I think that St. Thomas often gets a bad rap for his doubt. He merely expresses what we would probably be thinking if we were him, and for that matter what the other disciples would have been thinking if they didn’t get to see Jesus the first time. But in his doubt, Jesus invites him to blessing. Thomas is invited to touch the Lord so that he could believe and be one with him. That’s the same invitation we have every time we approach the Lord in the Eucharist. “Take and eat,” Jesus says, “Touch me and do not be unbelieving but believe.” May the invitation to touch our Eucharistic Lord be the occasion to dispel our own doubt and become more closely one with him.
Tag: Eucharist
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The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
Today we celebrate with great joy one of the most wonderful feasts on our Church calendar, the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Through this greatest of all gifts, we have been made one with our God who loves his people beyond all imagining. We experience this love in perhaps one of the most basic ways of our human existence, which is to say by being fed. Learning to satisfy our hunger is one of the first things we learn; we learn who we can depend on and develop close relationships with those people. Today’s feast brings it to a higher level, of course. The hunger we’re talking about is not mere physical hunger, but instead a deep inner yearning, a hunger for wholeness, for relatedness, for intimate union with our Creator and Redeemer.
What we see in our God is one who has always desired deep union with his people. We have just recently finished the Lent and Easter seasons, in which the history of God’s work in salvation history has been beautifully recalled. Salvation began with the creation of the whole world, the saving of Noah and those on the ark, the covenant made with Abraham, the ministry of the prophets, and ultimately culminated in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the acceptable sacrifice which brings salvation to the whole world. God never lost interest in his creation; he didn’t set the world in motion and then back off to leave everything to its own devices. God has time and again intervened in human history, offering us an olive branch, seeking renewal of our relationship with him, and bringing us back no matter how far we have fallen.
God has repeatedly sought to covenant with us. Eucharistic Prayer IV beautifully summarizes God’s desire: “You formed man in your own likeness and set him over the whole world to serve you, his creator, and to rule over all creatures. Even when he disobeyed you and lost your friendship you did not abandon him to the power of death, but helped all men to seek and find you. Again and again you offered a covenant to man, and through the prophets taught him to hope for salvation.”
And unlike human covenants, which have to be ratified by both parties, and are useless unless both parties agree, the covenant offered by God is effective on its face. God initiates the covenant, unilaterally, out of love for us. Our hardness of heart, our sinfulness, our constant turning away from the covenant do not nullify that covenant. God’s grace transcends our weakness, God’s jealous love for us and constant pursuit of us is limitless.
Today’s Liturgy of the Word shows us the history of the covenant. The first reading recalls the covenant God made with the Israelites through the ministry of Moses. The people agree to do everything the Lord commanded, and Moses seals the covenant by sprinkling the people with the blood of the sacrifice and saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words of his.” The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews makes the point that if the blood of sacrificed animals can bring people back in relationship with God, how much more could the blood of Christ draw back all those who have strayed. Christ is the mediator of the new covenant, as he himself said in the Gospel: “This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.”
And so we, the many, benefit from Christ’s blood of the covenant. The preface for the Eucharist Prayer today says, “As we eat his body which he gave for us, we grow in strength. As we drink his blood which he poured out for us, we are washed clean.” God’s desire for covenant with us cannot be stopped by sin or death or the grave.
We disciples are called then to respond to the covenant. Having been recipients of the great grace of God’s love, we are called to live the covenant in our relationships with others. Which isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Sometimes people test our desire to covenant with them; sometimes they don’t even want to be in covenant with us. But the model for our relationships with others is the relationship God has with us. And so sometimes we have to unilaterally extend the covenant, even if the other isn’t willing, or doesn’t know, that we care for them. God wants to offer the covenant to everyone on earth, and he may well be using us to extend the covenant to those he puts in our path. As the alternate opening prayer for today says, “May we offer to our brothers and sisters a life poured out in loving service of that kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit…”
We do this in so many ways. Here at St. Raphael, one of the important ways we do that is through our support of Hesed House and Loaves and Fishes. The Loaves and Fishes Community Pantry began in a closet here at St. Raphael in 1984. That year, eight families were helped. This year, as the year began, 1,800 families were helped, and that number has grown by about a hundred families a month due to this economy. Most recently, the pantry helped 2,800 families. I was privileged to offer the invocation at their 24 Hours Without Hunger event two weeks ago. The executive director expressed the organization’s deep regard for St. Raphael, noting that although so many Naperville churches currently support them, St. Raphael’s continues to be by far their largest congregational supporter.
We absolutely should feel good about the ways we show our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. But we cannot rest on our laurels, as that number of families served continues to grow, we who are able must be strong in our support of them. One of the particular needs they have in the summer months is to provide extra food for children who, during the school year, receive a free lunch at school. They want to provide additional juice boxes and healthy snacks for kids this summer. Maybe we can all buy another box of snacks or juice boxes the next time we shop. Or even add slightly to our envelope for Loaves and Fishes on the second Sunday of the month. This is a great option because every dollar we give them can buy $10 worth of food through their sources. A small effort can be a great blessing to those in need this summer.
God’s covenant with us is renewed every day, and celebrated every time we come to receive Holy Communion. When we receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we are renewed in the covenant, strengthened in grace and holiness, and brought nearer to our God who longs for us. We who are so richly graced can do no less than extend the covenant to others, helping them too to know God’s love for them, feeding them physically and spiritually.
The Psalmist asks today, “How shall I make a return to the LORD for all the good he has done for me?” And the answer is given: by taking up the chalice of salvation, drinking of God’s grace, renewing the covenant, and passing it on to others. May the Body and Blood of Christ bring us all to everlasting life!
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Holy Thursday: Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
“We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
for he is our salvation, our life and our resurrection;
through him we are saved and made free.”That is the proper entrance antiphon, also known as the introit, for this Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper. It is taken from Paul’s letter to the Galatians in which he says “May I never boast about anything other than the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which I have been crucified to the world and the world to me.” As you know, the Church considers these three days – the Sacred Triduum – as just one day, one liturgy. When we gather for Mass tonight, and reconvene tomorrow for the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion, and finally gather for the great Easter Vigil on Saturday, it’s just one day for the church, one Liturgy in three parts. And the only part that has an entrance antiphon is tonight’s Mass, so the Church has chosen this text to set the tone for our celebrations for these three nights, and to draw all of them together with the cross holding them all together.
I think what the cross teaches us in these days, and what this evening’s part of the Liturgy says in particular is summed up in the Latin word, caritas. Caritas is most often translated into English as either “charity” or “love.” And, as in the case of most translations, both are inadequate. When we think about the word “charity,” we usually think of something we do to the poor: we give to the poor, we have pity on the poor, that kind of thing. And “love” can have a whole host of different meanings, depending on the context, and the emotion involved. And that’s not what caritas means at all. I think caritas is best imagined as a love that shows itself in the action of setting oneself aside for the good of others. It’s a love that remembers that everything is not about me, that God gives us opportunities all the time to pour ourselves out on behalf of others, that we were put on this earth to love one another into heaven.
Two parts of this evening’s Liturgy show us what caritas means. The first is what we call the mandatum: the washing of the feet. Here, Jesus gets up from the meal, puts on a towel and begins to wash the feet of his disciples. Washing the feet of guests was a common practice in Jesus’ time. In those days, people often had to travel quite a distance to accept an invitation to a feast or celebration. And they would travel that distance, not by car or train or even by beast of burden, but most often on foot. The travelers’ feet would then become not only dirty from the dusty roads, but also hot and tired from the long journey. It was a gesture of hospitality to wash the guests’ feet, but it was a gesture that was supplied not by the host of the gathering, but instead by someone much lower in stature, usually a servant or slave. But at the Last Supper, it is Jesus himself who wraps a towel around himself, picks up the bowl and pitcher, and washes the feet of his friends.
We will reenact that Gospel vignette in a few minutes. But I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of this particular ritual. Not because I don’t like washing feet or don’t care to have mine washed. It’s just that I think this particular ritual should be reenacted outside of church. Every day, in every place where Christians are. Let me give you an example.
In seminary, we used to eat cafeteria style most of the time, much like any institution of higher learning. But several times a year, we would have formal dinners. They would happen on special feast days or to celebrate the giving of ministries or ordinations to the deaconate. On those occasions, our round tables would have white tablecloths, there would be wine at the table, and special food. On one of the chairs of every table, there would be a white apron. The person who got that chair was to put on the apron – much like Jesus wrapped the towel around him – and serve the rest of the people at the table. Now, when I first got to seminary, my objective, I am not proud to tell you, was to get over to the refectory early so that I wouldn’t have to be that person. Lots of us did that at first. But sometime during seminary, and I’m not sure exactly when it happened, my objective changed. I would try to get to the refectory early, not to avoid being the one to serve the rest, but to get that seat at the table so that I could serve the others. Certainly that was the work of the Holy Spirit.
And I think this kind of caritas can happen everywhere. Maybe you make an effort to get home from work a little sooner to help your spouse get dinner ready or help your children with their homework. Maybe at work you try to get in early so that you can make the first pot of coffee so that people can smell it when they come in to the office. Or maybe after lunch you take a minute or two to wipe out the microwave so it’s not gross the next day. If you’re a young person, perhaps you can try on occasion to do a chore without being asked or even wash the dishes when it’s not your turn to do it. Or if one of your classmates has a lot of stuff to bring to school one day, you can offer to carry some of his or her books to lighten the load.
This kind of thing costs us. It’s not our job. We’re entitled to be treated well too. It’s inconvenient. I’ve had a hard day at work – or at school. I want to see this show on television. I’m in the middle of reading the paper. But caritas requires something of us – something over and above what we may be prepared to do. But, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel, he’s given us an example: as he has done, so we must do. And not just here in church washing each other’s feet, but out there in our world, washing the feet of all those in our lives who need to be loved into heaven.
The second part of our Liturgy that illustrates caritas is one with which we are so familiar, we may most of the time let it pass us by without giving it a thought. And that, of course, is the Eucharist. This evening we commemorate that night when Jesus, for the very first time, shared bread and wine with his closest friends and offered the meal as his very own body and blood, poured out on behalf of the world, given that we might remember, as often as we do it, what caritas means. This is the meal that we share here tonight, not just as a memory of something that happened in the far distant past, but instead experienced with Jesus and his disciples, and all the church of every time and place, on earth and in heaven, gathered around the same Table of the Lord, nourished by the same body, blood, soul and divinity of our Savior who poured himself out for us in the ultimate act of caritas.
We who eat this meal have to be willing to be changed by it. Because we too must pour ourselves out for others. We must feed them with our presence and our love and our understanding even when we would rather not. We must help them to know Christ’s presence in their lives by the way that we serve them, in humility, giving of ourselves and asking nothing in return.
The ultimate act of caritas will unfold tomorrow and Saturday night as we look to the cross and keep vigil for the resurrection. Tonight it will suffice for us to hear the command to go and do likewise, pouring ourselves out for others, laying down our life for them, washing their feet and becoming Eucharist for them. It may seem difficult to glory in the cross – it may even seem strange to say it. But the Church makes it clear tonight: the cross is our salvation, it is caritas poured out for us, it is caritas poured out on others through us, every time we extend ourselves, lay down our lives, abandon our sense of entitlement and give of ourselves.
“We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
for he is our salvation, our life and our resurrection;
through him we are saved and made free.” -
Forty Hours Devotion: Thursday Evening Vespers
Reading: Hebrews 12:18-24
The letter to the Hebrews draws our attention to two living pictures. First, there is the worship gathering of the old Law, at Mount Sinai, with Moses as the presider. There the people gathered in fear, because anyone who might see the Lord would certainly die. The worship was of a God of fire and judgment, and a covenant marked by strict observance of the Law. Sinners really had no place in this worship space, because their own rejection of the covenant marked them for destruction.
Second, there is the worship gathering of the New Covenant, at Mount Zion, the centerpiece of the New Jerusalem, with no one less than Jesus Christ as the presider. Here the people gather in joy, because the Lord embraces us to live. The worship here is of a God of mercy and compassion, and a covenant marked by “the sprinkled blood which speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.” Sinners are central to worship on this mountain, where Christ offers himself as salvation for the sins of the whole world.
This second mountain is where we gather today, entering with joy this holy ground, aware that with us are gathered “countless angels in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” And it is Jesus that we have come to worship on this altar, in these holy forty hours, aware that we are the holy people of God, the people he came to save, the ones he longs for.
I borrowed a tradition from Anne Hillebrand of our pastoral staff when my father died. At family gatherings, we have a special candle that we light to remind ourselves that he is with us, certainly not in a physical way, but as we Catholics believe, among the Communion of Saints. Jacqueline Skelly and I had a conversation this morning that reminded me of this little tradition. We see here so many beautiful candles burning with love for God. They are symbols of the light of Christ, certainly, but also symbols of all those people that the author of the letter to the Hebrews speaks of: the countless angels, the assembly of the firstborn, the spirits of the just made perfect. All of the angels and saints and our faithful departed gather with us on this holy night to adore the Lord.
This is an opportunity to see the Church, as it were, in a whole new light. The offical Evening Prayer, or Vespers, of the Church always speaks of the Church in a special way, in the image of Mary. We have more Marian prayers in Vespers, and we sing Mary’s song, the Magnificat. But she stands in the place of the Church, being the image of the faith the Church has in Christ. And so, tonight, we have the worship of the Church gathered in the Assembly of the Lord. We’ve come to celebrate the New Covenant that Jesus ratified in his own blood. We celebrate the nourishment we have in Christ’s own body, we celebrate his complete presence, soul and divinity, incarnate among us in our praying.
But it’s also important for us to remember that the presence of Christ, and the Communion of Saints, do not leave us when we leave this holy place. As we recognize Christ our Lord in the Eucharist this evening, so we should always recognize him in our brothers and sisters, the poor and the outcast, the sinners among us, the ones who frustrate us, those who are fallen, prisoners, the elderly and the terminally ill, the unborn, and all the people God has created and called his own. Christ is present with us in a special way during these forty hours, but he is also present to us in important ways every hour of our living. As we have come to adore the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament tonight, let us resolve to adore the Lord in all the people God puts in our path from this moment forward.
As we gather here before our Eucharistic Lord, the love that God has for us is palpable, but so is the love that God has for everyone. It is important for us to be welcoming witnesses of every person, so that they can see Christ in us, but also so that we can see Christ in them.
And so we pray with joy this night, gathered in the presence of all God’s holy ones, asking that the Church Triumphant would be made manifest in all its glory, here and now, and in every age to come.
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Forty Hours Devotion: Opening Mass of the Holy Eucharist
Readings: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:1-15
My Aunt Mia was an outstanding cook. And like all the outstanding cooks on my mom’s side of the family, she took pride in making people feel welcome and providing an incredible meal, a meal bigger than twice the number of people invited could ever manage to digest in one sitting. There was a time we were at her house for a meal, and I was pretty young at the time so I barely remember this, although the story is told often in our family, that the leftovers on the table amounted to just one piece of meatloaf. My uncle offered to split it with my father, not wanting to waste any food. Dad agreed. Aunt Mia, however, was mortified that she had “run out” of food for her guests and was instantly on her feet and in the fridge looking for what else she could fix. Nobody needed more food, they just enjoyed the meal and didn’t want to waste the small amount of leftovers that were there. Well, let me tell you, that was the last time anyone in the family got that close to running out of food!
This kind of reminds me of the meal we have in this evening’s Gospel reading. This was obviously an important event in the life of the early Church, because we have this story in all four Gospel accounts in one form or another. The version we have tonight serves as the “Institution narrative” for John’s Gospel. The Institution narratives in the Gospels tell about the institution of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. For Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Institution narrative is the Last Supper. For John, it’s the feeding of the multitudes. A deliberate, and interesting choice on John’s part.
Jesus is headed to Jerusalem – the site of his upcoming passion and death – and he notices that a large crowd is following him. He takes the opportunity here to do a “teacher thing” with his disciples. He asks where they can buy food enough to feed all these people. Philip states the obvious: “not even two hundred days wages would buy enough for each of them to have a little.” Andrew does what he can, finding a boy with five barley loaves and two fish, saying, “but what good are these for so many?” It might as well have been just one piece of meatloaf!
Well, we know the rest of the story: not only is there enough for the five thousand men and presumably their families, but also enough to fill twelve baskets with leftovers. That’s more than even my dad and my uncle could manage to polish off! Now many will tell you that this story is one of holy sharing, that people who had come with sandwiches for the journey saw what was going on and shared what they had, and by spreading it around they all had enough and then some. I flatly reject that theory, because if we accept that explanation that means that it was about us – or at least about the people in the story – and not about Jesus’ power to fill us with what we need. Whenever you see someone explaining Gospel miracles in a way that gives human beings the credit, you may assume that it’s wrong, because, brothers and sisters in Christ, the Gospels are not about us!
All the action that is important in the story is the action the evangelist describes: “Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining…” This was, in John’s Gospel, the first Holy Communion. Jesus took what was offered, just as we offer gifts at every Mass. He says the blessing, much as the priest says the Eucharistic Prayer, and then the food was distributed, just as we all approach the Table of the Lord for Communion. And, as in most things in life, the results are important. It was enough, and not only that: it was more than enough!
John’s Gospel is filled with all these images of superabundance. Jesus is the light that darkness cannot overcome. The crocks of water at the wedding banquet were filled to the brim and became the best wine ever. And now five loaves and a couple of fish feed more than five thousand people and provide twelve baskets full of leftovers. The message is clear: Jesus is enough, and more than enough, to fill us with what we need. The issue for us, is as it was for the disciples – trust. Do we trust that Jesus can provide for our needs? Do we trust that he even wants to do so? Do we trust that just five loaves and a couple of fish can provide such superabundant grace and mercy?
We know in our heads that it’s enough. But to really trust, it has to spread to our hearts too. That, I think, is the journey of Lent for us in some ways. We have to take the time with Jesus so that we can come to know of his superabundant mercy for us. And so, we’re gathered here to do just that. At the beginning of Lent, this is an opportunity for some quiet time with our Lord. This doesn’t need to be a time when we “do” a lot or say a lot of words in prayer, but a time for quiet and reflection, knowing that our God longs to reach out to us and touch our hearts. This is the time in prayer when we can let God do the talking, speaking to us in the stillness of our hearts. It’s a time when, as one of my seminary professors put it, we can look at God and let him look at us.
This is a time, above all, when we can come to know our Lord in ways we may not have before. A time when we can accept the superabundant graces that he wants to give us. A time when we can come to know that he is enough, and more than enough, to make us whole, to heal our brokenness, to forgive our sins, to strengthen our works of faith, hope and love, to answer our prayers in ways we don’t expect or could never imagine, to feed us beyond our deepest hungers. “Give us this day our daily bread,” we pray. In these wonderful forty hours, we can come to know that the daily bread God provides is better than we could ever imagine, a bread that will never let us be hungry again.
What are the superabundant graces that God has in store for you in these forty hours? What is in store for our parish in these forty hours? I don’t know, but won’t it be exciting to find out?
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CREEDS Retreat Conference II: The Eucharist and the Church
Scriptures: Matthew 26:14-30
Godspell: “Beautiful City” and “On the Willows”
The Eucharist is an amazingly complex event. Ordinary food – bread and wine – become the very body and blood of our Lord and God. Through the Eucharist we mere creatures are given the opportunity to take part in the very life of God our creator. That life giving body and blood join to our own flesh and blood and raise us up from the base creatures that we are to become more like our divine Savior. In some way, we become what we receive. And each celebration of the Eucharist isn’t merely one of a vast number of disconnected events; instead it is what we call an anamnesis, a re-presentation or remembering taking part in the one event on Calvary that saved us all.
In this meal, we are fed and we participate in a sacrifice. We are fed spiritually, given the strength to fight against evil, to reach out to the needy, to live our lives in holiness and grace. The strength that the Eucharistic food gives us enables us to change our lives, becoming more than we were, becoming more that we might settle for, becoming all that God created us to be. We participate also in sacrifice, not just any sacrifice, but the one saving sacrifice that reconciled us to God.
This holy mystery comes about through a similarly complex event, which is to say our celebration of the Mass. Words are said – “this is my body,” “this is my blood” – the very words Christ himself used when he gave us this amazing sacrament. These words aren’t magic “hocus pocus” words, because this event is much more than magic. It’s not a mere change, it’s a re-creation, a re-creation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and a re-creation of ourselves into the disciples God wants us to be. And it’s much more than just the words: the bread and wine themselves are important, the priest as the minister acts in the person of Christ, the assembled body of believers brings their joys, sorrows, successes, failures, their riches and their poverty, their gifts and their brokenness, and lays all of it before the altar, in a great offering of faith.
We could get all caught up in the externals. We want the best music, the nicest vestments and decorations. But none of that means anything without the faithful act of the assembly, praying and participating, becoming one with each other and one with God. Eucharist is thanksgiving for our many blessings, but most of all for the blessing of salvation and grace. Eucharist is communion with Christ and with our brothers and sisters. In Godspell, this is symbolized by the players having the face paint washed off before the breaking of bread: what had made them beautiful individuals in the sight of God is now an obstacle to communion, and so it is washed away as they come together as one community.
This is why we take such care with the Liturgy of the Eucharist. We carefully prepare the bread and wine. We pray the words as best we can in both word and song. We bow before we receive the Body and Blood of our Lord. We handle the Body of Christ and the Cup of the Blood of Christ with a care reserved for the most precious of gifts, which of course this is. And when we are done, we meticulously collect and consume every crumb of Christ’s Body and every drop of his Precious Blood. When I do that, there is a little prayer that the Liturgy has me say quietly: “May I receive these gifts with purity of heart. May they bring me healing and strength, now and forever.” Isn’t that wonderful? Notice how it carefully refers to the tiniest of leftovers as gifts to be received with purity of heart. Notice how even those fragments have the ability to bring me healing and strength now and forever!
And what those gifts do for me, they do for all of us. We become a community strengthened by our participation in the Eucharist and our Communion with God and each other. The Eucharist is the central act of the Church, because in the Eucharist, we become one and together we accomplish all that Christ wanted for the world: healing the sick, binding up the broken, reaching the lost and the marginalized, meeting the needs of the poor and homeless, helping prisoners find freedom in Christ, defending the infant in the womb, the child on the streets, the elderly on their sick beds, bringing the presence of Christ to the lonely. As the song says, we can build a beautiful city, but only through our communion with Christ.
As incredibly complex as the Eucharist and our celebration of it is, we are blessed to be able to celebrate it every day of the week. I remember in the first week of seminary, one of my friends on Saturday said, “Who wants to go to Mass with me tonight and get it over with?” You’ve never seen men with such horrified looks on their faces! That is because, whenever we gather, that is the best part of our day. Our participation in the Eucharist makes all the rest of our lives possible, but not only possible but also better, more filled with grace. And so, as the prayer says, may we always receive these incredible gifts with purity of heart. May they bring us healing and strength, now and forever.
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Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time
It was shortly after lunch that I finished this homily, and who could blame me? With all this talk of “juicy, rich food” and wedding banquets, and even St. Paul saying that he knew what it was like to be well-fed and what it was like to be hungry, whose mind wouldn’t turn to food? And that’s really okay, because all of us have come here [today / tonight] because we are hungry, but maybe hungry in a different way.
Many people, when asked why they pick one church over another, say that they do it because it is at that church that they are “spiritually fed.” And that is certainly one of the tasks of the church, to feed those who hunger with the spiritual food that comes from our Lord Jesus Christ. And I think that’s the lens through which we have to see this rather curious Gospel parable today.
When our modern ears hear this parable, there are surely things that seem odd about it, aren’t there? First of all, as the wedding banquet is finished, the guests have to be summoned to the feast. But in those days, they probably had received a formal invitation previously, and then had to be let know when the feast was ready. But then we come to this very curious issue of the invited guests not wishing to attend. What could possibly be keeping them away. Even if they weren’t thrilled by the invitation and honored to attend, you’d think they would show up anyway because of who it is that is inviting them. You would think they would want to keep the king happy.
And many of us have been in the position of going to some social event because it is expected of us, I am sure. I myself remember clearly attending events for work in my pre-priesthood days because clients or other VIPs were in the area. Even in seminary, we were often “invited” to events that really were mandatory, which always used to drive me nuts. But we can all relate in some way to attending some social event because it is expected of us, and not necessarily because we would choose to be there.
And that makes what happens next even stranger. Did they really think they could mistreat and kill the king’s messengers without any kind of consequences? No king worth his salt would let such a disrespectful challenge to his authority go unpunished.
But now the banquet is still ready and the guests are well, unavailable shall we say… So the king sends the messengers out to all the public places in order to invite whomever they find. And who are they going to find? Well, probably pretty much what you’d expect: peddlers, butchers, beggars, prostitutes, tax collectors, shop lifters, the physically impaired and sick … in short, not the sort of people you’d expect to find at a king’s wedding banquet.
So, to me, it’s not all that shocking that one of them is not appropriately dressed for the banquet. What is shocking is that the rest of them are, right? Some biblical scholars have suggested that perhaps the king, knowing who was going to show up, may have provided appropriate attire, and that one person refused to put it on. Certainly if that were true, we could all understand the king throwing that person out.
Putting the parable in context, the banquet is the kingdom of God. The distinguished invited guests are the people to whom Jesus addressed the parable: the chief priests and the elders of the people. These have all rejected the invitation numerous times, and would now make that rejection complete by murdering the messenger, the king’s son, Christ Jesus. Because of this, God would take the kingdom from them, letting them go on to their destruction, and offer the kingdom to everyone that would come, possibly indicating the Gentiles, but certainly including everyone whose way of life would have been looked down upon by the chief priests and elders: prostitutes, criminals, beggars, the blind and lame. All of these would be ushered in to the banquet, being given the new beautiful wedding garment which is baptism, of course, and treated to a wonderful banquet, which is the Eucharist. Those who further reject the king by refusing to don that pristine garment may indeed be cast out, but to everyone who accepts the grace given them, a sumptuous banquet awaits.
Can you imagine the hunger that those beggars, prostitutes, criminals, blind and lame people had? Think about how filthy were the garments they had to be wearing. Yet they are all washed clean in the waters of baptism, fed to satisfaction on the Bread of Life.
If by now you’re thinking that the beggars, prostitutes, criminals, blind and lame are you and me, well, now you’re beginning to understand what Jesus is getting at. Our sinfulness leaves us impoverished, and hardly worthy to attend the Banquet of the Lord. It would only be just for our God to leave us off the invitation list. But our God will do no such thing. He washes us in the waters of baptism, clothing us in Christ, bringing us to the Banquet, and feeding us beyond our wildest imaginings. We come here desiring to be spiritually fed, and our God offers us the very best: his own Son’s body and blood.
[Today we join with our RCIA candidates for full communion, who are themselves answering the king’s invitation tonight. They are one with us in baptism already, and in the days to come will complete the formation that will bring them along with us to the table of the Lord. Their presence here stirs our own hearts, reminding us to keep that wedding garment pristine, and approach the Lord’s table with renewed love and devotion.]As we come to the Banquet today, we must certainly be overjoyed that our names are on the list. We have been summoned and the banquet is prepared. Now we approach the Banquet of the Lord with gratitude for the invitation, which is certainly undeserved, but just as certainly the cause of all our joy. We sing this joy with our Psalmist today: “Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for years to come.”
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St. Pius X, pope
St. Pius would have been a great organizer of the feast that our Gospel tells us about today. The whole point of the feast is that all are welcome, but some choose not to come, or don’t come worthily. Jesus was speaking pointedly to the Jewish rulers who should have had the place of honor at the banquet. But they all had excuses that kept them away. And so the banquet was made available to all the nations – Gentiles too! – if they would come properly attired, that is, if they would come worthily, with open hearts and longing minds.
St. Pius X was born Joseph Sarto, the second of ten children in a poor Italian family. He became pope at the age of 68, and he too wanted to open the banquet for all those who would come worthily. He encouraged frequent reception of Holy Communion, which was observed sparingly in his day, and especially encouraged children to come to the banquet. During his reign, he famously ended, and subsequently refused to reinstate, state interference in canonical affairs. He had foreseen World War I, but because he died just a few weeks after the war began, he was unable to speak much about it. On his deathbed, however, he said, “This is the last affliction the Lord will visit on me. I would gladly give my life to save my poor children from this ghastly scourge.”
“The feast is ready,” we are told in today’s Gospel. May we all take this occasion to receive the Eucharist worthily and often, reviving our devotion and love for the Eucharist every day. May we all be among those brought in for the feast, and found to be appropriately attired with pure hearts.
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Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
As you may know, I kind of like to cook. I learned to cook back when I was about eleven or twelve, when my mom started a part time job working in the evenings. My Dad, God rest his soul, wasn’t much of a cook. We used to say he used the smoke alarm to time when things were done cooking. So, in defense of myself and my two sisters, I learned to cook. And Dad wasn’t real unhappy about that, as you might guess. Anyway, as I was learning to cook, sometimes I’d come across a recipe for which we didn’t have the exact right ingredients. Sometimes it was a spice we didn’t have, or maybe it called for butter and all we had was margarine. But whatever the case, there were a few times when I just adapted and took a chance. Sometimes it worked out okay, and sometimes not, but I always learned from the experience.
I was reminded about that experience when I was reading today’s Gospel. Jesus has been attracting people to come to him. They have heard his words and seen what he’s done and want to be around him. But the disciples have no idea what to do with these people now that it’s getting late and nobody’s eaten yet. If they could, they might provide a rich feast that the author of our first reading hints at. A buffet flowing with wine and milk and rich fare. But they have nothing like that to give all these people. So they approach Jesus with a different idea: “dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus won’t hear of such a thing: “Give them some food yourselves.”
And to the disciples ear, that’s easier said than done. “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.” But for Jesus, that’s good enough. Those might not have been the exact ingredients for a rich banquet for well over five thousand people, but they’d be good enough in the hands of Jesus. The drama unfolds over four very specific verbs: take, bless, break, give. Jesus takes the bread, says the blessing, breaks the bread, and gives it to the disciples to give to the crowds. And everyone has more than enough to eat.
Jesus does that same thing for us today. He takes the meager gifts we bring: bread and wine, our underdeveloped talents, our tentative faith life. They might not be the ingredients one would hope for, but for Jesus they are plenty. Because he doesn’t just stand off at a distance and see what it is we’ll do with our lacking giftedness, instead he gets right in there with us and supplies everything that what we bring lacks.
Then he says the blessing. In that blessing he gives our meager gifts the power to be a scrumptious banquet. And so our bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ himself, a banquet that in itself gives eloquence to our underdeveloped talents and power to our tentative faith.
Then he breaks the bread. Our gifts taken and blessed are now divided up to provide for the need that is the experience of our world. Because it’s not just us who need to be fed, but it is a hungry, waiting world, that numbers far beyond the shocking five thousand men, to include the billions of men, women and children from every time and place. These are people who are perhaps physically hungry, lacking food and money and clothing and shelter. They are also people who are spiritually hungry, needing something they can believe in, something that can deliver them from the limits of their sadness and pain. This broken bread has to feed all of them, and it will.
Finally he gives the bread to the disciples to give to the people. The disciples are the Church, bringing that blessed bread to all the hungry people. The crowds eat and are satisfied, but more important than that, they are nourished and strengthened for the task that lies ahead. That task is bringing all those hungry people of every time and place to the Church so that they too can be fed, so that their broken lives can be bound up and healed, so that their sadness and pain can be transformed in the healing power of the Cross and Resurrection. The Church’s mission to feed the hungry will never end until that great day when Christ gathers us all to himself.
Just like my culinary experimentation most often led to an edible dish, so the disciples had to throw in whatever they had and came out with an amazing meal. We must continue to do that, continue bringing our bread and wine, our gifts and talents, our faith – such as it is, and giving them to our Lord who takes it all, blesses it and breaks it, giving it all for the life of the world. But it all starts with us. We have to take a chance and give whatever we have. Because if we don’t, dinner will never be served.
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The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
[display_podcast]After my first year in seminary, during the summer, I was sent to live for six weeks in Mexico in order to learn Spanish. I wish that endeavor had been more successful, but I did in fact come away with some experiences that have changed my way of thinking and praying. The most profound was my realization of how unified we are as Catholics in the Eucharist. On the very first day I came to Mexico, which was a Sunday, the family I was staying with picked me up at the Spanish school, and before taking me to the house, we went to Sunday Mass at the local Cathedral. In many ways, it was a “foreign” experience to me: the Church itself was around 500 years old, the oldest Church I’d ever been in. The Liturgy, of course, was all in Spanish, a language I spoke very little of at the time, having only my high school Spanish to rely on.
But as foreign as the experience was, there was also something very familiar about it. And if you’ve ever been to Mass in a foreign country, you may well have had the same experience that I did. Even though I didn’t understand every word, there was still a comfort that I had because the Mass was the same both here and there. I understood that I was in the Liturgy of the Word when we sat to hear the readings. I knew that we were in the Eucharistic Prayer at the elevation of the host and cup. I knew that “Cuerpo de Christo” meant “The Body of Christ” when I went forward to receive Holy Communion. Even though I didn’t understand every single word, I still felt united with the other worshippers in that Cathedral, because we had all come to the Altar to receive the Body of Christ.
“Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” That’s what St. Paul tells the Corinthians today, and we are meant to hear it as well. We are called to unity with one another as we gather around the Altar to partake of the one Body of Christ. This feast was celebrated on Thursday at the Vatican, and in his homily, Pope Benedict made note of this very important aspect of the Eucharist. “We feel the truth and the power of the Christian revolution,” he says, “the most profound revolution in human history, which we may experience in the Eucharist where people of different ages, sexes, social conditions and political ideas come together in the presence of the Lord. The Eucharist can never be a private matter. … The Eucharist is public worship, which has nothing esoteric or exclusive about it. … We remain united, over and above our differences, … we [must be] open to one another in order to become a single thing in Him.”
We may try to express our unity in many ways in the Mass. We might all sing the same songs. We might all stand or sit together. We might all join hands at the Lord’s Prayer. Those are all okay things, but they are not what unites us. They put us on a somewhat equal footing, but that can happen in all kinds of gatherings. The one thing that unites us at this gathering, the experience we have here that we don’t have in any other situation, is the Eucharist. The Eucharist unites us in the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, where all division must necessarily cease. The Eucharist is the celebration of our unity par excellence.
Having said that, there are obvious ways in which we can notice that we are not, in fact, one. The Eucharist which is the celebration of our unity can often remind us in a very stark and disheartening way, of the ways that we remain divided with our brothers and sisters in Christ. The most obvious of these ways is the way that we Catholics remain divided with our Protestant brothers and sisters, and in fact, they with each other as well. The proliferation of Christian denominations is something we can soft-petal as “different strokes for different folks,” but is in fact a rather sad lament that the Church that Jesus meant to be one is in fact fragmented in ways that it seems can only be overcome by a miracle. In our Creed we profess a Church that is “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic.” By “Catholic” here, we may indeed mean “universal” but that does not excuse us from our lack of unity.
Another thing that divides even us Catholics from one another is by sin. Mortal sin separates us not only from God, not only from those we have wronged, but also from the Church and all of our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we have sinned greatly, we are not permitted in good conscience to receive the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, because we cannot dare to pretend to be one with those we have separated ourselves from through mortal sin.
This lack of unity expresses itself when all of the guests and family members cannot receive the Eucharist at weddings and funerals. We see it painfully when we must remain in our pew at Communion time until we have been to Confession. The lack of unity that we find ourselves in is one that is deeply painful to us, and grievously painful to our Savior who came that we might all be one.
“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him,” Jesus says to us today. When we remain in him, we also remain united to one another through Christ. This is what God wants for his Church, so today we must recommit ourselves to unity, real unity. So if you have not been to Confession in a while, make it a priority to do that in the next week or so so that you can be one with us at the Table of the Lord. And at Communion today, we must all make it our prayer that the many things that divide us might soon melt away so that we can all become one in the real way the Jesus meant for us.
"I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world."On this feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we pray that every person may one day come to share in the flesh of our Savior, given for the life of the world, and we pray that his great desire might come to pass: that we may be one.
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