NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
9 AUGUST 2015
As we continue to reflect on the Lord’s real
presence in the Eucharist, our Scripture readings remind us that God created us
with a hunger and thirst that only God can fill. Jesus reminds the crowds that God had offered
manna and water from the rock in the desert as a sign of his power to satisfy
their real hungers and thirsts. Jesus has been sent from God to fulfill that
hunger and thirst at a level that Moses could never have imagined.
Thomas Merton wrote a book which
became a New York Times best seller
soon after World War II. That book, The Seven Story Mountain, was the
autobiographical account of his conversion.
Not only did turning to God bring him to Baptism after living a rather
selfish life, but it also led him to become a Trappist Monk at the Abbey of
Gethsemani in Kentucky. As Merton
continued to reflect on his conversion experience, he wrote about his continuing
journey into eternity. He wrote that we
find God when we find our true self. At
one level, finding our true self is simple:
who we are, and always have been, in God. Who we are in God is who we are forever. However, that journey is difficult, because
we are tempted to define ourselves in terms of what Merton called the “false self”
– our reputations, titles, possessions, and other roles which ultimately pass
away. Merton does not define the false
self as bad. Rather, if we wrap
ourselves with pleasures, experiences, titles, and accomplishments, there will
be nothing left of us when we die. We
have failed to find God in failing to find our true selves.
Jesus tells us that he is the Bread
of life. In believing in him, who feeds
us with his own Body and Blood, we slowly and gradually find our true
self. We received our true self in Christ
on the day when we were baptized. To use
Saint Paul’s term, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit. In the ancient world, slaves were sealed with
their master’s insignia, proclaiming that they belonged to someone. Paul tells us that we belong to God, who
draws us to find our true selves. When
we live our baptismal promises, we can let go of all those things that tend to
tear apart at our true selves: all bitterness,
fury, anger, shouting, and reviling, along with all malice.
That is why the Eucharist is so
critical to our journey of finding our true selves, and ultimately finding the
God who created us. Jesus is very clear
about it: “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever believes has eternal life. Whoever eats this bread will live
forever. The bread that I will give is
my flesh for the life of the world.”
Jesus feeds us with this bread every Sunday (or every day for those who
choose to come to daily Mass). He feeds
us when life is going well. He feeds us
in desperate situations, as God fed Elijah when he was running for us life from
Queen Jezebel, who was trying to kill him for speaking the truth about the God
of the Covenant.
Sometimes young people tell me that
they get away from the habit of regular participation at Sunday Mass, because
they don’t get anything out of Mass.
(Don’t worry, I felt the same thing when I was your age, when my parents
dragged me to Mass. My Dad would remind
us that if we wanted a meal, we had to go to Mass). Do you expect that you will get “something
out of Mass” every time you come, especially when the homily is not so good! We continue to set aside this hour and make
Mass a part of our weekly routine, because it is easy to get caught up in our
false selves, to think that those false selves define who we are, and forget
where we are going.
As the Body of Christ, joined to
others, we become what we eat. The
journey is long and filled with danger.
What the angel said to Elijah, he says to us: “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too
long for you!” Eating and drinking, we
walk on this journey together to the God who created us, gave us our true
selves, and wants us to be with him in eternity.
Good homily and an excellent life lesson for continuing our journey along the way...
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