Food and Sacrifice, 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Jn 6:41-51; 1 Kgs 19:4-8
It’d like you to consider a question that I read in a book on the Eucharist (Abbot Vonier, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, Chapters 4 and 7):
If the priest at the altar was to call down Jesus Christ from heaven, Jesus in His natural bodily state as a full-grown man, and He was to appear, would this be something more or something less that what actually happens in the sacrament of the Eucharist?

It’s a bold image, but Abbot Vonier points out that this would actually be something LESS that the reality we have in the sacrament. Yes, it would be more visually DRAMATIC, but it would lack something that a sacrament has, namely, it would lack the value of SIGN and symbol.
At the level of reality, both would be the same, since the Eucharist is truly Christ:
His Body, His Blood, His Soul and His Divinity (Catechism n.1374), as the true Faith professes.
At the level of PRESENCE both would be the same.
But at the level of sign and symbol the sacrament has something that His body in its natural state does not.

Abbot Vonier notes that every sacrament uses signs in such a way that it connects the past, present, and future.
The past, meaning the events of salvation history, as recorded in the Bible, principally the death of Christ on the Cross.
The present, that we live in, being whatever particular thing that the sign and symbol of the sacrament signifies.
And the future eternal life, that is opened up to us by our connection with those saving events of past.
So, for example, the saving of the Israelites in the parting of the Red Sea is brought into the present by the water of the sacrament of Baptism, opening the door to heaven.

Let me point to just two of the signs that are made present in the Eucharist.

First, there is the sign of food, of nourishment.
If the Lord came down in His body in its natural state then He would be visible as Himself, but He would NOT be visible as food for our souls.
Yet, being our spiritual food is a vital part of what He is to us: Our souls need feeding, and He provides the food in the Eucharist.
Our first reading, with Elijah being fed with miraculous food that kept him going for his 40 day journey is a foretaste of this Eucharistic feeding. The Eucharist feeds us not for a 40 day journey but for the journey towards our eternal home in heaven.

Second, there is the sign of sacrifice.
Christ instituted the Eucharist under the two appearances of bread and wine, and the Catholic Faith articulates that each is fully Him. It is not that a bit of Him is over here and another bit of Him is over there, rather, He is fully present under each form (Catechism n.1377) -what is called the doctrine of concomitance.
But the form of the two different species is a sign of something else, namely, of death and sacrifice.
In a living person body and blood are together.
When they are separated death occurs.
The sign value of separate bread and wine is thus that of the sacrifice of Calvary. And what the Eucharist makes present is the one eternal sacrifice of Calvary, of the Cross, made present and re-presented, offered on our altar.
Again, if He appeared in just His natural bodily state this sign and symbol would not be present.

To sum that up, a sacrament is the Lord being present, but more than just this: it is sign also.
The Eucharist is His Presence par excellence. But it is also a sign, and among those signs are those of (1) His feeding us and of (2) His being the sacrifice that takes our sins away.
And when we meet Him this way in the sacrament His saving events of the past are brought into the present to carry us on to heaven.

Adapted for every need, 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Jn 6: 24-35; Ex 16:2-4.12-15
We’re gathered here at Mass now, as we come every Sunday, to the same Mass, the same thing. I want, however, to say a word about how the Eucharist is also DIFFERENT every time we receive Holy Communion, different every week, different every day, different according to our different needs.
If you recall, we’re now in our 2nd Sunday of 5 Sundays with Scripture readings on the Eucharist, all focussed on John chapter 6, and my focus this Sunday is on this aspect of being fed, fed according to our needs, the Eucharist being adapted to YOUR particular needs this very day.

The Lord, we know, feeds us in Holy Communion. And Holy Communion, which is Jesus Himself “the Bread of Life” (Jn 6:35) –as we just heard in that Gospel text, Holy Communion is often compared to the miraculous manna that the Jews were given to eat when they were wandering in the desert, as we heard in our first reading (Ex 16:2-4.12-15).
If you recall the context, the Jews were rescued from slavery in Egypt by the miracles the Lord worked through Moses, like the parting of the Red Sea.
But when they got to the desert, and wandered there for 40 years before entering the Promised Land, as they wandered in the desert they were hungry. So, as we heard in the first reading, the Lord gave them manna from heaven to eat, a mysterious bread that appeared on the ground every morning.


There are 2 things I want to point out to you about this manna:
First, the people got bored with it (Num 11:6). It was the same every day.
In this sense it was like the Eucharist, because we can look at the Eucharist and think it’s always the same, unexciting, uninteresting.
Second, however, I want to draw your attention to what we also read in the Old Testament about the manna, and it is this:
it was mysteriously adapted to what each person needed,
so that they were able to live on nothing but that manna for 40 years. In the book of Wisdom we find this commentary about the manna:

It “provided every pleasure and [was] suited to every taste ...[it] was changed to whatever each one desired”(Wis 16:20).

This text from Wis 16:20 is partially quoted as our Communion Antiphon for this Sunday, Week 18.


Now, the point is this, the Eucharist, being not just manna but the very “flesh”(Jn 6:51) of the Lord Jesus, the Eucharist is similarly adapted to our every need, even more than the manna was. And this is a point that we find reflected on in the writings of many of the saints, as quoted in the liturgy, for example:

“[Concerning the Eucharist] What could be more delightful that that in which God offers us infinite delight? ‘Without their toil you supplied them with bread from heaven ready to eat, providing every pleasure and suited to every taste. For your sustenance manifested your loving kindness towards your children; and the bread, ministering to the desire of the one who took it, was changed to whatever each one desired’...This sacrament is the fruit of the tree of life... This sacrament is operative to produce both love and union with Christ.” (St Albert the Great, Commentary on St Luke’s Gospel 22,19, in Office of Readings, 15 Nov, Vol 3, p.397). Also, the Communion Antiphon this week, week 18 in Ordinary Time: “You have given us, O Lord, bread from heaven, endowed with all delights and sweetness in every taste”.

And, if the Eucharist is what Jesus says it is, namely, His very self, then this is exactly what we should expect: as the Lord God, Jesus contains every goodness, is able to satisfy our every need. And when we come to Him with one need He is coming to us to satisfy that need. When we come to Him with another need then He is coming to us to satisfy that need.


(pause)
He comes in Holy Communion to satisfy our every need:

When I come to Him weak, He comes bringing His strength.
When I come to Him sad, He comes with His consolation.
When I come to Him lonely, He comes as the companion of my heart.
When I come to Him fighting temptation to sin, He comes with the grace to resists sin.
Even when I come to Him deluded and self-satisfied and thinking I don’t need Him, He comes offering graces to draw me away from my self-delusion.

So, finally, let me bring this to a practical conclusion, let me ask you a question:
What do you think about when you are receiving Holy Communion?
Do you come to Him thinking of nothing? With an empty head? Or worse?
Or, you come to Him mentally and spiritually focused on Him so that you will be suitably DISPOSED and able to receive the graces on offer in Holy Communion?
Every need for your soul is ready to be satisfied in Holy Communion –if only we are open to Him!

I have printed in the newsletter this Sunday a little ‘Spiritual Communion’ prayer I often use, that I’d suggest to you, to focus our thoughts as we approach the altar:

“I wish, Lord, to receive you with the purity, humility and devotion with which your most Holy Mother received you, with the spirit and the fervour of the saints”

To go back to where I began: we’re here doing what we do every Sunday, every Mass, but it is not just all the same.

The Lord Jesus knows what we need,
He comes bringing what we need,
because He comes as His very Self.

The Real Presence, 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Jn 6:1-15
We just heard the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5000.
This miracle is a sign of many things:
Of the power of the Lord;
Of the desire of the Lord to care and provide for us;
Of our ability to trust in the Lord.
Today, however, I want to preach about the deeper feeding that this miracle points towards:
How the Lord Jesus feds us in Holy Communion.
The miracle of the feeding of the 5000 occurred at a very precise moment in our Lord’s mission:
He fed the 5000, miraculously;
He then walked on water in the midst of the storm, miraculously;
Then, He gave one of His longest sermons recorded in the Gospels:
His ‘Bread of Life’ discourse.
In that discourse, as we’ll hear in the weeks ahead, He made various claims that would be outrageous if they came from anyone who had not just manifested such miraculous power.

WHAT did He claim? He claimed that we must eat His flesh.
I want to ponder, today, how we know for sure that this is about the Eucharist.

First, and most simply, from the words of the Lord Jesus Himself:
At the Last Supper, the first Mass, when He instituted the Mass, He said,
“This IS my body”(Lk 22:19)
-not, this is a sign of my body;
-not, this is like my body.
He said this “is” my body.

Second, as a fact of history, the early Church, those first believers who had known Him and lived with Him and heard those words first hand,
The early Church understood the Lord to mean those words literally, not just symbolically.
We know this from the very earliest writings we have.
Conversely, if we want to look for people who doubt that these words were meant literally, we have to wait in history until the 8th century opinion of Ratramnus which became the basis of the views of the Protestant errors on the Eucharist in the 16th century.
The point is this: that the early Church’s view on this is identical with that of the Catholic Church still today:
The Eucharist truly IS the Lord.

Third, that this feeding actually corresponds to what we NEED:
We are beings with both a bodily and a spiritual dimension: we need God to come to us not just in some vague spiritual manner, but in the PHYSICAL.
This is exactly what He promised to do, giving us the sacraments;
this is exactly what the Catholic Church acknowledges that He does.

To conclude, Why is this IMPORTANT?
Because I need God.
I need God to come to me as the food to sustain me, as the food to lead me to heaven.
I need God not just as a symbol, not just as a hope, but I need Him, Himself.

It still LOOKS like bread, it still tastes like bread.
But I trust what He has told us, and what Christians have trusted down the centuries: It is what He SAID, it is what He PROMISED.
And so I kneel before Him, and receive Him with faith and love.

A Prophet’s Reward, 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Mk 6:1-6; Ezek 2:2-5
In today’s Gospel we heard the Lord Jesus refer to Himself as a prophet, while in the first reading we heard God sending the prophet Ezekiel to the people.

Being a prophet isn’t an easy thing.
Being a prophet is a deeply unpopular thing -prophets carry words from the Lord that people usually don’t want to hear, almost always being words calling for repentance, to change your life.
The typical pattern, therefore, was that the prophet was killed. So typical a pattern was this that we hear, elsewhere in the Gospels, the Lord Jesus pointing out the irony of people building monuments to honour the prophets, but these same prophets had been killed by their forefathers (c.f Mt 23:29; Lk 11:47).
Being a prophet is deeply unpopular.
There is thus an old warning sometimes given to priests, “If you play the prophet, you’ll receive the prophet’s reward”

Why then did the Lord want to be prophet?
I think this is a useful question because it points out to us that, as with everything, He did it not for His benefit but for ours.
What did He receive?
Hatred, and the Cross. Yes, ultimately, the definitive reason they killed Him was His claim to be God (see Palm Sunday 2017 sermon). But His long-term unpopularity with so many was the fact He played the prophet.
What this highlights, however, is that He calls us to repentance, He calls us to change our lives, not for His benefit but for OURS.
He loves us so much that He is even willing to receive “a prophet’s reward”, just as long as He is able to proclaim to us what we need to repent of.

As I was pondering this, I thought about two prophetic words of the Lord, two prophetic criticisms, two calls to repent and change, that might be particularly relevant in this HOT weather.

The first concerns purity and chastity. I think that for men, in particular, this is a difficult season to be chaste:
There is much uncovered flesh paraded down the high street and is requires EXTRA vigilance on a man’s part to avert his eyes, and to guard his subsequent thoughts.
Yet, this is exactly what the prophetic words of the Lord say:
Anyone who “LOOKS at a women lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”(Mt 5:28).
Elsewhere He warns that it is precisely what is WITHIN a man, the ”evil thoughts” and the “sexual immorality”(Mk 7:21) that makes a man unclean.
Yet, the thing is this: the reason He gives the unpopular prophetic moral criticism is to enable us to achieve the promise that comes with it:
He promises that the “PURE of heart... will see God” (Mt 5:8) -those who have not let their eyes and thoughts and heart wander to the flesh, they will have hearts pure enough to see God.

A second prophetic words for the hot weather:
The call to not WASTE our TIME.
In the heat we can all be prone to wilt and do less, to fail to get on with those errands and tasks, to fail to live the fulfilled life God call us to.
And, among other texts, the parable of the talents warns us USE our time, use our abilities.
Again, a prophetic moral critique, offered to enable us to achieve the goal he call us to to: fulfilment, not a wasted life, a life of wasted talents.
As a prophetic word in the heat, we might ask ourselves how well we’ve done so.

To return to where I began:
The Lord Jesus was a prophet. He called people to repentance and change.
And that’s an unpopular thing.
He did it, He endured unpopularity, for our sake, to point out to us the life we can live.

Talitha kum, 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Mk 5:21-43
Who do we turn to when we have a problem?
Something we often do is, we turn to those we have seen help others in a similar situation.
The point I want to make to you is that we have a powerful example of how the Early Church did this with respect to the Gospel miracle we just heard:

The account we just heard passes on to us one of the extremely rare words of Aramaic recorded in the Gospels. Why is this significant? Because it indicates that these were the EXACT words spoken by the Lord Jesus. In hearing the words, “Talitha, kum”(Mk 5:41), we hear not a summary of Jesus, not a translation, but even 2000 years later we hear the EXACT words He said.
The Gospels were written in Greek because that was the international language of the day. But the Lord Jesus and the disciples would have used other languages: Hebrew, for certain official prayers; Latin, for dealing with the Roman rulers; Greek, for business transactions; but their everyday language use was Aramaic.
In this passage, written in Greek, St Mark hands on to us not a translation of the Lord but His exact words.
The Early Church, as it spread beyond Palestine, treasured and handed on certain exact phrases of the Lord, and this is one of them.
“Talitha kum” -but why it is significant?

Literally, as St Mark comments, it means, “Little girl, get up!”
The Early Church treasured this text because it saw in these words a significance even broader than being yet another miracle of the Lord.
WHO is the “little girl” that the Lord raises up?
THE CHURCH -she is, according to Scripture, she is the “bride” of the Lord Jesus (c.f. St Bede, cited in Catena Aurea).
The Lord came from heaven because she was in need: weak in sickness of soul, lost in her sin.
And the Lord said to her: “Little girl, get up”.
Yes, this was a particular girl: Jarius’s daughter.
But she is symbol of how the Lord raises up the WHOLE Church, and each of us as members of her.

I know this has been MY experience:
There are times when I’ve been weak and defeated, crushed by the trials and woes of life, and yet I’ve somehow felt an inner strength move me on, something beyond me -He has said to me, “Get up!”
There are times when I’ve been dead in my sin, rendered lifeless by my own iniquities, and yet He has spoken to me, “Get up!”
And across this congregation: you know the same.

Let us think, also, of how often we have been like Jarius:
Jarius was not sick himself; he didn’t have a problem.
It was the problem of one he loved that troubled him: the sickness of his daughter.
Like Jarius, when we carry the problems of others, we must bring them to the Lord, we must bring them to the only one who has the power to say, “Talitha, kum”, “little girl, get up!”

A final point: Jarius had people try to stop him bring her to the Lord:
Some people told him not to bother the Lord, she was dead already9mk 5:35);
Other people scoffed at the Lord, they “laughed”(Mk 5:40).
My point is this: there are many around us today who likewise scoff as they see us bring our problems to the Lord. “Do you really still believe all that?”, “Do you really think there’s a God up there?”
Yes, actually, I do. I believe that nothing comes from nothing; and that something comes only from something; that this amazing ‘something’ all around us is only here because of a Creator.
And yes, I believe He cares about us, that He listens to our pleas. And I light candle with my prayers.

Because the One who raised up that little girl of Jarius;
The One who raised up the “little girl” of the Church, when weak and lost;
That same One can also raise me up today. And I come to hear His call, “Talitha, kum!”

Birth of St John the Baptist

Today we keep the feastday of St John the Baptist, and you might not be aware of this, but its incredibly rare for Church to allow an individual saint to replace the normal Sunday Mass.  So its worth while remembering why St John the Baptist is considered important.

Let’s recall who he was:

He was “the Baptist” -in the River Jordan he baptised huge crowds of people who came to him from all over Palestine.

He was great 

-he had so many many followers, and was held in such admiration, that many people thought that he must eb the long-awaited Jewish Messaish.  So many people thought this that he had to make a point of saying that he WASN’T the Messiah (Lk 3:15-16);

-he was so great that the Lord Jesus said of Him, that there was no one greater born of women (Mt 11:11);

-God blessed his birth with miracles: an angel appeared to his father and first struck him dumb and then his speech was restored, events so unusual that “all marvelled”(Lk 1:63) and everyone said, “What then will this child turn out to be?”(Lk 1:66).

He was the cousin of the Lord Jesus

-his mother was Elizabeth, a cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Having noted all those details, let’s come to the crucial point: 

WHY was he baptising?

As he put it himself, he was ‘Preparing a way for the Lord’(Lk 3:4):

His was a ‘baptism of repentence’(Lk 3:3);

He told people how to change their lives: the tax collectors, the soldiers, the multitudes;

And the point is this:

None of this was for himself, it was all to get them ready for someone else: the Lord Jesus Christ, who WAS the long-awaited Messiah.

A brief application to ourselves: How is all this relevant to ME?  

4 very brief points:

(1) God had a plan in St John the Baptist, a long plan with many miraculous details, a plan that was part of a wider plan: for the Messiah.

If God had a plan for him, it’s a reminder that He also mas a plan for me, and a plan for you.

(2) A different point, St John the Baptist deferred to the Lord Jesus.  St John the Baptist said, He must increase and I must decrease”(Jn 3:30).

I, too, must be ready to put the Lord before all else -he and I are not on an equal footing.

(3) Third, the entire work of St John the Baptist was oriented towards the something GREATER that lay ahead: the coming of the King, with a new type of Kingdom.

There is something greater ahead, available for you and me too: Heaven.

(4) Finally, let us think about how St John the Baptist first reacted when meeting the Lord Jesus. 

People often recall his life of penance in the desert, his eating locusts etc.  

BUT when he first met the Lord, when their pregnant mothers greeted, and the two babes in the wombs miraculously reacted to each other, his mother Elizabeth said, “The babe in my womb leapt for JOY”(Lk 1:44).

Joy can be our reaction too, every time we meet the Lord, at a deeper and deeper level.

By Faith not by sight, 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

2 Cor 5:6-10; Mk 4:26-34

If you’re wondering where I was last week, I’ve just been away on an 8 day retreat.  8 days of silence, speaking only to my retreat director, and only to him once a day. 

Such a retreat is hard work.  We use the word ‘retreat’ in English, but in other languages they call them the ‘exercises’.

To use one analogy, it’s a bit like staring in the mirror non-stop for 8 days. You come to see every imperfection, every thing about yourself that you don’t like, everything that you need to CHANGE -you can become rather sick of yourself.  

That analogy has a serious flaw, however:

A Christian retreat isn’t about looking at yourself in a mirror.

A Christian retreat is about looking at Christ, looking at Him long and hard.

-like a mirror, we come to see ourselves in a new light.

But whereas a mirror only leads you to yourself, and fails to show you HOW to change -you only see what is ugly and wrong,

in contrast, when we look at Christ, we see not so much what is WRONG, but what could be RIGHT, in Him.

I want to focus this on a useful and oft-quoted statement we heard in our second reading, from St Paul to the Corinthians:

“We walk by faith, and not by sight”(2 Cor 5:7).

I might know I need to change; know I need to move on, 

But none of us have SEEN that place where we are supposed to be going, 

we don’t know it “by sight” -to use St Paul’s term.

So how DO we know it?  How can I know HOW I’m supposed to journey onwards?

            St Paul says we do so, “by faith”.

Faith, it’s important to be clear, it’s NOT a vague attitude or feeling.

Romans 10:17: “Faith comes from hearing” 

I hear what the Lord has told me, especially in the Bible, 

and I choose to accept Him, and, accept what He has said.

I say, “I believe you”, to the Lord Jesus,

I say that I believe all He has told me about:

The destination, life in Him, life united to Him;

The path, which is also Him, He is “the way”(Jn 14:6).

For myself, as for you, the Lord has told us many things for us to believe, to “walk by faith”.

He has revealed, in Himself, just how wondrous, how desirable, that destination is.

He has also revealed what I need to do to get there:

To daily, if not hourly, repent of my sins;

To see myself more truly in Him, to examine myself, to know what sins to repent of;

To live for Him, and for others for His sake, rather than living for myself, 

not living for my comfort, for my accomplishment, my pride, my vanity, my pleasure;

He has also revealed His strength and assistance on the way:

Our gospel parable, of the seed that grows unseen, is just one of many promises of how He DOES work, even when we don’t see it;

He promises to come with His strength in the sacraments, because I can’t get to heaven by own power:

I need His feeding in Holy Communion,

I need His restoring forgiveness in regular Confession.

I haven’t yet seen the goal, but I’ve been told of it in faith.  

“We walk by faith, and not [yet!] by sight”(2 Cor 5:7).