20 ^th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Year B

          Peace be with you and greetings on our celebration of the Mass for the 20 ^th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  So, today is the fourth Sunday in a row we’ve heard a Gospel reading from the 6 ^th Chapter of John and next week will be the 5 ^th , and last.  Then we’ll go back to reading Mark.  Basically, this happens every three years during our liturgical calendar.  Last year were the A readings from Matthew, this year B is from Mark, and next year is C from Luke, then we start over again with A.  One of the reasons we end up with John 6 during our B cycle is Mark is such a short Gospel the Church uses John to fill out the readings for Ordinary Time.  This year is especially appropriate however, because it is the year of Eucharistic Renewal and Revival.  So, Father Tim thought it would be appropriate for him, Deacon James, and me to talk about some of our own personal Eucharistic experiences as we read John 6, Jesus’s Bread of Life discourse.  Now if you’re one of those 50 or 60 percenters who don’t believe in the real presence, I’m probably not going to change your mind with an 8- or 9-minute homily, but maybe you’ll go home today with a little more to think about.

Certainly, one Eucharistic event I’ll never forget was an outdoor Mass in 1979, on a hillside in Western Turkey, when Virginia and I were on a NATO assignment.  We were there with probably less than 100 other people and the Mass Celebrant was the brand-new Polish Pope, John Paul II.  I’ve thought often about that Eucharistic Celebration over the years.  We were probably less than 10 feet from the front of that crude stone altar and could watch every detail during the Mass.

Perhaps the Mass I think about most often however, is depicted in a photo hanging in my office and surprisingly, I wasn’t even in attendance.  It’s from 1969 when I was flying combat helicopter missions in Vietnam.  We landed at a tiny fire support base on a hilltop and my copilot, and I went into a command bunker to coordinate a helicopter combat assault with an infantry unit.  When we came back out a Catholic Chaplain had set up a make-shift altar right in front of our Huey, he was celebrating Mass, and there in the grass, knelt 15 or so young soldiers during the consecration.  At that moment I was personally frustrated and felt no spirituality.  I couldn’t start up the aircraft and blow everything away until he finished, and I needed to get back and brief the other mission crews.  Some 50 years later however, I ran into my copilot from that day again, and he told me that experience was one of the most spiritual moments of his entire life.  It seems a good old Southern Baptist recognized Jesus in that moment at a Catholic Mass in Vietnam and I missed it.  Hence the picture as a reminder hangs on my wall.

          And all this a great lead-in to our Gospel reading.  When Jesus actually said, “I am the bread of life.”  Well, a real controversy started that day in Israel, and unfortunately, it’s still raging today.  We’ve all heard Father tell us how alarmingly high the percentage of Catholics is that view Eucharist as simply a symbol.  Kind-a like that plaster Jesus up there, except edible.  Well, in today’s Gospel Jesus really doubles down.  His language gets even more extreme when he 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.”  You see, at this point in his Gospel, John changes the Greek word used for eating, from the common human act “esthio” to a word commonly used to describe animals eating, “trogo”, which should really be translated “chew” or “gnaw”.  My friends, this is the reason many scholars call this the most difficult sermon Jesus ever gives in the Bible.  Next week we’re going to hear the end of this story and it is sad indeed.

          Let me ask, does anyone know who the first Christian writer was who described the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist?  Well, it’s good old St Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians written probably about 56AD.  Now that’s interesting because that’s about 40 years before John wrote his Gospel.  So obviously, this spiritual miracle we celebrate during every Mass must have started almost immediately after Jesus’ Ascension.  In First Corinthians Chapter 11 Paul gives us the same words used during the consecration in Mass.  The words we also hear in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  But if you skip down a few more verses in Paul’s letter you hear this, “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.”  My friends, the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, during the Mass, is not some fabricated tradition started by clerical elites during the Middle Ages, as many Catholic critics propose.  Last week Father Tim told us about St Cyril of Jerusalem writing some 1700 years ago about how to receive Holy Communion.  “When you approach, take care not to do so with your hand stretched out and your fingers open or apart, but rather place your left hand as a throne beneath your right, as befits one who is about to receive the King.”  Wow, one hand as a throne beneath the other, as befits one who is about to receive the King.

          OK, from St Paul to the Evangelists, the Saints, the Doctors of the Church, and scholars, down through the millennia many have written about the real presence.  Something our finite human minds cannot ever fully comprehend.  Just like an unlimited and eternal God, the creator of the Universe, the Blessed Trinity, or the Incarnation itself.  Ultimately, faith in the spiritual is the only answer.  If you’re trying to find scientific proof, sorry.  It isn’t there.  My sisters and brothers, Jesus defined the faith we need for our salvation with instructions for his Apostles in the Gospel of Matthew when they asked him, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”  Here was his answer, “He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, ‘Amen, I say to you unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.’”  Jesus was not telling his disciples to be silly little kids, he was telling them to push their egos aside, be humble, trust in God, and have faith.  Thomas Aquinas, one of the most accomplished men to ever live was often described as “childlike” and “innocent”.

          Now, I must assume everyone here believes in God or you wouldn’t be sitting in Church at all.  Right?  Friends, if you believe in the God of the Bible, you must realize, when God speaks things happen, let there be light, little girl get up, Lazurus come out, this is my body, this is my blood.  So, here’s your homework today.  As you watch your brothers and sisters in Christ leave Church today, if they received Holy Communion, pause and recognize, each and every one of them is a Tabernacle.   And if you received Communion yourself, remember who is within you if you accept him, and remember Jesus’s instruction to his disciples, “turn and become like children.”