple: they are our grateful response to everything God gives us. And if a long life has taught me anything, it is this. Grateful people are happy people.