Seventeenth Sunday, Year B.
(2 Kings
4:42-44; Ephesians 4:1-6; Gospel of St. John 6:1-15)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, notice
first of all those words spoken by the people who witnessed and benefitted from
Our Lord’s miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fish:
This
really is the Prophet Who is to come into the world.
How right were those words!
As you well know, that great miracle foreshadowed
the Holy Eucharist, the Bread of Eternal Life, which Jesus was to give at the
Last Supper. You will also remember, I
am sure, the story of those two disciples walking together to Emmaus and
sorrowing over Our Lord’s recent crucifixion, who were overtaken and joined by
the Risen Lord Himself; and how, despite conversation on their way together, it
was only at the evening meal -- which they had charitably invited Him to share
with them – that they eventually realized just Who their guest was as they saw
Him bless and break the bread.
In both those cases, the miraculous feeding of
the five thousand and the Emmaus incident, Jesus was recognized for Who He most
truly was, Prophet and Saviour, in a Eucharistic context. It is the same today, People of God; only in our
Eucharist – only through participation in Holy Mass, only through our
sacramental reception of the Body and Blood of Christ -- can we come to
a full recognition of the truth about Our Blessed Lord.
This is confirmed for us by St. John who assures
us that no one knows the depths of a man save the spirit within that man, and
here in the Eucharist -- as we receive and consume the Sacred Host -- Christ bestows
on us His own most Holy Spirit, to the fullest extent of our individual capacity
and longing to receive Him: the Spirit of Wisdom and Power to lead and guide us,
as children of Mother Church and members of the Body of Christ, through the
trials of this life into all truth about Jesus and all love for Him and His
Father.
This Eucharistic receiving-in-order-to-learn
is a pattern that permeates the whole of Christian life:
first of all, for the consecration of both bread and wine in our
Eucharist
Blessed
are You, Lord God, for we have received …
then, in the case of the great Apostle of the Gentiles
For I
received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus,
on the night He was handed over, took bread, (1 Corinthians 11:23)
and then in the lives of each and every disciple of Jesus our Lord (Revelation
3:20),
Behold, I
stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door,
(then) I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with Me.
Dear People of God that attitude of receiving,
of asking and listening, in order to receive and learn, should permeate the
lives of each and every one of us, because our Christian life is a vocational search
for knowledge of God’s truth and a right understanding of His love, and for the
grace to respond as true children of God, in Jesus, the sublimely obedient Son
and lover of us all.
And yet, as you heard, Our Blessed Lord can
only say ‘if’:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and
dine with him sharing the bread of life and word of God,
with the wine of wisdom, understanding, and power.
Today there are many, many people, scholars and authorities, writing and/or speaking much about Jesus or about what is good,
better, and best for mankind and modern society, without any obedient acknowledgement
of God, with no faith in Jesus, and who are strongly opposed to the very notion
of any humble submission to His most Holy Spirit. Consequently,
all their conclusions concerning mankind’s intractable social problems and moral
dilemmas are, at the best, but the result of human mental endeavour, directed
by an individual ego: they are ‘excogitations’, mostly sparked off by, and
developed along lines determined by, scholarly controversy. The result is not
something gratefully received, lovingly heard, observed, admired, and treasured,
but the product, so-to-speak, of a mental vine-press, where the grapes
used are the fruit of scholars ‘up to the minute’ studies, bolstered by personal
items contributing little more than some measure of ‘spikyness’, helpful to
provoke present-day controversy among fellow scholars and to promote immediate
sales for all.
Authentic Christian knowledge on the other
hand is precisely the fruit of a gracious gift of God, a fruit to be subsequently
matured under the sun of the Spirit’s grace: for, after having been gratefully
received, such intellectual and spiritual awareness needs to be humbly appreciated
and assessed, rigorously developed, and whatever else is humanly needed for its
proper and fullest expression and understanding; but its origin is always a Godly gift, received not excogitated, a gift to be personally
accepted with gratitude and faith before being lovingly shared and shaped with
others’ help for a deeper understanding and appreciation of Mother Church’s treasury
of God’s revelation, and for our own human joy as children of God delighting in
the glory of God’s Kingdom taking shape before us and among us, and finding
proper expression to the greater glory of God and the beauty of our Christian faith
and hope.
That sort of knowledge, dear People of God, is
the basis of our Catholic and Christian Tradition, and that distinctive aspect of being
received characterizes all truly great and profitable human knowledge and awareness,
a characteristic which is impossible without much previous prayer and listening as
well as present thinking, without humble waiting as well as hard work, without aspiring
to what is above and beyond self and time as well as trying to appreciate what
needs to be done here on earth, in our modern society and the world around us .
Jesus in His Eucharist is the only true source
of Life for us, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, and that is what the bread
and wine used at Holy Mass signify: the nourishment for our earthly life to be gradually
transfigured into heavenly and eternal Life by the Spirit being offered
us.
When Jesus was talking to the crowd after this
multiplication of the loaves and fish, He urged them:
Do not labour for the food which
perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.
The wondrous nature of this ‘bread enduring to
eternal life’, was foreshadowed by the fact of Jesus ordering that all scraps
be gathered up: none were to be left for the birds of the air and beasts of the
field, let alone to just corrupt as did even the miraculous manna of old left
unconsumed overnight in the desert. Moreover,
12 hampers’ full were gathered in total, foreshadowing such food – Jesus’ gift
– intended for the feeding not only of the 12 tribes of Israel, but (John 10:16) also
of all those:
Other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These
also I must lead, and they will hear My voice, and there will be one flock, one
shepherd,
for eternal life, through faith and obedience
to God’s guidance of Law and Love. Yes
indeed, that bread blessed by Jesus was wonderful both in its immediate
significance for those original 5,000 who gratefully rejoiced on receiving it; but far, far more wonderful is the bread consecrated by Jesus, in its future promise for all those who
would subsequently look with full faith, confidence and love, towards
Jesus to lead them through the desert of this man-made world towards the
promised land to come.
Whatever promise life may hold for us who are
the People of God, whatever may be the meaning, purpose and goal of our individual
lives, for each one of us, the fulfilment of it all and the consummation of all
our deepest yearnings or aspirations is to be found in the Eucharist, for here
we receive Him Who is Life itself. In
Him alone – and only by receiving His
Spirit into our lives -- can we become fully, truly, and ultimately ourselves,
the selves we were created and destined to become not only for our personal
fulfilment, but for the blessing of our world and the greater manifestation of
the glory of God our Father.
The Christ we receive in Holy Communion is the
crucified Christ, now glorified and seated at the right hand of His Father in
heaven. He comes to us through the
sacrifice of the Mass, and this Eucharistic Jesus we receive is the real Christ
glorified in His Self-oblation to His Father for us. He still bears the traces of His crucifixion,
of the wounds in His hands, feet and side; it is part of His glory, He does not
seek to obliterate the memory of His great suffering because that suffering was
the supreme expression of His sublime love for His Father and the enduring witness
to His love for us.
As with all human beings, suffering will
inevitably have a significant, perhaps even vital part, to play in our lives, and
as disciples of Jesus we aspire to embrace those sufferings by the power of His
most Holy Spirit Who wills to transfigure us thereby into a Christ-like
expression of love for the Father.
People of God, let us thank God with all our
hearts for this supremely holy sacrifice and sacrament of Holy Mass, let us
offer ourselves with Jesus and in Him to the Father, and
-- receiving Him in Holy Communion -- let us,
in the power and love of His most Holy Spirit, express our willingness, our
great desire, to learn from Him, to receive from Him whatever and
all that will prepare us so that He might be able to take us by the hand and lead us in
all things through life and death for the glory of His Father and the salvation
of all those found to be of good will.
