THE TABLE OF THE WORD.

Homily for April 22^nd, 2021: John 6:44-51.

          “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat and not die.” Jesus is speaking to his fellow Jews. So, to understand what he is saying, we must start with the Jewish Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament.

          The rabbis often spoke of the manna which nourished God’s people during their desert wanderings under Moses as God’s word or instruction. Amos, the first of Israel’s prophets to write down his message (earlier prophets spoke orally only) writes about a famine coming on the land, because of the people’s unfaithfulness: “Not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the Lord” (8:11f). The theme of bread as God’s word is frequent in the so-called Wisdom books of the Old Testament. In the book Sirach, for instance, we read: “He who fears the Lord … will come to wisdom … She will nourish him with the bread of understanding . . .” (15:1 & 3).

          This is the background for Jesus’ astonishing claim: “I am the bread of life … the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Jesus is telling us that his words are real nourishment. That is why the two disciples who encountered the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus could say, after Jesus had made himself known in “the breaking of the bread” (the oldest term for the Eucharist): “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32).

          All Catholics know that Jesus comes to us in Holy Communion. Many still do not realize that he comes to us equally in what the second Vatican Council called “the table of the word.” The rediscovery of that term, which had lain, largely forgotten, in the Church’s attic for centuries, was one of the Council’s great gifts to us. “The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerates the body of the Lord,” the Council said, “insofar as she never ceases, particularly in the sacred liturgy, to partake of the bread of life and to offer it to the faithful from the table of the Word of God and the Body of Christ” (Verbum Dei, 21). For a balanced spiritual diet, we must be nourished by both.

         

 

"I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE."

Homily for April 21st, 2021: John 6:35-40.

          An African priest tells about a priest-friend who is studying in Paris. One day the French priest with whom he lives was unwell and unable to celebrate his regular 4 p.m. Mass for nuns in a nearby convent. He asked the African priest to substitute for him. When the African priest rang the convent doorbell at 3.55, the Sister who answered was surprised to see an unfamiliar face. She thought he was a street person asking for help. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “We’re just about to have Mass. We can’t help you now. Come back later.” Fifteen minutes later, the nuns called the rectory to ask where their priest was. Imagine their embarrassment when they learned that they had just turned him away.

          Why did those good Sisters go without Mass that day? It was because the priest who came did not look like the person they were expecting. That was Jesus’ experience. His fellow Jews were expecting that God’s long-awaited anointed servant, the Messiah, would come dramatically, descending from the clouds of heaven. Jesus was not dramatic. He was ordinary. When Jesus said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” they thought he must be crazy. “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?” they asked. “Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”  

          Jesus’ people knew about “bread from heaven.” That was the manna with which God had fed their ancestors during their desert wanderings. But the prophets also spoke of bread as the spiritual nourishment which God gives to those who approach him in faith and try to do his will. So, when Jesus said, “I am the bread come down from heaven,” he was using the language of the prophets. When Jesus says, “I am the bread come down from heaven,” and “I am the bread of life,” we read those words as a reference to the Eucharist. That is correct. But there are two tables in the Eucharist: the table of the Lord’s body, but also the table of the word. The first part of the Mass, the liturgy of the word, is not merely a preparation for the “essential part”: consecration and communion. The liturgy of the word is equally important, and equally essential. The Second Vatican Council said in 1965: “In the sacred books the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them. And such is the force and power of the word of God that it can serve the Church as her support and vigor, and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting source of spiritual life.”

          We repeat then in this Mass the words spoken by the boy Samuel when the Lord called out to him in the Jerusalem Temple: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening” (1 Sam. 3:10).

         

 

"LORD JESUS, RECEIVE MY SPIRIT."

April 20th, 2021: Acts 7:51-8:1.

Our first reading tells the story of St. Stephen, the Church’s first martyr. The word “martyr” is taken from the Greek word: martyros. It means simply “witness.” The Christian martyrs are those who have been witnesses to Jesus Christ through the shedding of their blood, even unto death. Few of us, if any, will be called to be martyrs in this sense. All of us, however, were commissioned at baptism to be witnesses to Jesus Christ in daily life. Two of the four formulas of dismissal at the end of Mass remind us of this:

"Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.”

“Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”       

         What is this gospel, the Good News, that we are commissioned to proclaim, sometimes by words, but always by the way we live our lives? It is very simple really. The Lord calls us to live as people who know that God is, that he is real; that he is a God of love, who looks for a response of love – for himself, and for our sisters and brothers; that God has made us for himself: to serve, love, and praise him here on earth, to be happy with him forever in heaven; that he is the God of the impossible, who can do for us what we can never do for ourselves: fit us for life with him, here and in eternity.

Does any of that come through in your life? If you were arrested tonight for being a Catholic Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? And if mere presence at Sunday Mass were not enough for conviction, would there be enough evidence then?  

Never underestimate the power of personal witness. With great literary artistry Luke, the author of our first reading today, concludes his account of Stephen’s martyrdom with the sentence: “The witnesses meanwhile were piling their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.” This was the man who, in baptism, would receive the Christian name of Paul. He was so zealous in defending his Jewish faith that he hunted down Christians to send them to prison for heresy.

         There is a direct line from what Saul witnessed that day, as Stephen laid down his life for Jesus Christ, to the event outside the gate of Damascus which changed Saul’s life: the blinding light from heaven and the voice that said: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Stephen’s martyrdom prepared Saul to become the apostle Paul, the one whom God had chosen to enable his Church to break out of its original Jewish shell and become the worldwide Church of the Gentiles.

Your life too can make a difference. The Lord wants to use your faithful witness to him in daily life to influence others, in ways you may never know – until, one day, you meet the Lord, face to face.  

 

 

 

 

 

TRUSTING FAITH

Homily for April 19^th, 2021: John 6:22-29.

“This is the work of God,” Jesus says in the gospel reading we have just heard, “that you believe in the one he sent.@ Or as another translation has it: “have faith in the one he sent.” What is faith? For many of us, I think, faith means belief in the truths contained in the creed which we recite every Sunday at Mass. Faith in that sense is more properly called “belief”: mental assent. Important as that is, faith has another meaning: personal trust -- an affair not just of the head, but of the heart.  Even the creed begins not “I believe that” but “I believe in.” To believe in someone is to trust that person. Here’s a story about such trusting faith.

Some Alpine guides in a Swiss village organized a climb late in the season, after all the tourists had departed. They reached their chosen summit without difficulty. They were disappointed, however, not to have found an edelweiss, the delicate star-shaped white flower that grows only at high altitudes and is prized by mountaineers as a souvenir of their exploits.

The group had already started their descent when one of them spotted a single edelweiss on a narrow ledge some thirty feet below. To get it someone would have to be let down on a rope. There was no time to linger, for the weather, which changes rapidly in the high mountains, was deteriorating. The climbers turned to the youngest and smallest member of the party, twelve-year-old Hans, making his first major climb with his father. It would be easy to let him down. In five minutes they could be on their way again. 

“What about it, Hans,” they asked. “Will you do it?”

Hans peered anxiously at the narrow ledged with the treasured white flower -- and at the sheer drop of hundreds of feet immediately beyond.

“I’ll do it,” Hans replied, “if my father holds the rope.”

That’s faith -- unconditional trust! That is what Jesus is talking about when he says in today’s gospel: “This is the work of God: that you believe in the One he sent.”

We pray in this Mass that, through the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit, we too may receive the trusting faith of that twelve-year-old boy.   

"IT IS I: DO NOT BE AFRAID."

Homily for April 17^th, 2021: John 6:16-21.

          What began as a routine evening crossing of the lake soon turns into a nightmare for Jesus’ friends in their small boat. When they see a human figure approaching across the storm-tossed waves it is small wonder that they “began to be afraid.” It is Jesus. “It is I,” he calls out. “Do not be afraid!”

Like most people in antiquity, Jesus’ people, the Jews, regarded the sea as the domain of supernatural, demonic forces. To the Hebrew mind wind and waves were perilous: only God could master them. Repeatedly the psalms speak of God’s power to “rule the surging sea and calm the turmoil of its waves” (Ps. 89:10; cf. 93:3f; 107:23-30). By walking on the raging waves, and calming the stormy sea, Jesus shows himself to be acting as only God can do.

          This beautiful story speaks to each one of us individually. Somewhere in this church right now there may be someone facing a personal crisis: an illness, perhaps, your own or that of a loved one; a family problem; a humiliating failure; the sudden collapse of long held hopes, plans, and efforts. You are filled with fear. When you look down, you see only peril and ruin. But look up! Keep your eyes on Jesus. He still has power to save. 

          The story assures us that when the storm rages and the night is blackest; when we cannot see the way ahead; when we are bone weary with life’s struggle and our hearts fail us for fear, Jesus is close. He only seems to be absent. In reality he is never far from us. He knows at every moment the difficulties against which we contend. Across the storm waters of this world he comes to us and speaks the same words of assurance that he spoke to the terrified men in that small boat: “It is I, do not be afraid!”

That, friends, is the gospel. That is the good news.          

 

"THEY WANTED TO MAKE HIM KING."

Homily for April 16^th, 2021: John 6:1-15.

Following the miraculous feeding of the great crowd in the wilderness, “Jesus realized that they would come and carry him off to make him king, so he fled back to the mountain alone.” The people were so impressed with the great “sign” which Jesus had performed, that they want to capture the power the had seen in Jesus, so that it would be theirs always.

You cannot capture Jesus Christ. You cannot apprehend him or hold him fast. He will always elude your grasp. “Do not cling to me,” the risen Lord said to Mary Magdalene in the garden of the resurrection. She wanted to resume the relationship of emotional intimacy with Jesus which she had enjoyed during his public ministry. The time for that was past.  “Do not cling to me,” Jesus told her. “Rather, go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God!’” (John 20:17)

Jesus says the same to us today: “Do not cling to me.” At the end of every Mass the Lord sends us to others: his brothers and sisters -- and ours too. As we journey life’s way, with all its twistings and turnings, Jesus is always with us. He remains close to us, even when we stray far from him. But he does not belong to us. We belong to him. He will be with us always -- but he will always be ahead of us.

When you come to walk the last stretch of life’s journey, which each of us must walk alone, you will find that you are not alone. Jesus will be walking with you. And he will be waiting for you at the end of the road. “I am going to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says later in John’s gospel, “that where I am you also may be” (14:3). That is Jesus’ personal promise to you -- and to me. And when Jesus Christ promises something, he always keeps his promise.

Here, then, is a question to ponder. When you meet the Lord at the end of life’s road, will you be encountering a stern judge, before whom you shrink in fear? Or will you be meeting a familiar, dearly loved friend? The Lord in his goodness allows us to choose what the encounter will be like. It is the most important choice we shall ever have. 

 

"GO DOES NOT RATION HIS SPIRIT."

Homily for April 15^th, 2021: John 3:31-36.

          “He does not ration his gift of the Spirit,” we heard in the gospel. What does that mean? It means that God’s gifts are without limit. When God gives, he gives totally and completely.

          Jesus showed that in his own life. When he turned water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana, the quantity of water changed into wine would have kept the party going for a week. In every one of the six accounts of Jesus’ feeding a vast crowd in the wilderness, he gave them not just a snack. Always there was food left over, even after all had eaten to the full. When God gives, he gives not only abundantly, but superabundantly.

          Whether I offer Mass for one person, or for a hundred, does not affect the blessings that each receives. God’s blessings are infinite. We come again and again to Communion not because what we receive is limited, but because our capacity to receive is limited.

          Jesus goes on to say: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” We heard yesterday that believing in someone means trusting that person, and more: entrusting our lives to him or her. Friends and disciples of Jesus Christ are people who entrust their lives to him who is our best friend, our lover – but also our Savior, our Redeemer, our God in human flesh.   

          And note: Jesus does not say that we shall have eternal life. No. He speaks in the present tense. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” – here and now. The fellowship we have with the Lord Jesus continues on beyond death into eternity. That is God’s plan and design for your life, and for mine. And the only thing that can frustrate the fulfillment of that plan is our own final and deliberate No.

          That, friends, is the gospel. That is the good news.

"GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD."

Homily for April 14^th, 2021: John 3: 16-21.

          “God so loved he world …” we just heard. Perhaps someone is thinking: “But of course. Isn’t that obvious?” To many people it is not obvious. Christians who in past centuries used to be called Puritans consider the world an evil place, from which Jesus’ disciples must flee. This view is still alive and well today in certain quarters. It has a kernel of truth. The world organized apart from God, and against God is evil. Jesus refers to that world when he says, later in John’s gospel: “In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (16:33). In today’s gospel, however, Jesus is speaking of the world in a good sense: not the world of human marring, but the good world of God’s making. That world must be lovable, for God does not make anything that is not good.

          “God so loved the world,” Jesus goes on, “that he gave his only begotten Son.” He was the most that God had to give or could give. And God’s Son came into our

world, and continues with us through the power of his Holy Spirit, not as some kind of great policeman or scold to frighten us into measuring up to his unrealistically high standards. No. Jesus came, and remains with us, “so that the world might be saved through him.” How?

          As we read on in today’s gospel we discover the answer. We are saved “by believing in him,” Jesus Christ. To believe in someone is to trust that person -- more, to entrust ourselves to him or her. Whoever does that, our gospel tells us, lives not in darkness, but in light – the light that shines from the face of Jesus Christ. How dark our world would be had he never come to us!

          We pray in this Mass, therefore, that we may entrust ourselves ever more completely to Jesus, himself the light of the world; and that we ourselves may be lenses or prisms of his light in a dark and often fearful world.