Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Author: Father Pat Mulcahy

  • Friday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time [Mass of the Holy Spirit]

    Friday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time [Mass of the Holy Spirit]

    Today’s readings (Mass for the school children.)

    I can’t think of any better way to celebrate the beginning of the school year than by giving a teacher a pop quiz!  You can all relax: I’m not really going to do that.  But that’s what is going on in the Gospel reading today.  The Pharisees are a group of the religious leaders in Jesus’ time who were very concerned that the law was being followed to the letter.  And today they approach Jesus, who they call “Teacher,” to ask him a question.  Now let’s be clear: the Pharisees didn’t like Jesus.  They call him “Teacher” in a kind of mocking sort of way because they had seen him teaching the crowds.  They were a little jealous, if they were honest, at how much the crowds were listening to him.

    Then they ask him what they think is a trick question.  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  Now, I think it’s important for us to know that this scholar wasn’t really interested in Jesus’ point of view, nor did he expect to learn anything from Jesus.  Instead he was looking for a wrong answer, for Jesus to say something that was against their way of thinking so that they could brand him as a heretic and get rid of him.  That’s what those Pharisees were all about.

    It’s important for us to know that, in the Old Testament, which was the Bible in those days, there are over six hundred laws!  So the Pharisees and the teachers and the scribes were always arguing about which of the laws was the greatest.  This question that the Pharisee asked could easily have gotten Jesus into trouble.

    But Jesus is too good for that.  So what he gives this scholar, and all those who were listening in, was a very fair summary of the law and the prophets: love God and love your neighbor.  And he does it in a way that they can’t argue about.  He does it by quoting one of their most famous rules of life, one of their favorite laws from Holy Scripture: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  Every Jew memorized that as the greatest and first commandment, so they couldn’t be uncomfortable with that answer.  And when he adds the commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself, well that wasn’t going that far beyond what they had been taught.  So now they have nothing to say to him.

    But what is important here is that these words are for us.  All of our life needs to be centered around love.  If love is what summed up the law and the prophets, then it is certainly what sums up the Gospel.  We too are called to love God who loved us first and loves us best.  We too are called to put that love into action by loving others, every person we come in contact with.  Some are easy to love, others not so much.  But we are called to love them anyway.

    And I really do think that’s a great thing to think about as we begin our school year.  We will all be friends with some people, and others might just be people we know when we see them.  Most of the time, I think we will all get along alright.  But sometimes, something might happen, or something might get said, and they we get hurt.  Then it’s important to remember what Jesus says in the Gospel today: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.  The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

    We have to remember to love, because God loves us even when we aren’t so easy to love.  Even when we fall into sin, he loves us anyway.  So if God loves us that much, we need to love others just like that.  We need to love our neighbor, no matter who that neighbor is, no matter what race that neighbor is, no matter what part of town they come from or what their parents do for a living.  We have to love them when it’s easy to love them, and we have to love them when it’s not so easy.  Because our God loves us just like that.So think about this as you pray today: how will you love others today?  Who is hard to love?  What will you do to love them anyway?

  • Thursday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I’m not going to sugar-coat this: the truth is that the story we have in our first reading is a horrible story.  Why  on earth would we worship a God who accept such a vow from Jephthah (or anyone else for that matter), or hold him to it? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves: first, a bit of context.  The footnotes in the New American Bible remind us that this was a fairly common theme in ancient mythology.  When the topic of sacrificing children comes up in Scripture, it is usually strongly condemned.  Here, the writer simply records the story, probably to explain the tradition that is recorded in the next verse after our reading stops: “It became a custom in Israel for Israelite women to go yearly to mourn the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite for four days of the year.”

    Why this comes up at all in the Sacred Liturgy is another matter.  Bad enough that this story is in the Bible, must we hear it every second year on this day?  Well, all we have to do is wait a minute to hear the Psalmist explain what’s really important:

    Sacrifice or oblation you wished not,
        but ears open to obedience you gave me.
    Burnt offerings or sin-offerings you sought not;
        then said I, “Behold I come.”

    So let’s let the horrible story remind us that the Psalmist directs us how to really pray and really live.  Leave behind the crazy sacrifices and unholy vows, and instead give ourselves completely to the Lord, and obey his commands.

  • Tuesday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel reading follows picks up where yesterday’s reading left off.  As you remember, the rich young man went away sad, not knowing how he could attain eternal life, because he had many possessions.  Today, Jesus explains to his disciples what was going on.  

    “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven.”  That was the sadness for the rich young man, right?  He went away sad because of his many possessions.  Now, it’s not going to be hard because God is setting up the obstacle; it will be hard because the rich young man was grieved at letting go of what he had.

    So it is with us sometimes.  Very often, we have placed an obstacle between ourselves and God.  Or we are holding on to so much other stuff that we can’t receive what God wants us to have.  Odds are one hundred percent that what God wants us to have will make us infinitely happier than the stuff currently in our hands.You see,  Jesus isn’t bashing rich people.  And it’s not just rich people who will have trouble going to the kingdom.  It’s going to be hard for anyone who has an obstacle between themselves and Jesus.  So whether that obstacle is riches, or our work, or our lifestyle, or our grudges, or our comfort zone, or whatever, we need to let go of all that.  It’s going to be hard for us to get into heaven with obstacles in our way, with stuff in our hands, “but for God all things are possible.”  If we let go of the garbage we are holding onto, if we make a real sacrifice for the kingdom, then the kingdom is ours.

  • The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

    Today’s readings

    In every age of the world, people have needed hope.  Because in every age of the world, there has been unbelievable hardship.  There has always been war, and disease, and poverty, and oppression, and alienation, and all the rest.  There has always been sin, and broken relationships, and impure desires and that feeling of emptiness that hardens our hearts.  Evil has run rampant from the fall of humanity and ever onward.  And the weight of all of that could be crushing – if we didn’t have hope.

    And I don’t need to be abstract about this.  We certainly have been and still are dealing with one of the most prolific pandemics of our time.  Just when we think things will go back to normal, a variant emerges that causes concern all over again.  No one can agree on what to do to keep people well, and an illness becomes even worse: a source of division, as if we needed another one.  Our pulling out of the endless conflict in Afghanistan causes renewed violence in the region.  Wildfires are destroying whole regions and are plaguing ever more locations of the earth, and violent weather batters many other places.  In our own lives we have the illness and death of loved ones; family members alienating one another; loss of employment; and that’s just to name a few.  There’s no way we could live with all that – if we didn’t have hope.

    And I don’t mean hope in the Pollyanna sense.  I’m not going to tell you, “don’t worry – everything will work out all right” because, honestly, some things just won’t.  The hope that I think we can find in today’s Liturgy is the theological virtue that reminds us that this is not all there is; this is not as good as it gets.  Our readings remind us that there has been and still is, and perhaps always will be incredible evil in this world, but evil doesn’t get the final say – not for Jesus, not for Mary, and not for us.  One look at the way things work in our world and in our lives could convince us that this has all been an unbelievable failure – if we didn’t have hope.

    Today, we joyfully celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which dates back to the very earliest days of the Church, all the way back to the days of the apostles. It was known that Mary had “fallen asleep” and that there is a “Tomb of Mary” close to Mount Zion, where the early Christian community had lived. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 tells us that, after Mary’s death, the apostles opened the tomb, finding it empty, and concluded that she had been taken bodily into heaven. The tradition was spoken about by the various fathers of the Church, and in the eighth century, St. John Damascene wrote, “Although the body was duly buried, it did not remain in the state of death, neither was it dissolved by decay … You were transferred to your heavenly home, O Lady, Queen and Mother of God in truth.” The current celebration of Mary’s Assumption has taken place since 1950, when Pope Pius XII proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in his encyclical, Munificentissimus Deus, saying: “The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven.”

    The hope that we find in the doctrine of the Assumption is summed up in the Preface to today’s Eucharistic Prayer, which I will sing in a few minutes.  Listen to the beautiful words of that prayer:

    For today the Virgin Mother of God
    was assumed into heaven
    as the beginning and image
    of your Church’s coming to perfection
    and a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people…

    The Church knows well that our pilgrim way in this world would be filled with evil.  But the Church courageously believes that this world’s experience isn’t the be-all and end-all of our existence: we have much to look forward to in the life to come.  Our Savior himself foretold as much in John’s gospel when he said, “I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.” (John 16:33)  This, brothers and sisters in Christ, is our hope, and this is the hope that we celebrate today.

    The reason the Church reveres Mary as much as she does, and celebrates this feast with so much joy, is because Mary’s life is the icon of the Church.  What is important for us to see in this feast is that it proclaims with all the joy the Church has at her disposal that what happened to Mary can happen and will happen for us who believe. We too have the promise of eternal life in heaven, where death and sin and pain will no longer have power over us. Because Christ caught his Blessed Mother back up into his life in heaven, we know that we too can be caught up with his life in heaven. On that great day, death, the last enemy, will be completely destroyed, as Saint Paul tells us today.  That is our hope: our unbelievably gracious, completely unmerited, lovingly-bestowed hope.

    Mary’s life wasn’t always easy, but Mary’s life was redeemed. That is good news for us who have difficult lives or fine it hard to live our faith. Because there are those among us too who have family lives that are made difficult by external circumstances.  There are those among us whose children go in directions that put them in danger.  There are those among us who have to watch a child die.  But because Mary suffered these sorrows too, and yet was exalted, we can hope for the day when that which she was given and which we have been promised will surely be ours.  We can and do hope in this salvation every day of our lives.  It’s what makes our lives livable; it’s what gives us the strength to keep going, in the midst of so much difficulty.

    Today’s readings can seem pretty fantastic, in the sense that we don’t know what to believe about them.  The reading from revelation has a dragon sweeping a third of the stars from the sky, and a child being caught up to heaven.  But really, I don’t think that’s too hard to grasp.  We have all been through things in our lives when it felt like a third of the stars had fallen out of the sky.  There is that evil dragon that seeks us out and wants to devour the hope that we have, but the child of that hope has been taken up to heaven, and we can go there one day too, if we believe, and repent, and cling to Christ who is our hope.

    Mary’s song of praise in today’s gospel reading, which the Church prays every evening in Vespers, echoes the hope we have in this feast of the Assumption:

    He has come to the help of his servant Israel
    for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
    the promise he made to our fathers,
    to Abraham and his children forever.

    Life is hard.  It always has been, and probably always will be.  But this life is not all there is.  As we walk through this life on our pilgrim way to God’s kingdom, we walk always in the presence of our God who sees us, who notices our pain and sorrow, who grieves with us and laughs with us, who never lets go of us, and who gives us hope beyond anything we deserve.  As we live our lives here on earth, we find ourselves straining toward heaven, looking up for our redemption, knowing that where Mary has gone, we hope to follow.

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

    Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

    Maximilian Kolbe became a Franciscan novice at the age of 16. Earlier in life he had a vision of the Blessed Virgin offering him two crowns, a white one of purity, and a red one of martyrdom. Maximilian said “I choose both.” The Blessed Virgin smiled and departed from him. Maximilian devoted his life to purity through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. He founded the Mission of the Immaculata to combat religious indifference, which he saw as the greatest problem in society. By the time the Nazis overran Poland, the mission numbered as many as a million people.

    Maximilian was twice arrested by the Nazis and the second time taken to Auschwitz. One day a fellow prisoner escaped, and the commandant decided to put ten men to death, whom he chose by arbitrarily pointing men out as he walked among their ranks. Just after the tenth man was chosen, Maximilian stepped out of the ranks and asked to take the place of one man, who had a wife and children. The commandant asked “what about you?” to which Maximilian replied, “I am a priest.” Because the regime at the time was striving to eliminate all the leaders of the people, Maximilian’s request was granted, and he died in the starvation chamber some three months later.

    Saint Maximilian had a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so it is appropriate that we celebrate his feast on this day, the vigil of Mary’s Assumption.  Through the intercession of Saint Maximilian and our Blessed Mother, may we too combat religious indifference and give our lives in service to others.

  • Saint Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr

    Saint Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr

    Today’s readings

    St. Lawrence was a deacon of the early Church, who was charged with the care of the goods of the Church.  Legend has it that he was called in by the Prefect of Rome, who had just killed Pope Sixtus II, whose memorial was last week.  The Prefect told Lawrence that he wanted the treasures of the Church.  His warped explanation for this unreasonable demand was that, since Christ didn’t bring any money or material goods into the world with him, then such things should not be important to the Church.  Let’s be clear: the Prefect didn’t care what was or was not important to the Church, or for that matter, Christ, but that was what he said. 

    Lawrence told him to give him a few days to inventory the goods of the Church.  Three days later, Lawrence assembled a large group of the widows, orphans, blind, lame and leprous.  He presented them to the Prefect saying, “Behold, these are the treasures of the Church.”  Which was the real truth, but not what the Prefect was going for.  He was so angry, he ordered Deacon Lawrence to be killed, but, in his words, “by inches,” meaning a slow and tortuous death.  Lawrence was bound to a gridiron and was roasted over coals.  At one point in the torture, Lawrence is said to have called out cheerfully, “I am done on this side, I think; you can turn me over now.”

    Several years ago, on vacation, I visited a classmate who is a priest down in Belleville, and we visited the Saint Louis Art Museum.  They have a very famous painting of Saint Lawrence distributing the wealth of the Church to the poor so that the Prefect couldn’t have it.  It was painted by Bernardo Strozzi around the year 1625.  That was one of my favorite paintings there in the museum.  You can Google St. Lawrence Strozzi and see it; it’s worth doing.

    Now, this whole story is saintly legend, certainly.  We don’t know if it is true or not.  But it is a beautiful story that makes us reflect on Jesus’ call in the Gospel today: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.”  We who would be followers of Christ are called to know what the real treasures of life are, and to be willing to sacrifice, give everything, to protect them.

  • The Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Bread of Life Discourse III

    The Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Bread of Life Discourse III

    Today’s readings

    You may have heard of Viaticum, which we generally think of as one’s last Communion. Indeed, the Church encourages us by precept of the Church to receive Holy Communion in our last moments, if at all possible.  The word viaticum is Latin for “bread for the journey.”  So in our last moments, when we set out on our journey to the life that is to come, we are fed with that Food that sustains us.  It’s a commendable practice and I highly encourage it.

    Today we see the Scriptural basis for viaticum, that bread for the journey.  In the first reading, the prophet Elijah had come to the point where he just couldn’t even.  Despite some successes in preaching the word of the Lord, he has felt that he is a failure.  Today’s reading comes after Elijah, with God’s help, just defeated all the prophets of the false god Baal in a splendid display of pyrotechnics on Mount Carmel.  It’s a wonderful story that you can find in chapter 18 of the first book of Kings, and your homework today is to go home and read it.  I promise, you’ll enjoy the story.  Well after that outstanding success, one would expect Elijah to go about boasting of his victory.  Instead, Jezebel, the king’s wife and the one who brought the prophets of Baal to Israel in the first place, pledges to take Elijah’s life.  Today’s story, then, finds him sitting under a scraggly broom tree, which offered little if any shade, and praying for death.  For him it would be better for the Lord to take his life than to die by Jezebel’s henchmen.  The Lord ignores his prayer and instead twice makes him get up and eat bread that God himself provides, so that he would be strengthened for the journey.  In the story that follows, Elijah will come quite face-to-face with God, and be refreshed to go on.  But he can’t do that if he starves to death under the broom tree.  Sometimes God does not give us what we ask for, but exactly what we need.

    Our Gospel reading takes us back to Saint John’s “Bread of Life Discourse.”  We began two weeks ago with the feeding of the multitudes; then last week the multitudes sought Jesus out so they could get more of the same and Jesus sets out to feed their spirits.  At the end of last week’s Gospel, Jesus told them that Moses didn’t give them bread from heaven, but rather God did; and then he made a very bold claim: “I am the bread of life.”  So this week, the people are angry with Jesus for that claim, for saying that he came down from heaven.  They murmured because they knew his family, and surmised that, because they knew who he was, he couldn’t have descended from heaven.  Sometimes we think we know everything about a person, but really we don’t.  They didn’t yet understand the depth of who Jesus was.  They were so hungry that they didn’t realize that the finest spiritual banquet stood right before them.

    The thing is, spiritual hunger is something we all face in one way or another.  We all have very difficult journeys to face in our lives.  Whether we’re feeling dejected and defeated like Elijah, or feeling cranky and irritable like the Ephesians in the second reading, or whether we’re just feeling confused or superior and murmuring like the Jews in today’s Gospel, spiritual hunger is something we all must face sometime in our lives.  From time to time, we all discover in ourselves a hole that we try to fill with something.  And usually we make a pretty poor choice of how to fill up that hole.  Maybe we try to fill that up with alcohol, or too much work, or too much ice cream, or the wrong kind of relationships, or whatever; and eventually we find that none of that fills up the hole in our lives.  Soon we end up sitting under a scraggly old broom tree, wishing that God would take us now.  If we’re honest, we’ve all been at that place at one time or another in our lives.

    We disciples know that there is only one thing – or rather one person – that can fill up that emptiness.  And that person is Jesus Christ.  This Jesus knows our pains and sorrows and longs to be our Bread of Life, the only bread that can fill up that God-sized hole in our lives.  We have to let him do that.  But it’s not so easy for us to let God take over and do what he needs to do in us.  We have to turn off the distractions around us, we have to stop trying to fill the hole with other things that never have any hope of satisfying us, and we have to turn to our Lord in trust that only he can give us strength for the journey.  Jesus alone is the bread that came down from heaven, and only those who eat this bread will live forever: forever satisfied, forever strengthened.  It is only this bread that will give us strength for the arduous journeys of our lives.

    Because this Food is so important to us, because it is such a great experience of God’s presence in our lives, we should be all the more diligent to receive the Eucharist frequently and faithfully.  Certainly nothing other than sickness or death should ever deter us from gathering on Sunday to celebrate with the community and receive our Lord in Holy Communion.  We should all think long and hard before we decide not to bring our families to Sunday Mass.  Sometimes soccer, football, softball and other sports or activities become more important than weekly worship, as if Mass were just one option among many activities from which we may choose.  Or maybe we decide to work at the office or around the house instead of coming to Church on Sunday, a clear violation of the third commandment.  And most especially in this pandemic time, when we may have become used to watching the livestream of Mass in our pajamas with a cup of coffee, or even skipping it altogether, we need to get back in the glorious habit of coming to Mass in church.  I realize that I may well be preaching to those who already know this, and I realize that it’s hard, especially for families, to get to Church at times, but this is way too important for any of us to miss.  Hard as it may be, the effort will always be worth it, in the long run.  It is Jesus, the Bread of Life, who will lead us to heaven – the goal of all our lives and our most important journey, – and absolutely nothing and no one else will do that.  Jesus is absolutely our only way to heaven, so we have to keep our eye on the ball.

    It all comes down to what we believe.  If we believe that Jesus is the Bread of Life, then why on earth would we ever want to miss Holy Mass?  If he is the only way to heaven, why would we think to separate ourselves from him?  Our Church teaches us that this is not just a wafer of bread that we are receiving; we believe that it is the very real presence of our Lord: his Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, under the appearance of a wafer of bread.  Because this is our Lord we are receiving, we should never allow anything to take its place.  Because this is our Lord we are receiving, we must return to this Eucharist every week, every day if we are able, acknowledging the great and holy gift that He is to us. We will come forward in a few minutes to receive this great gift around the Table of the Lord.  As we continue our prayer today, let us remember the advice God gives to Elijah: “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!”

  • Thursday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading this morning, we have more of the murmuring of the Israelites as they make their way out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land.  This time, they hold a council against Moses and Aaron because they don’t have water to drink.  Notice clearly, they don’t ask for water, they don’t pray for water, they hold a council against Moses and Aaron because they have no water.  We would certainly recognize that as a completely backward way to address the problem.

    Murmuring is horrible, because it is a cancer in the community.  We see it sometimes in parishes, when people bicker and gossip in the parking lot rather than ask a question or seek clarification.  Then, without clear and correct guidance, misinformation spreads. 

    Murmuring can also affect a leader.  Earlier on in the book of Numbers, the people murmur because they have no meat to eat.  Moses was tired of the grief and said to the Lord: “Why do you treat your servant so badly?  Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people?  Was it I who conceived all this people? or was it I who gave them birth, that you tell me to carry them at my breast, like a nurse carrying an infant, to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers?  Where can I get meat to give to all this people? For they are crying to me, ‘Give us meat for our food.’  I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me.  If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face my distress.”  Yikes.

    And that leads to what happens at the end of the first reading today.  The murmuring has affected Moses and Aaron so much that they cannot serve God with faithfulness to his sanctity, so God puts them out of the Promised Land, to await a Savior.

    Today, let’s be on the lookout for any tendency we might have to murmur, and to savagely put it out of our lives.  Because we want to go to the Promised Land.

  • The Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Bread of Life Discourse II

    The Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: Bread of Life Discourse II

    Today’s readings

    There’s a lot of hunger in the readings today.  First we have the Israelites, fresh from their escape from slavery in Egypt, finding that they are hungry as they wander through the desert.  I think we can understand their hunger.  But what is hard to understand is the content of their grumbling about it.  They say that they would rather be back in Egypt, eating bread and the meat of the “fleshpots.”  Why on earth did God have to drag them out into the desert only to kill them by hunger and let them die there?  They would rather be in slavery in Egypt than be in the situation in which they find themselves.

    Please understand how serious this grumbling is: it is a complete rejection of God, God who has done everything miraculous to save them from abject slavery.  And that slavery was not some kind of minor inconvenience: the people were told to take care of the most strenuous of all labor, building the cities and even making the bricks for them themselves.  If they slacked off at all, or didn’t meet their captors’ unreasonable quotas, they were severely beaten.  They were subject to racism at its nastiest form, and their baby boys were put to death to keep them from rising up.  And yet, the people say they’d rather be in Egypt so they could have a little food in their stomachs.

    Not so different is the clamoring of the people in today’s Gospel reading.  Today we pick back up our reflection on the “Bread of Life Discourse,” the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel.  We began last week, with the famous story of Jesus feeding the multitudes.  Today’s story picks up where last week’s left off: the people were so impressed by Jesus feeding so many with so little that they pursue him across the sea to Capernaum.

    Why do they follow him?  Well, they want more food, of course.  But the real feeding he intends is not just barley loaves, but instead something a little more enduring.  So Jesus tells them that the best way they can do God’s will is to believe in him – Jesus, the one God sent.  So they have the audacity to ask him what kind of sign he can do so that they can believe in him.  Can you believe that?  He just finished feeding thousands of people with five loaves and two fish, leaving twelve baskets of leftovers to distribute to the whole world, proving that he was enough, and more than enough, to feed their hungers, and they still want to see a sign? 

    But let’s just pause a second here.  Isn’t that a lot like we ourselves?  Hasn’t God done everything for us?  He created us out of love for us, and in love, he sent his only begotten Son to take on our sins and die in one of the most horrific ways possible, so that we could have the possibility of being freed from the chains of death, and one day go to heaven.  And not only that, but he aids us in our daily troubles, hearing our prayers and helping us in our need.  We are not so different from the Israelites longing for the fleshpots of Egypt and the multitudes clamoring for a little more bread and fish, please.

    So the people ask for a sign, and what Jesus does is to give a spiritual sign, a challenge really.  He tells them to believe in him because “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

    Jesus wants to get to the root cause of their hunger … and ours too, by the way.  So I think the starting point is that we have to be clear about what it is we hunger for.  And that question is very pressing on all of us today.  Every one of us comes here hungering for something.  Our hungers may be very physical: some here may be unemployed or underemployed, or perhaps our hunger is for physical healing of some kind.  But perhaps our hungers are a bit deeper too: a relationship that is going badly, or a sense that we aren’t doing what we should be or want to be doing with our lives.  Our hunger very well may be very spiritual as well: perhaps our relationship with God is not very developed or our prayer life has become stale.  Whatever the hunger is, we need to be honest and name it right now, in the stillness of our hearts.

    Naming that hunger, we then have to do what Jesus encouraged the crowds to do: believe.  Believe that God can feed our deepest hungers, heal our deepest wounds, bind up our brokenness and calm our restless hearts.  Believe that Jesus is, in fact, the Bread of Life, the bread that will never go stale or perish, the bread that will never run out, or disappear like manna in the heat of the day.  Jesus is the Bread that can feed more than our stomachs but also our hearts and souls.  The Psalmist sings, “The Lord gave them bread from heaven.”  And we know that bread is the most wonderful food of all, because it is the most holy and precious Body of Christ. Amen!

  • Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

    Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus

    Today’s readings

    Today’s memorial of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus is a feast of siblings.  It’s a wonderful reminder of how family should be: united in faith, and bringing each other to Christ.  The story of the raising of Lazarus, of which we have a fragment in today’s Gospel reading, is a story of how shared faith can triumph over death.  It’s our responsibility to bring our loved ones to Jesus, and for Martha and Mary, the need for that was very real.  Today’s memorial remembers Martha who toiled for the sake of hospitality, and professed her faith in Jesus when her brother died; it remembers Martha too, who famously sat at the feet of Jesus, drinking in his every word.  And we also remember Lazarus, from whom we never hear, but who Jesus loved enough to raise him from death.  In them we see ourselves: called to serve and profess our faith, called to contemplate the presence of Jesus, and called to the resurrection of the dead, which Lazarus saw firsthand.