19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 Kgs 19:4-8; Eph 4:30 – 5:2; John 6: 41-51
Deacon Larry Brockman
Guilty on 2 counts!
First, we are all guilty of the same offense that Jesus accused the Jews of in today’s Gospel when he says: “Stop murmuring amongst yourselves”. Why? Because we are not united as one body of Christ. Rather, we are a diverse group of individualists fined honed by the culture of our time. We question all authority and test everything.
Now, that doesn’t sound so bad on the surface- we should question certain kinds of authority, particular in today’s world of clever deception. Everyone has an angle; everyone is selling with self-proclaimed authority. We do need to test secular authority like the Government. That kind of skepticism is good and healthy.
But there is an exception: The authority of God. That, we should not question- we should be of one mind and body in accepting the authority of God. We have given that unified body the name- the Body of Christ. And the Word of God, as represented by the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church, ought to be the knowledge that binds us together in body and spirit as the Church so that when we gather here to worship and participate in the Eucharist, we fulfill Jesus words: “They shall all be taught by God.” And “Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me”.
As it is, some of us challenge the incarnation, some the right to life, some the definition of marriage, and some the social teachings of the Church. But whatever it is that we pick and choose, it causes division in the Church. We are like the Jews who questioned what it meant to come down from heaven. Guilty!
And then there is the second count over which we are guilty. Despite all of the teaching we have had in our Catholic schools, in our Prep programs, and in our RCIA programs, and all the homilies from this and other pulpits over the years, a 1992 Gallup poll revealed that only 30 percent of Catholics believe that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist they receive. And the situation probably hasn’t gotten any better because Church attendance is way down since then. So, many Catholics are guilty of rejecting Jesus teaching in today’s Gospel that He is the bread of life, and that whoever eats this bread will live forever. Guilty again.
But you see, these two things are key to our salvation. First, we absolutely must accept God’s teaching and plan for us on Faith. “Faith” is the theme of the whole Pentecost season- real Faith. That means believing with the heart what God has revealed. Not just some of it, but all of it. And second, we will not enter the Kingdom of God when we die unless we have eaten of the flesh of Jesus Christ. That is what today’s Gospel is all about. And when eat that flesh, the whole idea of it is that we do it so that we have Christ living in us. And having Christ live in us means that we will be given the graces to act Christ-like in our lives, not just some of the time, but all of the time. That’s why we receive the Eucharist often.
Paul says it so well in Ephesians this morning: “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us.” That means we put aside bitterness, fury, anger, shouting and reviling; rather we must be kind to one another, compassionate, and forgiving.
I couldn’t help but be struck by the clear example shown this morning in the first reading of how all this applies. Elijah roams into the desert and is starved for both food and purpose. The King, and in particular, the Queen, are angry with him over his prophecy of the truth, and so, they wish to put him to death. Despondent in exile, Elijah gives up on life, and even prays for death.
How many of us are wandering around in a desert of sorts despondent over the trials and tribulations of life, starved for both means and purpose? And don’t we sometimes feel like giving up? But then God provides Elijah a simple meal and drink through the angel. And the angel tells him to get up and get going because that meal was intended to sustain him for “40 days and 40 nights”. In Biblical terms 40 simply meant a long, long, time. Yes, the bread that God gave Elijah was intended to sustain him a long, long time, just as the mana sustained the Israelites for 40 years during the Exodus.
Just so, we are given something even more powerful than the hearthcakes the angel gave Elijah. We have been given the actual Body and Blood of Christ to sustain us. But it won’t work unless we really believe that Jesus has come to us physically and spiritually, and unless we have Faith in what Jesus taught us in the Gospel to trust that his way is the way and to act in accordance with His teaching and the teachings of the Church.
In this day and age when the Church is under attack, rather than allow the secular forces to tear us apart by driving a wedge though our congregation issue by issue, and by shaking us in our Faith in what seems contrary to our senses, we need to come together as the People of God. We need to be innocent of these two errors united solidly in one body of Christ, believers in word and deed, and firm that Christ is with is in the Eucharist. Amen!
