Given the many clouds on our spiritual landscape, can we make a life-defining commitment to discipleship of the Lord Jesus.

Twenty First Sunday in OT  B 2018

This past Friday, I was at St. Paul’s Church in Brooklyn officiating at the wedding of my 2^nd cousin Connor Oberst and Flor de Jesus.  In the words of the marriage vows, Connor and Flor committed themselves to love and honor each other in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health all the days of their lives.  The 39 words of the marriage vows are a life-defining commitment.

What are the significant commitments of your life -- to your family, to your spouse, to your children, to your parents?  What are the commitments of your life?

As a priest for 50 years, I renew my life-defining commitment every year.  More rightly speaking., I renew my commitment each day to serve God’s people as an ordained priest of the church.

Today's Scripture readings call us to make our commitment.

In the first Scripture reading today, Joshua gathered his people and called them to make a solemn commitment.  They were to proclaim publicly whether they would worship the Lord who freed and fed them and brought them to the Promised Land.  They swore enthusiastically that they would always serve the Lord their God.  Now it is true that their track record of obedience to the Lord their God is a little checkered as in ours in striving to live out our Gospel commitment to love God and t love one another.

In the Gospel, when Jesus finished explaining that He was the Bread for the life of the world, the majority of his disciples gave a “thumbs down” and were not ready to make a life defining commitment to follow Jesus.  It was too much for them to accept.

Perhaps they would have preferred a God who stayed in heaven, and they could worship Him from a safe distance.  But Jesus was asking his disciples to consider a new way of understanding God.  Jesus said: “I am the Bread of life…Whoever eats this Bread will live forever and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world…Jesus is God…The Eucharist is the real presence of Christ, the real presence of God.

The commitment Jesus made to us gives us an example of the commitment Jesus is now asking of us.  Jesus proclaimed Himself as a God who gave Himself in self-giving love.  Jesus is asking us to make a self-giving commitment to our discipleship.

For the first disciples, many found this commitment “over the top.”  The evangelist tells us: “As a result many of his disciples returned to their former way of life.”

Then Jesus said to the original twelve: “Do you also want to leave?”

Peter responded: “Lord, you have the words of eternal life.”

In the gospels for the last five Sundays, we have been contemplating Jesus as the Bread of Life, are we ready now to make a life-defining commitment to place Jesus at the center of our lives?

Can we make a life-defining commitment to Jesus when we live with many clouds on the spiritual landscape?  Even as Pope Francis journeys to Ireland this weekend for the world meeting of families, we are still trying to come to grips with the priest sex abuse scandal that is so demoralizing.  Some priests have abandoned their commitment to safeguard the precious dignity of our children.  What do we do with our anger and our sense of being betrayed?

Can we still come together as a body of believers and come before the Lord to be honest and transparent in our commitment to serve the Lord and all of God’s people?

What is our commitment to Jesus?  What is our life defining spiritual commitment? 

At the Last Supper, Jesus gave us his legacy saying: “Do this in memory of me.”  I invite you to reflect on the words of Jesus “Do this.”

Yes, we “do this in memory of me” as we celebrate the Eucharist Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.  I also want us to see the full measure of the words of Jesus.  It is not enough to be a Sunday pew-sitter.

When Jesus says, “Do this,” He is referring to his whole life and mission.  We are to witness to the mission of Jesus of healing, forgiving, including others, challenging wrongful authority, asking time to go away and pray, and serving others by washing feet.

Can we embrace the mission of Jesus as our life-defining commitment of discipleship of the Lord Jesus?

In celebrating the Eucharist, Jesus is blessed and broken and given to us for our salvation and for the life of the world.  In our commitment to Jesus, we are blessed and broken open so that we can give and share ourselves to feed the world.

As I began this homily., I talked about the life-defining commitment of Connor and Flor.  We celebrated with a rehearsal and a wedding and a wedding reception.  This commitment was celebrated with much love and joy.  How do we compare the life-defining marriage commitment with the life-defining commitment of our discipleship of Jesus?

Without doubt, the life-defining commitment of marriage is a beautiful expression of Connor and Flor’s commitment to discipleship of Jesus.

Just as the marriage commitment is much more that the joyful celebration of a wedding weekend, it is for better or for worse, in sickness and in health for the days of their life.

‘So too, our discipleship and our relationship to Jesus is demanding as well as joyful.  Our understanding of who God is much more than a heavenly deity.  Jesus is present in the tabernacle of our Church and Jesus is present in the tabernacle of each and every person on the planet.

Are we ready to renew our personal, public commitment to Christ?  If so, we might use the Profession of Faith we are about to say as a solemn affirmation of our commitment.  We could allow the procession at Communion to serve as a communal reenactment of the pledge Joshua called forth from hIs people.  Even making the sign of the cross with full awareness can reinforce our conscious decision to belong to Christ.

Have a Blessed Day.

We need to come together as a body of believers. Now is not the time to hide. We need to be honest, to be transparent and come before the light of Christ.

Twentieth Sunday in OT  B  2018

This Sunday’s Gospel is the fourth consecutive Sunday that the Gospel is taken from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel.   The Bread of Life Discourse from the 6^th chapter of John’s Gospel reaches a crescendo with startling hopes and startling claims.  “The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”   The second claim is:    “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”

You will recall the 6^th chapter of John’s Gospel began with Jesus feeding 5,000 people with five barley loaves and two fish.  After the miracle of the 5,000, everyone wanted to follow Jesus.  “Free Food,” they declared, anticipating that Jesus was another Moses who was going to shower down manna and quail on his followers.  Everyone was touched with the offer of free food – a graciously abundant gift and a welcome relief to their hunger.  Even now, the best way to get a good crowd at a parish event is to offer food – “Free Food.”

But today’s Gospel is not about Jesus as a worldly cafeteria manager; Jesus is drawing a radical line in the sand.  We are followers of Jesus not because we attend potluck and social gatherings that we call Christ-centered.  Rather, we are the followers of Jesus when we share in the Body and the Blood of the Lord.  “The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”  There is no diet on earth healthier than this.

Our discipleship of the Lord Jesus is not just about getting free food; it is about us as a Eucharistic community witnessing to the love of Jesus.  It is about our union with Jesus as the way to eternal life.

To share in the Body and Blood of the Lord expresses our willingness to be the followers of the crucified Christ as well as the Risen Christ.  We need to ask ourselves the questions:  Are we willing to die with Jesus?  Are we willing to share in the same suffering that the Lord Himself experiences?  This is what it takes to be a follower of Jesus.

The question for our gospel reflection today is how far are we willing to go with Jesus?  Do we want eternal bread or do we want everyday bread?  The desire to grab a free meal can disable us from hearing Jesus’ invitation to the eternal.  In this Eucharistic discourse, Jesus is drawing lines, dividing his followers between those who are looking for a handout and those who will go the distance.  Quite literally, Jesus is telling us:  “If you are not willing to share in my death and drink from my suffering, then you should turn back now.”

When you consume Christ, he becomes part and parcel of who you are.  He energizes you to do His work of ministry.  The bread of our Lord is empowering.  It not only can fill the heart, but it can also lead the recipient to overflow into actions of love.  As was said of Francis of Assisi, “It is in giving that we receive.”  We are called to bring the love of Christ to the broken places of our Church and of our world.

The broken place in the Church that is on the mind of many of us is the horrific scandal of clergy sexual abuse.  This criminal violation of the sacred trust given to priests by Catholic families is unthinkable and a betrayal of our Gospel values.

It has been a weird week to be a faithful Catholic and to be a Catholic priest.  It seems that the rock upon which the Church was built is sinking further and further into the mud.

We need to get to the bottom of this dark hour in the Church’s life where the trust of so many faithful Catholics has been rocked by the sexual abuse from its leaders.  If there are horrific secrets that have not as yet been unearthed, we as a Church need to be transparent to one and all.

We as a Church need to honestly ask ourselves how we are to witness to the love, the healing, compassion of Christ in the midst of the horrific tragedy of clergy sexual abuse.  We as Catholic priests, Catholic Bishops and as a Catholic Church need to very transparent; acknowledge the criminal abuse of God’s precious children; and seek to do whatever is necessary to restore trust in the priests and bishops of our Church.

The Church I love.  The Church I was raised in. The Church in which I have served as a priest for 50 hears is the Church I now am heartbroken and remarkably let down by priests and bishops.

  

But this Church is still guided by the Holy Spirit.   Jesus is still Lord.  I know many good and faithful priests, good and faithful bishops and many good and faithful Catholics in this parish.  We need to come together as a body of believers.  Now is not the time to hide.  We need to be honest, to be seen, to be forthright and come before the light of Christ.

The Church at Eucharist is a community aware of its sinfulness and repentant of its sins.  It is a community convinced of the power of God’s grace, a community ready to serve others, i.e., to carry out “the breaking of the bread” beyond the church, and a community, here and now, open to the presence of the Lord and the Spirit.  This is the community we become when we share Jesus’ real food and real drink together; constituted as such by the Eucharist, it becomes both the privilege and responsibility of all who eat the Bread of Life together to become bread for the life and salvation of the world.

At Eucharist, we are interconnected with Jesus, and we are interconnected with God’s people.  In Eucharist, we are committing ourselves to being connected with the Church.  The Eucharist is a Sacrament of the Church.

Yes, there is much bleeding in the Church today.  We come before the Lord seeking for the grace to trust again in each other.   We are still missioned and it is still both a  privilege and a responsibility of all who eat the Bread of Life together to become bread for the life of the world.

Have a Blessed Day,

We too longed to be "touched" by the mystery of God's love.

In today’s Scripture readings, people are tired, exhausted, depressed, and full of complaints.  Does this sound like God’s chosen people?  Perhaps these folks need to read and enjoy Pope Francis’s letter on THE JOY OF THE GOSPEL.  Perhaps they need to sing the beautiful hymn to the God of all hopefulness, the God of all joy.

In the first Scripture reading, the prophet Elijah sat under the broom tree and even prayed for death.  This was his hour of darkness.  Fleeing for his life from the evil queen Jezebel,  Elijah sought refuge and rest in the desert under a broom tree.  So broken in Spirit was Elijah that he literally prayed for death.  Elijah was basically telling God, ‘Enough!’  I’ve had it!  Just let me lie down and die!  Here and Now!

Most of us find situations in life when we can identify with Elijah’s desert experience under his broom tree of despair.  Were Elijah’s times all that different from ours?   Given the disillusionment with too many of our political and spiritual leaders, given the variant personal lifestyles of too many people, there is enormous pressure on us to be faithful.  Like Elijah, sometimes we question whether our lives have any lasting meaning, whether we have failed to make a difference in the world. 

Like Elijah, we can have a pity party for ourselves.  Personally, our family life may not be what we would like it to be.  Illness may be an unwelcomed and unplanned visitor to our life.  That right job just doesn’t to be on the horizon.

 Elijah, faithful to his mission but utterly discouraged, is depressed to the point of wanting to sleep and sleep.  And yet, “Touched” by the divine, Elijah’s spirit was renewed and sustained for the 40 day-and-night journey to Mount Hereby.  Elijah needed the kind of bread that only God could provide.

 We too long to be “touched” by the mystery of God’s love, to be taught by God.  The truth of our lives is God longs to touch us with his amazing grace.  When we trust in God and God’s care for us, we can leave behind the broom trees of our despair and live in hope.  Hope in God, hope in the bread of life, hope in the One who prepares a weekly feast and is revealed anew in bread and wine.

Elijah’s story provides a fitting context in which to reflect on the Eucharist.  The people listening to Jesus in the Gospel began to complain because he claimed to be the bread that came down from heaven.  People murmured when Jesus declares that He Himself is our bread for the journey.  This murmur echoes the reaction of some to the real presence of Jesus in the mystery of the Eucharist, the mystery of God’s self-sacrificing love revealed in Jesus, and this mystery that enables diverse people near and far to live as brothers and sisters in one human family, children of one heavenly Father.

We  must honestly ask ourselves if we are witnesses to the profound Eucharistic mystery?   Do we intellectually believe in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine that has become the Body and Blood of Christ?  Equally, are our hearts open to receiving God’s love and mercy?

In their murmuring, the first disciples said:  “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?  Do we not know his mother and his father?  Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven.’  Maybe that is our equivalent of the Mass becoming such a routine part of our lives. Homilies cease to inspire.  We have lost the wonder.   We have lost the mystery.  The Mass is too ordinary, too routine.

As a Eucharistic people, we are fed and nourished with the bread of life and the cup of salvation; our lives are transformed by the love of Jesus within us. On the day of your child’s First Communion, there is a wonderful expectancy, the joy and hope is so apparent in our First Communicants and their families.  Indeed, this is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it. 

The process of Eucharistic conversion for all of us is the deepening of the awe, the expectancy of being fed by the bread of life and the chalice of salvation.

If the Eucharist is only a Sunday morning thing, if there is anger and hatred in our hearts toward others, if our attention is only mixed at best, if we are hassled about many things, we have not opened our hearts to the transforming love of God revealed in the Eucharistic mystery.

To unlock the mystery of John’s Bread of Life discourse from his sixth chapter, we need to plummet the last line of today’s Gospel.  “The Bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”  Jesus’ crucified body is bread?  It is hard to imagine how Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross actually feeds us.  The cross is a place of glory for Jesus.  It is on the cross that Jesus will draw all people to himself.

In the second Scripture reading, Paul writes to the Ephesians, who likewise appear to be tired, and even broken in spirit, Paul has heard of the bitterness and anger that some community members feel toward each other. The situation has apparently deteriorated and there was “shouting,” “reviling,” even “fury” among community members. In his advice in handling this tension, Paul tells the Ephesians to “be imitators of God.”  The divine will is to love and forgive.  Bitter rancor is to be avoided; compassion and forgiveness are to become holy habits of those who profess to belong to God.

The only way for us as disciples to be imitators of God is to center our lives in the cross of Jesus.  I absolutely love how Jesus on the cross is such a dominating part of our Church sanctuary.  May the cross of Jesus be at the center of our hearts as well.  As we now celebrate the mystery of the Eucharist, the bread that is my flesh for the life of the world, may we be immersed in the great mystery of God’s unending love for us.

Do you seek the bread the Father gives, or do you seek the Father who gives you bread?

Eighteenth Sunday in OT  B  2018

In the first Scripture reading from the Book of Exodus, we read about our ancestors in faith.  The Israelites weren’t having a good time.  Their complaints were mounting.  Nothing was going right for them.  Moses their leader was on the hot seat. 

First, they wanted freedom. They were willing to leave Egypt for freedom. But as soon as they had freedom, they realized that the now lacked the food that they had enjoyed in Egypt! This is such a human story. When we get what we want, then we want something else. And very often we forget to enjoy what we have already.

God patiently works with them and responds to their complaints with bread from heaven.  As they gather the manna each day of their journey, they may learn to trust that God will always care for them.

But the truth of their journey lies in the reality that until the people learned to trust in God, they would never make much progress towards the Promised Land.

This is the truth of our spiritual journey as well:  Until we trust in God’s faithfulness to us, we wander a bit aimlessly.

In our wandering, we ask ourselves: “What do I want out of life?”  The answer to this question is very, very important. If we are starving for food, we will surely answer that we want food. If we are prisoners and being tortured, surely we will answer that we want freedom. So often our answers can be a clear response to the things that we most lack in life.

For those of us who are not physically hungry, we still ask ourselves for what are we hungry for?  What will bring us the fullness of life?

In today’s Gospel, remembering when Jesus fed five thousand people with only two fish and five barley loaves, the crowd chased Jesus down to ask for more, as if Jesus had a magic picnic hamper always full of food.

In the Gospel, people begin to follow Jesus and He realizes that they are following Him because He was able to give them bread. They do not recognize that when He gave them bread, there was a great sign being presented about God’s relationship to the world.

A fundamental question for the disciples of Jesus was:  Do you seek the bread the Father gives, or do you seek the Father who gives you bread?   More than satisfying our physical hunger, Jesus wishes us to have a relationship with the God who breathes life into our spirit.  The bread is a sign of God’s love for us.   Jesus tells us to look for a different kind of food.  Jesus said to them:  I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE.

Jesus now says that the deepest hungers and thirsts of the human heart are satisfied through the person of Jesus.  He is food for our souls.  Jesus is inviting us to a personal relationship with him.

Jesus is trying to refocus the inquiring minds and hearts                   of his disciples.  They are seeking him because they have filled their bellies on the loaves of bread.  But they have not understood the loaves as signs of God’s care for people.  They are well acquainted with their physical hunger and deeply attached to filling it.  But they are less acquainted with their spiritual hunger and unsure how to fill it.  Jesus tells them that he himself is the one who feeds them with eternal food.

The teaching in today’s Gospel points to the mystery of the Eucharist when Jesus says:  “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Today’s readings challenge us to consider our own lives, what we have, what we lack and what we want. Am I seriously hungry for spiritual food? Do I confuse the goods of this life with serious spiritual food? Am I willing to give up my life in order to receive bread from heaven? Am I willing to suffer in this life for the sake of true spiritual food? Am I willing to accept whatever happens in my life and seek God alone?

May this Sunday open our hearts and our minds to the person of Jesus in our lives.   May we desire God’s presence with our whole being and do whatever is necessary to seek God’s mercy and compassion!

While the externals of the Mass ritual are about sacred music, Scripture readings, a homily, a gathering of the parish community, the receiving of Communion, but unless the Mass is also a prayerful encounter with Jesus, the ritual will never fully satisfy us.  This is the message of today’s Gospel and the entire sixth chapter of John’s Gospel.

When our Mass consciousness focuses our relationship with Jesus, the Eucharist can change our human life in profound ways.  It’s that part of us that wants to hold the Life of God within our hearts like living tabernacles – waking with the Lord in the morning, sharing our joys and sufferings with Jesus throughout the day, and resting in the Lord again at the end of it all.  It’s that part of us that, despite our limitations and our sinfulness wants to give the life that Christ demands of us everything we’ve got.  It’s that part of us that cries out with Jesus’ followers in the Gospel, “Lord, give us this bread always!”

The Mass is about hospitality, making people feel welcomed, the gathering of the parish community, it is about good music, it is about good homilies, it is about ritual and liturgy, but most of all, it happens on a deeper spiritual level, it is about our encounter with the Risen Lord.  It is about the Lord speaking to us the words:  “I love you.”  And our response of gratitude and love to the Lord.  Unless we experience the Lord in the mystery of the Eucharist, we have not yet understood the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel:  I am the Bread of Life.

Have a Blessed DayZAsZ