Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 12:13 - 21

My wife and I are at that age when we are very much concerned about last things.  We’ve purchased our cemetery plots.  We met with someone at the funeral home.  We haven’t got everything done yet, but we are getting there. My wife’s father had everything arranged, even to the post - funeral luncheon for the people who attended.  She wants it to be like that for us.  On the other hand, I think it would be good for our kids to have to drop everything and spend a lot of time and effort getting me buried.  After all we’ve done for them, you know.  That’s what happened with my dad, who died suddenly at the age of 57.  

One thing we both agree on is that we have way too much stuff.  It wasn’t on purpose.  We’ve just gone through 56 years of marriage and raising a family, and not really throwing away much because we might need it.  I recently bought a battery-operated hedge trimmer for reasons which I could tell you about but won’t. And I decided to take one of my two electric hedge trimmers that required extension cords to the Longmeadow swap shop.  It hurt to give a perfectly good hedge trimmer away; now I only have two.  So as we go through our possessions, and especially our books, we keep wondering why we keep things and at the same time we feel pain when we part with them.  Is that a human reaction? Or is it a reaction of someone who lives in a privileged society and has never really wanted for anything?  Or is it just me.  Am I just a rich fool?  But I’m not the only one.  I once met a Jesuit priest.  Jesuits aren’t supposed to own anything.  When he had to get some personal necessities, he would go to his superior who would give him some money to buy toothpaste, or soap, or whatever.  He found himself hoarding the change from the purchases.  

A person named Marie Kondo wrote a book about decluttering.  YOu are supposed to pick up each item and ask whether it gives you joy or not.  If not, discard it.  If so, find a place for it where you can see it.  I think she’s on to something, but if I did that, I would probably reduce my stuff by about 10 %.  I gave away a lot of my books a couple of years ago but I still have a whole room full of books and then some.  

Several tribes of native Americans in the Northwest practiced a ritual called “potlatch”.  That’s a word from the Chinook language that means “to give away”.  And that’s exactly what it was.  People who had a lot of stuff were expected to periodically have a great big party to which they would invite all their relatives, even very distant ones.  There would be singing and dancing and feasting, and then the rich person would give away everything he had.  There was actually a sort of competition among tribal leaders – who could give away the most.  Now what they gave away was stuff.  It wasn’t land, or the means to make a living.  IT was things you accumulated.  In some tribes, once you turned twelve, you had your first potlatch and gave away all that you had accumulated during those twelve years.  

I’m not proud of all the stuff I’ve accumulated.  I’m even less proud of the fact that when I get rid of stuff, I have an emotional reaction.  It isn’t rational.  And I worry that it is one of the many barriers between me and God.  

Like all of us Christians, I want to be united with God for all eternity.  And according to the scriptures, that’s what God wants as well.  But there are barriers.  They all have to do with things that take God’s place in my life.  If I hold something of mine and it gives me pleasure, then that object is taking God’s place, at least a little bit.  God wants me to give him my whole self.  I want to hold back. 

So what should we do about our relationship to possessions?  After all, you can do a lot of good with stuff.  It’s not wrong to be rich.  Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man who provided a tomb for Jesus’ body.  There was a lady named Lydia who was wealthy and used her wealth to support Saint Paul.  The parents of Saint Therese of Lisieux were not poor at all, they ran a successful lace-making business.  And they are recognized as saints.  

As is usually the case, we can learn from the Blessed Mother.  When the angel appeared to her she was a teenager.  When he told her what God wanted from her, she replied, “Do to me whatever God wants” or “Be it done to me according to your word” which is a nicer translation.  And then she threw herself into allowing God to lead.  And God gave Mary the gift of being the mother of his son.  And God demanded that the gift be returned, and Mary freely returned the gift, though her heart was broken on that day on Calvary.  But she would withhold nothing from God.  

God does not ask us to be poor, to give away all our possessions.  But he wants us to see that everything is a gift, and I should be ready to give it away, to give it back, to pay it forward, at the first sign that it comes between God and me. So we should ask, this Sunday, what possessions of ours might interfere with our giving ourselves completely to God?

And if anyone would like an electric hedge trimmer, let me know.  

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 10:38 - 42

This little gospel story is found only in Luke, right after the story of the Good Samaritan, and right before Jesus gives Luke’s version of the Lord’s prayer.  It seems out of place and unrelated to the flow of things.  And of course, the story made my mother mad.  She identified strongly with Martha and had very little use for someone like Mary who would leave the work to someone else.  And I think a lot of people sympathize with Martha and it almost seems as though Jesus is acting out of character.  “Martha, Martha!” he says.  “You are so worried and upset about many things.  There is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”  I wonder how that dinner went.  Martha, after all, had invited Jesus and his 12 companions for supper and it must have felt like a slap in the face.  The fact that Martha continued her relationship with Jesus, as we will see in the Gospel of John when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, seems to be the real miracle here.  I know my mother would have taken a long time to get over being put down in this way.

But Jesus knows who he is.  He’s been going around telling people that he himself is the bridge between God and man.  The most important thing any human being can do is accept his invitation to enter into that relationship.  Mary has accepted that.  She sits at his feet like any disciple -- even though she is a woman and acting totally against the norms of that time.  Martha, I think, was appealing to that stereotype --” tell my sister to help me.  That’s what women do, that’s our role.  Back me up, Jesus!”

But Mary has chosen the better part.  She has chosen to enter into the relationship that Jesus offers.  But we are all Marthas and we are all Marys.  Someone has to do the work of living, the cleaning, the making of meals, all the things that have to be done to get on with life.  And yet it is so easy to lose sight of what is really important.  Jesus did not want Martha to stop doing what she was doing.  He wanted her to stop being distracted by what she was doing.  And that’s the real issue here.  A real problem for anyone who is serious about being a Christian is not how we can sit at Jesus’ feet and absorb his wisdom, but how we can take what we do, what we have to do every day, and turn that into a prayer, turn that into making us holy.  

Saint Josemaria Escriva founded the organization he named “Opus Dei”, or work of God, precisely to help people like Martha use their work to become holy.  It wasn’t a new idea -- it seems to be a recurring theme in Christianity.  Many great religious thinkers concluded that to be really holy you had to withdraw from the world.  We have a lot of Christian saints who thought like that.  But we have others, starting with Saint Paul, maybe starting with Jesus and his encounter with Martha, who recognized that most of us would have to become holy through the work we do.  Saint Benedict, whose feast we celebrated on Monday, truly recognized this and in the rule he wrote for his monks, there is a beautiful balance between work and prayer.  Several centuries later, Saint Francis de Sales wrote his classic “Introduction to a Devout life” in which he insisted that everyone was called to be a saint, not in spite of the work they had to do, but precisely through what they had to do.  Francis talked about how it would be totally inappropriate for a woman with small children to spend all her time in church.  He compared the different vocations of Christians to a flower garden where everyone would blossom in their own way.  And Saint Escriva in the 20th century said that we Christians are called to make our work holy, to make ourselves holy through our work, and to make the world holy through our work.  

And in a way it all makes sense.  After all, one of the first things God did when he created Adam was to give him a job; he was to take care of the garden in which God placed him.  

Martha’s problem is not that she is working, but that she is not making her work holy.  And all she has to do in this situation is remember that she is working to please Jesus.  And that makes her yoke easy and her burden light, because when we invite Jesus into the work we do, God joins our humanity, God makes what seems so ordinary and pedestrian into part of his great plan -- through us.  

We can’t always rush around being lost in work; we have to stop now and then to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to his voice.  The most productive saints knew this and did this.  It’s a wonderful thing to go to our weekend liturgy every week.  It reminds us of who we are, of our relationship with Jesus.  But how much more wonderful to cultivate a prayer life, to introduce some spiritual reading into our day, to visit the Blessed Sacrament now and then -- after all, that’s what Mary was doing and that’s the better part.  Jesus is always there waiting for us to visit him, and when we do this, when we put ourselves in his presence, he gives us the grace to make our work holy, to make ourselves holy through our work, to make the world holy through our work.  So Martha, don’t stop doing what you are doing.  Mary, after you’ve spent a little time with Jesus, go out and help Martha.  And you disciples sitting around waiting for supper, get up and ask how you can help.  And you will all have chosen the better part.  

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

 Luke 10:25 - 37

Every time Trinity Sunday rolls around, someone says that a sermon on the Trinity is the hardest to preach. But I think the story of the good Samaritan is right up there in difficulty. If I asked, “What is Jesus’ point?” We would all say, “Jesus wants us to have compassion for people in trouble” or something along those lines. We get the point, Jesus. But let's dive a little deeper.

First, why a Samaritan? The usual answer is that Jews and Samaritans hated each other. It was said that Jews who were traveling to Galilee would cross the Jordan river twice to avoid setting foot on Samaritan land. But there are a couple of problems with this. This is the only place where this story is told, and we know that Luke is writing for Gentile Christians. Luke’s understanding of Palestinian culture and geography is not as clear as one might expect if he were writing a first-hand account. And if he wanted someone that his audience could hate, he might have been better off using a Roman soldier or a tax collector as the hero of his story. His audience would probably resonate with that. A few modern scholars think that Luke's concern over Samaritans, which is found in several places in his gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles, has a lot to do with Luke’s interest in demonstrating that Christ brings people together; first, the tax collectors, sinners, lepers, demoniacs among the Jewish people; then the Samaritans are brought in -- ancient rivals of the Jews; and finally the Gentiles as we travel through the Acts of the Apostles.

Another thing about this story is that some of the Church Fathers read it entirely differently. The wounded man was the human race, incapable of helping himself; the priest and the levite were the law and the prophets -- incapable of helping restore the broken man to life. The Samaritan, who represents Christ, uses two sacramental substances -- oil and wine, to begin restoring the man to health. He brings the man to the inn which represents the Church; and he promises to return to pay whatever is necessary -- Christ’s second coming. Saint Augustine preached this analogy and Origen wrote about it.

You may be asking yourself, “What’s the point?” and I don’t blame you. But I’ve got to share a little of my research, yes?

There is something for you and I to think about, though. If you take a group of three or four kids who are roughly between the ages of two and three -- it doesn’t matter what race they come from or what part of the world -- and one of them shows signs of distress, the others will spontaneously move to comfort the child. They drop what they are doing and do to the distressed child those things that they have experienced from their own parents. I remember seeing this with my own children; the three-year-old would comfort the crying one year old. It’s as though we are all born good Samaritans. Why do we stop?

The priest and the Levite probably had good reasons. They might have remembered stories about how bandits would hide until someone stopped to help, and then rob that person as well. Or they might have looked and figured that the man was already dead and there was nothing much they could do. The priest might have been in a hurry and knew that the Levite wasn’t far behind, and he could deal with the problem. The Levite might have thought that if the priest hadn’t stopped, he needn’t stop either.

The Samaritan had places to go and things to do as well. And he was in foreign territory. And if someone came along and saw a Samaritan standing by a dying man, would they immediately conclude that he had done the violent deed? But the Samaritan put all those thoughts aside because he was moved with pity. Luke tells us that he felt it in his guts, like those toddlers feel the pain of their peers.

Our priest may have figured he didn’t have the medical knowledge or the equipment to do a proper job. The Samaritan used what he had -- oil and wine, and maybe strips of his own clothing to bind up the wounds. He might have left the man at that point and promised to send someone back from him -- but instead, he got off his own animal and put the stranger on it and walked alongside until they came to the inn. And you know the rest; the Samaritan never stopped being responsible for the wounded stranger, even to promise to repay the innkeeper whatever he spent over and above the two denarii that were given -- that, by the way, was two- or three-days wages.

So think about this question? What stopped you? Why did you quit being a good Samaritan? Oh, I know many of you are charitable and put your money where your mouth is, but if you are like me, you might give the man some money, or call the salvation army, or even call for an ambulance. But if you are like me, you would be happy to turn the problem over to someone else so you can get back to your life.

Remember the toddlers. Jesus said we have to become like little children. Perhaps that’s what he was talking about.

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 10:1 - 12, 17 - 20

As you might remember, Luke and the other gospel writers describe the sending out of the twelve apostles.  Luke is the only one who has Jesus sending out seventy-two disciples on another occasion.  You have to remember Luke’s overall purpose; he’s showing how the Christian movement began with an angel appearing to Mary, Mary revealing Jesus to Joseph and later Elizabeth; Jesus preaching in the temple, and eventually taking on his ministry with the twelve.  If you leap ahead to the Acts of the apostles, you see the Church growing under the ministrations of Peter and John, then Philip, and finally, Paul.  So Luke wanted us to see how, right from the beginning, the Church is a mission church.  Do we know any of those seventy-two disciples?  I doubt it. But I can think of two individuals who might very well have been part of that group.  They are mentioned by Paul more than once.  There was a prominent evangelist in those early days named Apollos.  Prisca, also known as Priscilla, and Aquila, the married couple we are talking about, sat down with Apollos and corrected some of his teachings. They went on to travel with Paul and were tentmakers and missionaries themselves.  Some bible scholars thought that the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is written in scholarly Greek, may have been authored by Prisca, or perhaps by Prisca and her husband together, because even though it contains definite Pauline ideas, it’s written by someone else.  Legend has it that Aquila later became a bishop, and both he and his wife suffered martyrdom.  

During Jesus’ time, we know that he had large crowds following him at different times.  We also know that despite the societal norms of those days, Jesus had many female disciples.  And we know that it was unusual for a Jewish man to remain unmarried by his late teens.  So it isn’t unreasonable that many of the disciples sent out two by two were married couples -- and that’s worth thinking about.  Because couples who are really responding to the graces of the Sacrament of Matrimony make great missionaries.  When my wife and I were engaged, we were introduced to a married couple, who, after raising their children, decided to found a mission in a very poor Mexican community.  They had basically sold everything and moved to that community, where they were using their skills to help the people.  We met them when they had returned to the states to raise more money.  They were, according to them, happier than they had ever been.  To Joan and I it opened up possibilities -- that a married couple could have a vocation to be missionaries, or whatever else God has in store for them -- a vocation over and above raising a family.  Being a deacon, I’ve learned that the diaconate is often a vocation for a couple, not just the man.  

In our gospel today Jesus sends out his disciples two by two.  There are probably many reasons for this.  If you send out three or four, someone will be on the outs.  It’s natural.  If you send out one, a lot depends on that person’s personality.  Some are too shy to make good missionaries.  Some decide to make it all about themselves.  Jesus had a few individuals like that.  Remember the man who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name but wasn’t a member of the apostolic band?  And remember when the apostles who had been waiting at the foot of the mountain when Jesus had been transfigured?  They couldn’t cast out the demon in the boy by themselves.  But two individuals hold each other accountable.  And in a good marriage, that’s really what it’s all about.  

In the book of Genesis, it records the origin of mankind.  Unlike the rest of the creation story, where God simply makes things happen, the story of human creation begins with “Let us make man in our own image and likeness.”  The word for man in Hebrew means “humanity”.  The passage goes on to say that God created man in his image; male and female he created them.  In other words, while we all bear the image of God, married couples have the potential through the sacrament of shining fourth the image even more powerfully.  After all, God is fundamentally three persons in a relationship, and that’s the potential we see in the sacrament of matrimony.  

Most married couples bring a third person or even more into their relationship because they have followed God’s command to be fruitful and multiply.  But like the missionary couple to whom I referred; the marital relationship is open to bringing others into the relationship.  And that of course is what Prisca and Aquila did -- they brought Paul into their union, and Apollos, and who knows who else. 

Of course, most marriages can only strive in that direction.  But the power is there, and in our time, people who take the sacrament seriously and try to reflect the image of God to those around them, especially their children, are the ones who are responsible for Satan falling like lightning from the sky.  So pray for good marriages and live a good marriage if you are married; remember that together you are in a special way the image of God. 

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 9:51 - 62

My grandfather had a fourth-grade education, spent much of his early years as a ranch hand and cowboy, drank a fair amount of whiskey, and after his marriage settled down and raised a family with my grandmother.  He stopped his drinking but worked odd jobs -- a salesman on commission, a bartender, a janitor.  He never owned a home or a new car or even a television set.  I remember him with fondness, though.  He used to take my sister and I out for an excursion in his used car once in a while.  There was a drive in where the waitresses came up to the car window to take your order and brought it out on a tray that attached to your car window.  This was long before McDonalds and Dairy Queen.  Gertie’s drive in was one of the more popular spots in town.  Every time we’d go there or even drive past there, my grandfather would reminisce about how he had been invited by Gertie, who was an old cowboy friend of my grandfather and not a woman, as the name may imply, to be a partner in the business when it first got off the ground.  My grandfather would always remark that he would have been rich if he had taken Gertie up on his offer. 

Today we hear a gospel which seems to have two unrelated parts.  There is the part about James and John offering to call down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans who rejected Jesus’ disciples.  Jesus rebukes them.  Then Jesus meets three individuals who claim they want to be his disciples but want to put off making the commitment because they have other things that they feel are more important.  Jesus in a sense rebukes them as well -- “Let the dead bury the dead”.  “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”  

James and John are on a mission.  They went to the Samaritan village to prepare for Jesus’ coming.  The Samaritans decided to have nothing to do with them because they were going to Jerusalem.  Jerusalem, of course , was where the Jews worshiped.  The Samaritans disagreed and worshiped at their own temple.  And over this difference there was a lot of enmity.  In another place Jesus told his disciples whom he had sent out that if they were rejected they were to shake the dust off their sandals and go on to the next village.  Jesus has basically defined the situation the disciples are in, and given them instructions as to what to do.  But James and John are distracted. They know in their hearts that the Samaritans, already heretics and the enemies of the Jews, clearly don’t deserve to live after this insult.  And they lose sight of the mission in order to get even with their enemies.  

And that’s why Jesus reinforces this message with the next three potential disciples.  If you really want to be his disciple, keep yourself focused on the mission.  It’s not your business to judge those to whom you preach.  It’s your business to preach.  And if they don’t listen, that’s not your problem.  After all, response to your preaching is up to the Holy Spirit.  If you are a disciple, your job is to listen to Jesus, and to proclaim his presence, his incarnation, his taking on flesh and living among us.  You do that by your words and actions, knowing that God will move the hearts of those who hear you if that’s what he wants.  

This was the attitude of the saints.  And not everyone who heard them responded to them,  Saint Francis de Sales preached to Calvinists; some returned to the Church but some did not.  Saint Charles de Foucald and some followers lived among the Tuareg people in North Africa.  When he was martyred he had no followers at all, but lived and preached his message right up to his death.  On the other hand, Saint Louis de Montfort had a different approach; while preaching in a town square he saw some young men on the other side who were gambling.  He stopped his sermon, went over to them, and ordered them to get into the crowd who had been listening. Charles was a tough guy and breaking up the gambing required a little physical force, but he got the young men over to hear his preaching.  Charles wasn't worried about conversion.  He just wanted everyone to be offered the opportunity.

Today as we listen to Jesus' words to his potential disciples, let’s ask if we are missing opportunities to preach to our families, friends and neighbors.  I’m sure we are.  But it's something we can do something about if we put our minds to it and remember that now is the time, now is where God’s grace is, now will never come again. 

Trinity Sunday, 2022

The various feasts we celebrate every year commemorate something in the life of Christ or his mother or the lives of the apostles or saints.  Except Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate a doctrine.  And when we try to explain the doctrine, two things usually happen.  The preacher will almost always say something that is a heresy, and the congregation will wonder what the big deal is. Someone once said that most Catholics are Unitarians in practical terms.  Saint Patrick was said to compare the Trinity to a shamrock -- three leaves, one plant.  But that’s a heresy.  The Trinity has been compared to water -- can exist as steam, liquid, or ice.  But that’s a heresy.  Thomas Aquinas said that God knows everything completely, including himself, and because God exists, the knowledge he has of himself exists and because God is completely loving and loveable, the love itself is a person.  But even Thomas sails near heretical shores, because we can’t help but see the Father as giving rise to the Son and both bringing about the Holy Spirit. But that’s not the case; there was never a time when only the Father existed.  Saint Augustine said that “The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.  The Son is not the Father or the Spirit; the Spirit is not the Father or the Son; and there is only one God''.  I’m not sure that helps me.

But maybe instead of trying to explain how the Trinity works, we could look at what it means to believe in God but not in the Trinity.  First, there are a lot of people who have a vague appreciation for a God who is the creator and sustainer of the universe.  Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin believed along those lines.  But such a God made no difference whatsoever in their lives. For them, God sets everything in motion and then stands back to watch.   And there are numerous other examples of this line of thinking among philosophers and scientists. 

There are other people -- people like Martin Luther King who said “The arc of history is long, but bends towards justice”.  There are people who devote their lives to a cause.  One of the reasons Marxism caught on was that there was a spiritual quality to it.  Marx preached that it was inevitable that the human race was going to reach the ideal where ``from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” would be a reality.  There are people who find meaning in associating with a movement.  And there are many people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. My grandfather who practiced no religion felt close to God when he was fishing..  What all of these have in common, even if they don’t admit it, is that they recognize a power outside of themselves -- maybe not a God, but certainly something to which they can relate, something that can satisfy a craving in our hearts for relationship.

And finally we have people that set out to change themselves for what they think is better.  There are people that obsessively work out developing muscles on top of muscles.  There are others who work long days and nights to gain a doctorate, or to build a business, or to change themselves in some other way that they envision will be an improvement over their present.  Sometimes this is good and sometimes it’s misguided, but it’s probably never entirely satisfying, and after you’ve achieved your goal you are looking around for another.  

In the Trinity, though, we speak of the Father who is the creator and sustainer of the universe who is God; and the Son who is God in relationship, the one we encounter when we have a personal experience of the divine, who is God.  And when we allow God to live in us and move us toward his idea of perfection, not ours, that is the Spirit, who is God.  And the doctrine of the Trinity is a reflection of how man relates to the infinite and the infinite to man.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov, a saint beloved by Eastern Christians, Said “God is above us, God walks beside us, God is within us”  the Father, Son and Spirit, three persons, one God.  

Corpus Christi 2022

Luke 9:11b - 17

When I was learning my catechism in grade school, I learned that the Mass was the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary.  I understood “unbloody”.  I knew about Calvary.  But I had a very limited appreciation of sacrifice.  To me, sacrifice meant giving up candy for lent.  But if you read the Old Testament or have a little knowledge of world history, you know that human beings have always been sacrificing something to God.  And in this sense, sacrifice is not giving up candy, it’s destroying a possession as a sign that you are offering something of value to God.  Once destroyed, you and no one else can ever use it again.  

We read in Genesis that Cain and Abel offered sacrifices; Abel’s was accepted, Cain’s was not.  It doesn’t say how they knew or why.  Noah offers sacrifice when the flood recedes as a way of thanking God.  Abraham offers his son to God, but an angel restrains him from putting his son to death and a ram caught in bushes is substituted.  And on and on it goes, down to the time of Christ and beyond.  Joseph and Mary offer two pigeons in the temple ritual as a way of buying back their first-born, who according to Jewish law, belongs to God.  

It’s a natural human instinct.  Buddhists, Shinto, Hindu and Confucionist religions all have sacrifices – sometimes it's incense, a flower, or some delicacy made by human hands.  Muslims, at least some, offer animal sacrifices, causing no little anger among their neighbors when they do this from their balconies in European cities. 

One of the4 main reasons the Israelites offered sacrifices was because it was a reminder of the seriousness of sin.  It was felt that God accepted the animal’s death instead of that of the sinner.  Sacrifices for sin were so common in Jesus’; time that it was said blood ran from the temple into the valley below.  

We Catholics believe that the Eucharist is the real presence of Jesus, and that the bread and wine no longer exist after the consecration.  Of course not all Christians, or unfortunately even not all Catholics, believe this.  We talk about the Eucharist as heavenly food, as food for the soul and the body – but Jesus can enter the soul if he wants, right?  According to the gospel of John, Jesus promised that he and the father would make their dwelling in those who love him and keep his word.  Doesn’t say anything about the Eucharist.  Of course Jesus did say that “Unless you eat my body and drink my blood you cannot have life in you.” resulting in the turning away of many of his followers.  But later he said, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail”.  And we certainly know of many very holy people who seem to get by just fine without participating in the Eucharist.  

But I think there is another reason for holding on to the doctrine of transubstantiation, the teaching that the Eucharist becomes the real presence of Jesus.  It has to do with sacrifice, sacrifice for sin.

If you had been an Israelite around the time of Christ, not all sacrifice ended with the destruction of the victim.  After a while, people began to see the actual taking of the life of the animal as the focus of the sacrifice.  In the book of Genesis, it says that God really liked the odor of the sacrifice that Noah offered.  That is a pretty primitive idea, and we can see that as time went on the people’s idea of God changed from that primitive conception to something far more sophisticated; from the vengeful tyrant of a God who killed people for even a slight mistake to a God who loved the people enough to forgive them over and over, and never leave them.  And the notion of sacrifice changed as well; once the life was taken from the sacrificial animal, its destruction could be by ritual consumption.  Even though the Jews no longer sacrifice animals, in the Passover Seder in Jesus’ time the meat would often come from an animal offered in the temple.  

Do we humans need to sacrifice to God?  We are still sinners, like our ancestors in faith, the Jewish people.  And of course if we didn’t then there would have been no reasons for Jesus to sacrifice himself for us.  So what can I offer to God in thanksgiving for all he has done for me?  What can I offer to make up for my sins, which are many, and even if small, still are great because of whom I offend?  The answer is, The Father gives us the Son to be our sacrifice, and we offer this sacrifice when we consume his body and blood. 

In the olden days, it was more apparent that the Mass was a sacrifice.  The priest faced the tabernacle – where God was, and led the people.  The Eucharistic prayer was clearly a prayer of sacrifice.  Participation by the people was elicited when the priest turned and spoke to the congregation, who would reply in the person of the altar servers.  And then, when God had given his son to us in the bread and wine, we would consume his flesh and blood.  To consume a symbol would have nothing to do with a real sacrifice.  And to consume the Son is to join in the sacrifice of Calvary.