Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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Although in the three-year Cycle of Readings for Ordinary Time we’ve been hearing excerpts from the Gospel of Mark this year, during this month of August we turn to the 6th Chapter of the Gospel of John, which is referred to as “The Bread of Life Discourse” in which Our Lord makes His first reference to the Holy Eucharist, claiming that He is, Himself, the Bread of Life.
It will not end well. Scandalized by what sounds like blasphemy, or sheer lunacy, many of the Lord’s disciples will abandon Him because of this teaching.
As our story unfolds, the crowds had tracked Jesus down to the Synagogue in Capernaum. Some, perhaps, had seen His miracles, others, had merely heard of them. All, however, seemed little more than curious, and Jesus knew it.
Instead of piquing their curiosity the Lord challenges their motives for seeking Him:
+ Are they coming simply to see a show, in the hope of witnessing a miracle? - or -
+ Are they sincerely seeking the fulfillment of a personal need (new manna in the desert)? - or -
+ Are they seeking Him for who He is, hungering for something more in life, open to conversion?
Jesus helps His followers to re-define and re-direct their search when He instructs them: “Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.” Picking up on His notion of “work,” the people ask Him: “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”
Take note of the Lord’s response: “This is the work of God: that you believe in the One He sent.” We tend to think of “the works of God” in the realm of the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. These works of mercy, justice and charity are vastly important, but the core of our faith, as Jesus Himself points out, is belief in Christ as the Son of God.
Good works are the fruit of our faith, but the essence of faith is belief. In order to sustain and grow our faith, the Lord gives us Himself in the Eucharist as the Bread of Life. This means that Jesus gives Himself to us not simply as a good example, but to teach and enable a higher consciousness wherein we discover that Christ is the life we are to live, and the Eucharist is the food He gives us to sustain that life.
To re-phrase the words of Moses — in the light of Christ — where he says of the manna God had provided: “This is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.” We can find in the Eucharist a statement more like: “This is the life that the Lord has given you to live.”
This is what Saint Paul speaks of in his Letter to the Ephesians when he writes: You must not live as the Gentiles [non-believers], but “put on the new self, created in God’s way of righteousness and holiness of truth.”
Thus, the Eucharist is a Sacrament to be received, and, in a manner of speaking, it becomes a life to be lived. What, then, will this life be? What will it look like? How will it be lived? To answer these questions, we look to the Lord’s own words.
He speaks of working for food that endures for eternal life. This means that eternal life - or at least our awareness of it - must begin during our earthly life. To move in this direction, we’ll have to look at this qualifying word “eternal.” This word “eternal,” when used in Scripture, is used of God alone. Not meant to describe a passage of time, but a quality of being found within the interior life of the Holy Trinity. So, something of this mode of being, this quality of life, which we call holiness, can be communicated to us mere mortals in the Grace of the Holy Eucharist through the act of receiving Holy Communion.
In Holy Communion, we meet the Lord in an act of mutual self-giving and receiving, handing over our time-wearied lives in exchange for a share in His eternal life… our sinfulness for His holiness. To live a Eucharistic life means to allow Christ to live in us and through us, to become less ourselves and more like Christ, and to be grateful for the change.
This life can be attained through prayer, especially in the Sunday Mass. To attempt good works without Eucharistic Grace will result in altruism, but will not be the work of God — as Jesus says — and will not necessarily lead one to eternal life.
So, stay close to the Eucharist, remain faithful to Christ in prayer. He will purify your motives for seeking Him, drawing you to Himself in holiness you cannot yet imagine. It will be in this holiness, living in the State of Grace, extended to us in Holy Communion, that we can begin to evangelize the world.
As we go forward, making our move toward evangelizing our culture, we will come to the full realization that we are living in an era of growing atheism. The late Pope Benedict XVI pointed out two ways in which this atheism is manifest: explicit and functional:
+ explicit atheism can be found, for example, in the speeches and publications of famous atheists, such as Hitchins and Dawkins.
+ functional atheism comes to light when people make a nominal claim of Christianity or of personal spirituality, but live as if there is no God… more subtle, but every bit as dangerous to the soul.
Addressing this world-wide and neighborhood (if not family) phenomenon cannot be left solely to the hierarchy of the Church (There are 34,000 priests in our nation, and 400 Bishops to serve 72 million Catholic laity) … it is the role of each person to live a Eucharistic, Christ-centered life. where good example and strong values can speak volumes more than attempts at verbal evangelization, as important as these words are.
Again, Pope Benedict: “Every great reform has in some way been linked to the rediscovery of belief in the Lord’s Eucharistic Presence among His people.”
Beyond fear and self-doubt, going into the world to evangelize… empowered by this indwelling Christ, we can truly proclaim the love of God in Christ and the Real Presence of Christ in His Eucharist, bringing Hope and Light to a darkening world.