The Feast of Corpus Christi – June 22, 2014

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ!  The Eucharist!  The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian Life.  The Church has always been very clear in its teaching that the Eucharist, while looking like bread and wine, are in reality the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ..  Most other faith communities, while they celebrate what they refer to as the Lord’s Supper, differ from our Faith in that they merely believe that the communion is symbolic, that the bread and wine, or indeed the crackers and grape juice represent the body and blood of Jesus, but remain at all times just crackers and juice.

If we look closely at the readings for today, we will gain an insight into the Eucharist.

In the first reading, taken from the book of Deuteronomy in the Torah, we see the Hebrews, who have been brought out of Egypt by Moses, wandering through the desert.  As usual, they have hardened their hearts, and are complaining to Moses, and through Moses to God that they are starving, that they have been abandoned by God, and ultimately, that it would have been better to remain slaves in Egypt with food to eat, than to wander freely, feeling the pangs of hunger.  The Lord wanted to test the Hebrews, to make them totally dependent on Him, to humble them.  He fed them, just when they thought that they could go no further. He sent Manna from Heaven, and only allowed them to gather enough for one day’s meal, even though they wanted to gather more, to keep some in reserve. God wanted to feed the Hebrews miraculously, so they would realize that everything they needed came directly from God, right down to bread and water.

“And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

Our second reading, taken from the First Letter of the Apostle Paul to the people of Corinth, seeks to remove all doubt from their minds as to the true nature of the Eucharistic feast.

“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”

This letter makes it very clear that Paul believed that the bread and wine, originally taken from the Pesach meal, has been transformed into the very Body and Blood of Jesus.

Finally, we hear from the Apostle who Jesus loved, John the Evangelist.  Jesus, has just finished teaching the crowds that he is the living bread.

“ I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life f the world is my flesh.”

“The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; ⁵⁴ he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. ⁵⁶ He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. ⁵⁷ As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”

The Jews, back in the desert in the time of Moses, were given very specific dietary commands, which had to be kept in order for them to remain ritually pure.  These dietary laws were of vital importance.  Now, hearing Jesus tell them they have to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to gain eternal life that as many as half of Jesus’ disciples got up and left him, rather than trying to wrap their mind around this talk of eating and drinking human flesh and blood.

Now seriously…, Jesus used metaphors, he taught using parables. If he was speaking symbolically, if he wasn’t being literal, wouldn’t this have been the perfect place for Jesus to tell the disciples who were walking away, “Whoa, I wasn’t being literal here!  I wouldn’t expect you to really eat and drink my flesh and blood.  I was just trying to make a point here…”  But instead, this is what Jesus says:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; ⁵⁴ he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. ⁵⁶ He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. ⁵⁷ As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”

So this is vital.  Jesus is talking about eternal life, an eternal life of supreme happiness and joy with Jesus, in heaven, and conversely, by contrast, of an eternal life of supreme misery, without him.

Just like the Jews in the Torah, just like all of us now, we are always looking for proof, something we can take to the bank, so to speak. To the contrary, Jesus is looking for us to believe him, without the miracles, taking him at his word. 

Now there are many instances of Eucharistic miracles that have been well documented and attested to though out the history of the Church.  One of most recent Eucharistic miracles occurred in Fatima, Portugal in 1916.  As the Angel of Peace was preparing the three children for the visitation of our Lady, he showed them a consecrated Host which dripped the Precious Blood of our Lord into a Chalice that he held beneath.

In Siena, Italy, on August 17^th, 1730 a consecrated host which had been profanely discarded, thrown away, was placed into water, in order to let it dissolve, and so be disposed of in a proper and respectful way, did not dissolve. In fact, not only did it not dissolve, it bled.  Not only did it bleed, it was kept and examined by a scientist in the 20^th Century, and the scientist, not knowing what he was examining, declared that what he was given was human flesh, flesh from the heart, flesh from the heart of a person who had been horribly beaten and tortured.

In Bolsena-Orvieto, Italy in 1263, a German priest named Peter, on a pilgrimage to Rome, stopped in Bolsena.  He was a pious priest, but he was having a difficult time believing that Jesus Christ was actually present in the Consecrated Host.  While he was celebrating the Holy Mass in a Church above the tomb of Saint Christina, the host started to bleed, the blood running down his hands and onto the Corporal and Altar.  The priest was so frightened that he asked to be taken to the neighboring city of Orvieto, where Pope Urban IV was residing.  Pope Urban, after examining the priest, and the bleeding Consecrated Host and the blood on the Corporal, issued a Papal Bull, which instituted the very Solemnity that we are celebrating here today.

Do we believe?  Hopefully, most of us would say yes.  Do we declare our belief with our actions?  Do we declare our belief in the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ with our awe and respect?  Upon entering this Church, do we respectfully fall to our knees in prayer, or do we stop to make small talk to our neighbor?  After Mass, do we kneel and offer prayers of Thanksgiving, or do we run to our cars to hurry home for the rest of a game on TV?  If we are being honest, our Church is experiencing a crisis of faith, or rather, a crisis of lack of faith, in the Real Presence.

The gift of belief, the gift of Faith is a grace that we have not earned, a grace that we have been freely given.  What we do with that faith will in some measure manifest our true beliefs.  Will we let our faith in the Real Presence wither and die, or will we, inflamed with a passionate love for our Lord in the Eucharist, the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, evidence our faith by our actions?

Just a humble note...

I honestly don't expect to develop a readership with this blog, and will be very grateful to anyone who even considers giving it a second look.  I am a new deacon, and I end up preaching every 4-6 weeks.  Right now, I'm just posting those homilies here.  Perhaps I'll try to add cogent comments every now and then.

Borrowing a thought from Bruvver Eccles, let's aspire to be saved pussons!

Thanks.

Homily March 2, 2014

Stress, the great bane of our time.  

If we are kids in grade school, we stress about where we’re going to sit in class, who we’ll be friends with, and maybe, just maybe, about our grades. If we are teens, in High School, we are still stressing about if we are wearing the “right” clothes, who we are hanging out with, what team we try out for, who thinks we are hot, and maybe, just maybe, our grades.  If we are in our twenties, we’re stressing about which school we’ll get accepted into, what job we’ll get, or who we’ll marry… You get the picture.

I’m well past 50, and I’m still stressing, about my job, about bills, about my children, about my health.  Is the stress helping me or hurting me? Let’s take a look at today’s readings and see what we can learn from the Lord this week.

In the first reading, from the Prophet Isaiah, Zion (in other words, Israel) is lamenting that the Lord has forsaken them.  They’ve been conquered, dispossessed.  The Lord, through the Prophet, tells them “Can a mother forget her infant?... Even if she would, I will never forget you.”

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he is reflecting on the need to be good stewards, to be trustworthy.  Then, in the same breath, he says that he is not concerned about being judged by anyone else, and not even by himself.  Paul tells us that if we are doing what the Lord asks of us, doing the Lord’s work, then we’ll be judged positively at the appointed time, and receive our praise from God.

Finally, we come to today’s Gospel, a very familiar passage from Matthew. We’ve all heard it many times before, sometimes referred to as “the Lilies of the Field”.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,

what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”

So, really, what is the Lord telling us here, that we should all become Dead Heads, begging for food and rides to the next concert two hundred miles away?  That we should all quit our jobs and live the rest of our lives in communal bliss on an ashram in Oregon? That we should all become slackers? NO.

When the Lord tells us that we should not give into stress, I would suggest that the real message is about Priorities.  First, and foremost, our main priority should always be the Lord, our relationship with the Lord, our doing the Lord’s work. 

“Learn from the way the wild flowers grow.

They do not work or spin.

But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor

Was clothed like one of them.

If God so clothes the grass of the field,

Which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow,

Will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?”

So we are to:

“Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you besides.”

And so, yes, it is ok to think about where we are to sleep, and yes, it is ok to worry about what we are to eat, and yes, it is ok to stress about what we are to wear.  These things, however, must never become our priority, our Mammon, the thing that consumes our every waking thought.

As we approach the Altar of Sacrifice and Thanksgiving, as we approach the coming Lenten season, let’s all resolve to examine our priorities.

Seek first the Kingdom of God!

Homily Second Sunday of Lent Year A

Three little words.

It’s the Second Sunday of Lent, and a lot happens in today’s Scripture Readings.  Big events.  I would suggest, however, that the most important lesson we can learn from these readings, comes not from the big events, but from three little words.  Let’s look back on these readings and see what we can find.

In the first reading, we are presented with God’s covenant with Abram.  Abram has made his choice.  He will follow the will of the Invisible God.  He has been told to gather his family and his belongings, and leave the place of his birth.  He doesn’t know where he is going, but he believes God’s promise that he will show him the way. 

         “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.

         I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

This is God’s great covenant with Abram.  It sets in motion all that follows in Genesis, the travels of Abram, soon to be renamed Abraham, and Sarah.  They will follow God where He leads them.  They hear God’s great promise, to make of them a great nation, and they believe Him.

         “Abram went as the Lord directed him.”

Abram, through his actions, answers God in the manner of our response to the Psalm:

         “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.”

Similarly, St. Paul, in our second reading, urges Timothy to accept and follow the Lord in faith:

         “He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works,  but according to his own design…”

So far, we’ve seen Abram show his faith in God by leaving his homeland, and following the Lord to an unknown destination, we’ve been admonished to put our trust in the Lord, and we’ve been called to live a holy life.  All of these lead us now to today’s Gospel reading from Matthew.

Jesus has gathered Peter, James, and John, and taken them away to a mountain top.   When they get there, Jesus is transfigured, he shines with a great radiance, and his clothes become as white as light.  Then, suddenly, Moses and Elijah, appear with Jesus, and are talking with him before the apostles. Moses, the law-giver, and Elijah, the great prophet.  Appearing before them in this manner, the three apostles see the Divinity of Jesus revealed.  They are mesmerized by the experience, until a bright cloud comes and casts a shadow over them, and God speaks directly to them.  They hear the voice, and are frightened, they fell prostrate on the ground, until Jesus touches them, and tells them to rise.  They get up, go down the mountain, and Jesus commands them not to speak of the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.

Pretty astounding!  I’m sure we all think to ourselves, how would we react if we were to witness this?  What’s the meaning behind it, what can we take away from the experience?  I suggest, once again, that the most important message that we can take away from these readings, can be summed up in three little words.  Spoken to the apostles, by God himself, 

         “Listen to him.”

Where can we experience a transfiguration?  Where can we see the Glory of the Lord revealed?  Eucharistic Adoration!  What greater Mystery, what greater experience, can we hope for, short of dying and beholding the Beatific Vision?  Worshiping our Lord in Eucharistic Adoration? Spend time before the Lord, spend time with the Lord, listen to him!”  We can also experience a great transfiguration by virtue of our participation of the Holy Eucharist.  In the Great Sacrament of the Altar, we are taken out of our earthy, mortal life and transfigured into the Heavenly realm, into the presence of Mary and all the saints.  Certainly, it would be great if God would speak to us directly, from a bright cloud, but it isn’t likely. We can, however, spend time with the Lord, in quiet, listening.  We can petition the Lord with the assurance that our prayers will be heard. We can prostrate ourselves before the Lord, and follow the command that we have been given by God himself,

         “Listen to him.”

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Sheep.  I don’t know about you all, but the first time I gave serious consideration to this analogy, I wasn’t very flattered.  How many of you have spent any time around sheep?  They are kind of stupid.  Apparently, their eyesight isn’t too keen, and I’m being kind in suggesting that their brain power is somewhat limited.  On top of all this, they really don’t smell very nice.  On the positive side, they do seem to have good noses, and really rely on their sense of smell.  So I’m sitting at my desk, trying to make sense of this business of being told that we are sheep, or should act like sheep, or that we should resemble sheep in any way.

Regardless of all of this, the comparison remains.  In today’s Scripture readings, we first hear about it in Psalm 23, a psalm of King David.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.”

In our Second Reading, taken from the first letter of the Apostle Peter, we are told that we are sheep.

“For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.”

If any doubt remained in our minds before the Gospel reading, it has surely been removed now.  Jesus was teaching his apostles, using the metaphor of the Shepherd and the sheep, and as usual, they were staying true to form, not understanding Jesus’ meaning, so he has to repeat Himself.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.  All who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not heed them.  I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Where does this leave us?  Are we truly to behave as sheep?  Thankfully, no!  If we remember the book of Genesis, we are told that we are born in the likeness of God.”  This certainly doesn’t sound like sheep.  We can understand this puzzle if we keep the big picture in mind, not zeroing in on one passage, or one phrase, or one comparison.  We want to be “catholic” in our approach.  We want to be “Both/And” rather than “Either/Or”.  We are admonished to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves”.  So what is it about sheep that we want to emulate?

The answer is that sheep are very trusting.  They trust their ears because they know the voice of the Shepherd.  They trust their nose, because they know the smell of their Shepherd.  They know that even though there are predators out there, even though there are wolves among us, they know that Jesus has not abandoned us, that Jesus will never abandon us.

If you remember two Sundays ago, Divine Mercy Sunday, we spoke of the Divine Mercy Image.  Under the Image of Christ, there is the motto, “Jesus, we trust in you.”  Time and again, the Lord has promised us that he will always take care of us.  He says further on, in the 14^th Chapter of John’s Gospel, “I will not leave you orphans”.

But how can we tell who is the trustworthy shepherd now.  Stay close to the Church, stay close to Peter.  We know that Jesus built his Church on solid rock, and it has survived for two thousand years.  We know that even though Peter and the rest of the Apostles died, they provided shepherds for us to carry on the work of the Lord.  They laid hands on disciples, and today we call them Bishops. They passed the authority that Jesus had given to them on to their successors.  So we can trust in the Church because Jesus promised that “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” 

So we trust in our Lord, we trust in our Church, in our Shepherds, Saints John 23^rd and John Paul 2^nd, Pope Benedict 16^th and Pope Francis. Here in the Oakland Diocese we have been blessed with our own Bishop, Michael Barber. We can rest assured that we haven’t been left to flounder.  We have been given reliable witnesses, we have been promised and have received trust-worthy and reliable shepherds.  As we approach the Altar, we can truly be thankful for this!