TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

26 AUGUST 2018

          For the past five weeks, we have been hearing the Bread of Life Discourse from Saint John’s Gospel.  The discourse began with Jesus feeding five thousand people with five barley loaves and two fish.  It has continued every Sunday (actually as long as the Season of Lent) and concludes today.  Jesus has been trying to help people understand the true significance of his sign of that miraculous feeding.  He is the Bread come down from heaven.  He has taken on human flesh.  He will become the sacrificial lamb slain on the cross.  After his Resurrection and Ascension into heaven, he will send the Holy Spirit to continue his real presence in the Eucharist.  He promises that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live forever.

            It is good for us to hear the conclusion of this discourse as we celebrate our patronal feast.  It reminds us that the Eucharist is at the heart of everything we do as a parish.  The vitality of our parish comes from the Eucharist and draws us back again every Sunday.

            Unfortunately, we celebrate our patronal feast when the news of the Grand Jury report from Pennsylvania has rocked our Church.  It is sickening to know that over 7 decades, 300 priests have been guilty of abusing thousands of children.  Even worse, we have learned that too many bishops had turned a blind eye and failed to protect the innocent victims.  Just as many of the disciples of Jesus left his company in today’s Gospel, people are walking away from the Church today because of these new revelations.  At some level, their reaction is understandable.  But Jesus turns to us, as he turns to Peter, and asks, “Do you also want to leave?”  By our very presence here today, we have already responded with his words, “Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words to eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”  I sincerely thank you for that response!

            At one level, there is not much we can do about those outright crimes and horrible abuses of power.  We can pray for the victims and support them in their healing.  That is why Bishop Rhoades is publishing the names of all credibly accused priests of our Diocese, whether living or dead.  We hope that other victims will come forward to be healed.  We continue to enforce the child protection procedures in place since the clergy abuse scandal broke in 2002.  They provide better safeguards for children under our care.  We expect that offending bishops will be punished or removed for their failure.  We trust that current bishops have learned from the failure of their predecessors and pay close attention to victims of abuse.  Because Bishop Rhoades was the Bishop of Harrisburg before coming here, his name has been implicated.  Please read his statement printed in the bulletin today.  He deserves our trust and support.

            No matter how many reforms have been introduced, we know that the humans of our Church, both clerical and lay, are sinners.  Jesus entrusted the care of the Church to Peter, whose sins are evident in the New Testament.  His worst sin was on the night of the Last Supper when he denied knowing Jesus.  He repented from his sins and worked with the Lord’s mercy to be a better shepherd.  The same is true of us.  We are all sinners.  If you don’t believe that I am a sinner, ask Fr. Eric or any member of the staff.  Those who were guilty of abuse committed crimes and abused their power in terrible ways.  In effect, they ignored Saint Paul’s advice.  Rather than making themselves subordinate to Christ and placing their lives in service to others, they made their innocent victims subordinate to their own darker urges.  We remain in the Church, not because of any human shepherds, but because we subordinate ourselves to Christ and trust that Christ will remain with us, forgive our sins, and feed us with his Body and Blood.  That is his promise.  That is at the heart of our celebration of our patronal feast today.

TWENTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

19 AUGUST 2018

          As we continue to reflect on the Bread of Life discourse from the Gospel of Saint John, we must remember that Jesus has fed the crowd of five thousand people with five barley loaves and two fish at the time of the Passover.  Those who hear this discourse for the first time understood the importance of the paschal lamb.  In their Passover rituals, the people would slaughter the lamb and smear its blood on their doorposts, as their ancestors had done in Egypt to allow the angel of death to pass over their homes.  As they ate the paschal lamb, they would share four cups of wine blessing (praising) God for their journey from slavery to freedom.  They would speak of the Covenant which God had made with their ancestors at Mount Sinai.  In speaking of the manna that fed their ancestors in the desert, they would tell of the ways in which God continues to be faithful to that Covenant.

            Jesus makes it clear that he is the new paschal lamb.  He will be sacrificed on the cross.  Blood and water will flow from his side as he dies on that cross, signifying the water of baptism and the Eucharist in the new Covenant.  He insists that he is the living bread come down from heaven.  Even though he was present at the creation of the world, he had taken on human flesh in the Incarnation and dwells among us.  Through the elements of bread and wine in the Eucharist, his Incarnation is made present in a real way.  He promises that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live forever.  In our journey through the desert of life, eating his flesh and drinking his blood will bring us into an intimate relationship with him that cannot be destroyed by death.

            The crowd is horrified.  Because they understand blood as a sign of life, they would never consider drinking any blood.  They think that Jesus is inviting them to be cannibals, eating the flesh of human beings.  They do not understand that the man speaking this message is the only begotten Son of God.  The Incarnation makes no sense to them, because Jesus is too ordinary for them.  They can only ask, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

            Saint John records these words for those who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God after the Paschal Mystery has been completed.  He invites the readers of this Gospel to reflect on what happened to Jesus Christ.  After washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, he had been betrayed and subjected to a fake trial.  He had calmly accepted the verdict of Pontius Pilate and had been executed like a common criminal and buried in a tomb.  He had been raised from the dead and given the Holy Spirit to his disciples.  He had been taken up to heaven, where he intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father.  His Incarnation continues to be present every time the Christian Community gathers to celebrate the Eucharist.

            That is exactly why we gather here every Sunday.  We hear about the Lord’s continuing presence in our lives in the Liturgy of the Word.  Trusting in that presence, Saint Paul reminds us to live our Baptismal promises.  He tells us to make the most of the opportunity.  In other words, he tells us that we can redeem the times by our witness to the Gospel.  Then, we take bread and wine, bless God the Father for the Sacrifice of Jesus made present as we remember, break the consecrated bread, and give it.

            Even though we stand on the shoulders of countless theologians who have developed the theology of the Eucharist over the centuries, we might ask the same question:  “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  We can never fully understand that Mystery.  That is why the Lord invites us to renew our faith today in his real presence.  He invites us to eat his flesh and drink his blood under the elements of bread and wine.  He invites us to trust that we who eat his flesh and drink his blood are members of his Body, and that death cannot destroy that reality.

NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

12 AUGUST 2018

          In today’s first reading, we find Elijah in a state of deep depression.  The last remaining prophet of God, Elijah had defeated the priests of the false gods of the Baal at Mount Carmel.  He demonstrated the faithfulness of God and had proven that the leadership of King Ahab had failed the northern kingdom of Israel.  But instead of basking in his victory, he is running for his life.  Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, has sent her armies to kill him.  After a day’s journey in the desert, Elijah sits under a broom tree and asks for death.  Instead of granting Elijah’s desperate wish, God sends an angel to feed him with a hearth cake and a jug of water.  Still depressed, Elijah lays down again.  When the angel feeds him a second time, he obeys the order and walks for forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb.  It was at Mount Horeb (which is the name given to Mount Sinai by the people of the northern kingdom) that Moses had originally mediated the Covenant between God and his people.  It is to Mount Horeb, nourished by the hearth cake and water, that Elijah would encounter God and regain his confidence in God’s promises.

            Like Elijah, we too are walking on this pilgrimage of life.  As members of the New Covenant sealed with the blood of the Lamb who gave his life for us, we know the many ways we have experienced God’s faithfulness in our lives.  But we also know times when the Lord seems distant from us.  All of us know that there are times in our lives when depression has a way of paralyzing us.  Some battle depression as a chronic condition.  Others experience times of depression that rob us of energy, of hope, and of a sense of God’s presence in our lives.

            For the third Sunday, we continue to reflect on the Bread of Life discourse from the Gospel of John.  Just as God fed Elijah with bread and water to strengthen him on his journey, so the Lord feeds us with his body and blood to strengthen us on ours.  Those who hear his words for the first time cannot believe his promise to be the bread of life.  He is too ordinary for them. They cannot see beyond his ordinary appearance to believe that he is the Eternal Word who has come down from heaven to give them new life.  They forget that their ancestors had complained about the manna in their pilgrimage through the desert from slavery to freedom.  They do the same thing.  They murmur against Jesus and refuse to believe that he will become the new Passover Lamb whose blood will wash away their sins and give eternal life.

            At this Mass, we hear those same words that we who eat his bread will live forever.  Saint Paul believed that promise and reaffirmed it in his letter to the Ephesians.  In writing to the Church of Ephesus two thousand years ago, he might as well have been addressing the conditions of our world today.  Like them, we walk in a world filled with bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling.  We know the political divides that polarize us and end up in shouting matches.  We know the pain when we are attacked on social media.  We know the terrible effects of grief resulting from failure or the death of a loved one.  Like Elijah, it is easy to fall into depression and give up.  But when we share in the Lord’s gift of the Eucharist here, we are nourished to continue our pilgrimage together with a sense of hope and love.  Nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ, we can truly be imitators of God as his beloved children and act like God’s beloved children in a broken world.  Aware of the bonds that bind us, we renew our intentions to be kind to one another, compassionate, and forgiving one another as God has forgiven us in Christ.  Nourished by the Eucharist, we can learn to imitate the Lord’s kindness not only to those we like or agree with, but also to those with whom we disagree or dislike.  That is why we march together to be fed at this Altar.  We are Christ’s Body, and we can make a difference in our world today by behaving as Christ’s Body.