The Church is to be a field hospital for the wounded

There is nothing we can do to stop God from loving us.  God is love.  There is nothing hypocritical about God’s love for us.  It is unconditional and unending.  I invite you to hold onto to this truth:  “There is nothing we can to stop God from loving us.

Yes, there is sin in the world.  There is sin in our own lives.  Sin is our failure to respond to the love of God.  Sin is a failure to love.  We are accountable for the actions of our life --  yes, yes, yes.  But God never stops loving us.

In the Scriptures today, Jesus challenges us to walk our talk, to be doers of the Word of God, to have a faith that is real and genuine and Christ-like.  If we want to be disciples of Jesus, we need to make sure that our liturgical and personal prayer, indeed our whole lives as disciples, bear witness to God’s Word:  revealed in Israel, made flesh in Jesus, and alive in the community of Jesus’ Church throughout all generations.

All three Scripture readings teach us what that living faith is to look life.  It is not enough to speak the words of faith or to spout wisdom from theological texts or canonical laws or liturgical rubrics with all kinds of piety.  Rather Jesus is saying that living faith is expressed in practical charity marked by selflessness and reaching out in service to one all and all, especially the marginalized, those whose lives by accident or even personal choice have left them on the peripheries of society and Church.

In the first Scripture reading, Moses said to the people:  “ Now Israel hear the statues and decrees which I am teaching you to observe; observe them carefully for you to be a wise and intelligent people.”

The laws of God’s people serve like an invisible fence  --  the fence you put in your yard to keep your dog from wandering into the street or menacing the jogger out for a bit of exercise or wherever your dog would like to wander to.  This fence serves an excellent purpose so that the dog can play in the yard without getting hurt.  So too, the ten commandments are our invisible fence that helps us to live in right relationship with one another and with our God.  They make all the sense in the world. 

But strict observance of the law doesn’t determine whether God is going to love us or not.  As I said, no matter what, God cannot stop loving us.  But the commandments are meant to hold us accountable as to how we respond to God’s great love for us.

In the Gospel, we see the anger of Jesus in confronting the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.  Jesus says:  “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Please note that Jesus is not venting against the Pharisees because of their fidelity to religious observance and the ritual tradition.  This is a good thing.  Jesus labels them hypocrites because the words they spoke from their lips did not come from hearts filled with compassion.  They worshiped ritually in solemn ways but this did not translate into deeds filled with love.   Their religion was high on human tradition but low on faithfulness to the law of God.

This Gospel is not just meant for the Pharisees, but its message is to each and every one of us.  Do we walk our talk in our prayer life and in our celebration of the sacraments.    Sometimes we too need spiritual open-heart surgery if see if we are touched by  the love of Jesus in the faith that we live.  Our prayer needs to touch our heart and thus motivate us to share the love of Jesus with others.

Jesus himself went to the synagogue in prayer and was very faithful to the Jewish tradition and obeyed the commandments.  This led Jesus to service and love toward society’s most vulnerable, the sick, the widows, and children.  Jesus lives the Torah.  For Jesus worship, charity and justice are inseparable.

The meaning of today’s Scriptures is that external observance of the law must be translated into inward commitment, but then the inward commitment must be translated back into outward charity.  Jesus cautions us that our external observance of the law declaring our love for the invisible God must become visible in the love that we have for one another.  Our words must be matched by our deeds; our rituals must lead us to develop compassionate hearts.

The Letter to James in the second Scripture is our litmus test for the validity of our liturgical piety.  James says:  “Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this:  to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep yourself unstained by the world.

During the coming Holy Year, Pope Francis wants to create a church of mercy, a more pastoral church, a field hospital for the wounded rather than a tribunal that withholds the sacraments until people conform to the ideal.  Jesus’ approach is not to deny the reality of sin, but to question the possibility of one person judging another.  Only God sees the heart.

May we witness to the Joy of the Gospel and  be a Church of Mercy, a Church of Compassion, and be a Church of Healing that reveals the unconditional love of our God.

The bread of life discourse from the 6th chapter of John's Gospel is filled with startling claims and startling hopes.

A catechist is teaching a class of six year olds about the commandments.  She explained the fourth commandment:  Honor your father and your mother.  A 6 year old girl asked if there is a commandment on how to treat your brothers and sisters.  A six year old raised his hand and answered:  “Yes, there is:  Thou shalt not kill.”

In the Gospel, Jesus proclaims:  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.”

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.  …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.”

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.

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 we are to pray about today is do we want eternal bread or do we want everyday bread?  They 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.”

In sharing the Eucharistic Bread, the promise of Christ to us is much more that making a living.  Jesus invites to the fullness of life.  Therein is the difference between the bread of this world and the living bread of Christ.

The development of the Bread of Life discourse in John’s sixth chapter leads us to a deeper understanding of the Eucharist.  Eucharist is both the gift of Jesus given to us, and it is an invitation to our self-giving.  We ask ourselves how do we allow Jesus to be Bread for our lives?  How do we convert to Jesus?  Jesus says “I am the Bread of Life.  Whoever comes to me will never hunger or thirst again.”  How do we come to Jesus?  How do we surrender to a new experience of God’s Eucharistic presence in our lives?  Would that we come to a new experience of God’s presence, grace, power and love?  What would it take?

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.

As the disciples of Jesus, our loneliness is rarely the result of not being loved; it is the result of not loving.  Sorrow is less the result of circumstances than the result of choosing isolation.  The fastest way to feel loved or experience joy is to give it to those without either.

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.

We grow in our experience of Jesus as Bread for Life when we fully are present at and participate in the Eucharist.  Some people celebrate the Eucharist daily.  Thanks be to God.  We are all called to celebrate Eucharistic weekly on the Lord’s Day -- Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.  It is important for us to be, not just physically present, but emotionally present, to the Lord and to each other.  It is important to not have an “audience” mindset, i.e., that we are watching something someone else is doing, but rather that we must have a mindset that Eucharist is something we do together, and, in doing it together, we are being transformed into the living Body of Christ.  Again, it becomes both the privilege and the responsibility of all who eat the Bread of Life together to become bread for the life of the world.

How have we been touched by the divine? How have we been taught by the word of God?

In today’s Scripture readings, people are tired, exhausted, depressed, full of complaints.  Does this sound like God’s chosen people?  These folks need to read and enjoy Pope Francis’s letter  on THE JOY OF THE GOSPEL.  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. 

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?  Public policy and personal lifestyles diverge dramatically from covenant commandments, exerting 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.

Today, 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 Horeb.  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 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, and its parallel to ours, 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.

And we ask must honestly ask ourselves if we are witnesses to the profound Eucharistic mystery?

In their murmuring, they 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.  Babies cry, readers falter, 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 conversion 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.

Compassionate love and forgiveness are to mark our family life, our parish life, our life as a Church.  Perhaps our political discourse and our presidential debates could be more characterized by a spirit of love and compassion for one and all.

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.