Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 6:30 - 34

When I was younger than I am now, I took a certain kind of pride in having too much to do. I had a demanding job, but felt that I should also be doing some research. I had a big family, and worried that I wasn't giving enough of my time to each of them. And I worried about other relationships which I had always planned to nurture - - friends from college, for example. In the midst of all this I took up guitar lessons, which I faithfully squeezed in to my day. I'm still this way but not so much. But I always have a vague feeling that I could have done more with my day, with my week, with my year.

Turns out that this attitude is not uncommon, especially among professional people. There just isn't enough time for all the stuff we want to cram into it. But in a way, that attitude is a little perverse. Someone called it an attitude of violence towards time. After all God made enough time, and we are trying to stretch it and squeeze more into it. We are doing violence to time.

The apostles, if you remember from last week, have just returned from their first mission trip. They have been healing and teaching and driving out demons. It must have really been exciting. There is a passage in another gospel that when the disciples return they report to Jesus all that has been going on and Jesus makes a comment which might have a touch of sarcasm in it. He says, “I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven.” And then we come to today's passage. If I were an apostle, I'd be eager to get out there again, to do more, to wield the power I had been given. I couldn't wait. But Jesus says, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest for a while.” The gospel seems to indicate that they didn't make it, but I suspect this was merely the first of many times that Jesus told them to cool their heels and take it easy for a bit.

Last week we celebrated the feast of Saint Benedict of Nursia, who sort of invented western monasticism. Up till that time there were monks, especially in the eastern half of the empire. Being a monk meant that you spent all your time in prayer, you might wear a hair shirt, you did a lot of fasting – and Benedict started out that way when he organized his first monastery. The monks who followed him were encouraged to out do each other in the penances they took upon themselves. It got so bad that there was a rebellion and somebody gave Benedict a poisoned drink. Legend has it that he made the sign of the cross over it so it didn't actually kill him, but it wasn't too much longer before the band of monks dispersed. After a lot of thought, Benedict wrote a rule, much of which could apply to our lives, in addition to those of monks. The rule is all about balance.

Benedictine monks have as their motto “ora et labora” which means, “prayer and work” Benedict wrote a rule that went back and forth, between prayer and work. Penances were supposed to be light, and assigned by a superior. No more hair shirts, no more self-flagellation. Fasting was moderate, and broken with feast now and then. Benedictines brewed beer and made wine and consumed some of it. . You worked for a while, then you prayed, which meant meditation, contemplation, in addition to verbal and mental prayer.

And I think that's what Jesus is getting at today. He's saying, “there is enough time for God's plan to be carried out. It isn't something that depends on you and I. What is important is that you pause every now and then and think about what has been going on. Where do you find God in what you just accomplished? What lessons have you learned? How has the Holy Spirit spoken to you.? Are there things you should do more of? Less of? If you don't take these pauses, you may be a dynamo and impress all your friends, but you won't make any spiritual progress.

Jesus says, “come away” because we can't contemplate in the middle of the workplace. If nothing else, we have to come away in our minds and put aside the to-do list. He says, “by yourselves” because it goes without saying that we can't hear God's voice unless the other voices are temporarily silenced.

He says, “to a deserted place”. There was a movie a while ago about a woman who set up a spot in her closet where she would go to pray. She had the right idea. We should all have a favorite place to pray – preferably a place we don't use for anything else. Pope John Paul II, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa. And countless others made it a point to spend an hour a day in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Unfortunately, I guess, that spot tends to be deserted for most of the day.

He says, “for a while”. What Jesus is recommending is that we deliberately make time to recharge our batteries, but not forget that we have to get back into the world, into the world where we are all called to evangelize, to teach, to heal, to bring the good news of Christ into our workplace.

Jesus himself took his own advice. It seems as though he frequently went off to commune with his Father, and the apostles would have to go looking for him.

So today we are invited by our Lord not to more and more action, but if we don't do so already, to deliberately introduce into our lives a regular time for reflection. Only by alternating action with reflection can we hope to truly progress in our spiritual lives.

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 6:7 – 13

My wife loves to take pictures, especially of grandchildren. She has a digital camera and although she hates computers, she can do all kinds of things with the pictures before printing them out. The other day she painstakingly printed out two pictures she took on our recent trip so that she could bring them over to show our daughter. It suddenly occurred to me that she has a very nice tablet computer, and Amazon lets you put all the pictures you want in the cloud, and this means that you don't have to spend gobs of money on ink for your printer, and you could just download from the cloud when you wanted to show pictures. I realize that for anyone older than I am some of those words don't make sense. But that's not the point. As I was excitedly pointing out the advantages of this approach to my wife, she stopped me and said that I should write down the directions, then she would follow the directions, and we would keep modifying the directions until she could do it without my help. You see, for her, and for many people, it isn't enough to have something explained, nor is it enough to even read the directions. You have to actually do it over and over until it becomes second nature.

That's what is going on in today's gospel. Remember, we are only in the sixth chapter of Mark. So far the apostles have watched as Jesus preached, healed, driven out demons, and in at least one instance, raised the dead. And now it is their turn. The only way they can learn to be what Jesus wants them to be is by imitating him, by going out as he did.

He sends them in pairs, because each can reinforce the other. Jesus would later say, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am”. That's still true today. We make much better missionaries when we have companions. When we are working together in His name, not only is he present, but we draw courage from each other; and we begin to realize the qualities of the other, some good, some bad; but we break out of our own egos.. Jesus knew this, and so do the Jehovah's witnesses and the Mormons and the seventh day Adventists. They go out together, they go out reinforcing each other; and they succeed in now and then winning converts.

He tells them that they can take a walking stick and sandals. Walking stick were used in defense against wild animals and sometimes bandits that you might meet out in the woods. Sandals kept your feet from wearing out on the rocks and stones and thorns. A walking stick could be leaned on, and could help you get over obstacles. Matthew in recounting this same story, has Jesus telling the apostles not to take walking sticks and Luke has Jesus denying them sandals. They have their reasons but we are going to concentrate on Mark. The point Mark is making is that there is nothing wrong with being prudent, using things to help us in our efforts as missionaries.

But sometimes we spend all our time getting ready. A Presbyterian minister I know says that as our country expanded westward, Presbyterian missionaries had to wait till the railroads were bult because they had large collections of books they needed to set up churches in the new territories. But when they would get to these towns, the Methodists were already there. All they needed was a horse a bible. So Jesus, who understands all of this, tells the apostles not to take extra underwear, food, or money, or whatever you carried around in your sack. If he had allowed that, they would have asked, how much money is enough? Or maybe I should take two changes of underwear. But the mission is urgent.

Finally, we have Jesus telling them to depend on the goodness of others as they go – in other words, trust that God will prepare the way. God will make some people well disposed, who will offer hospitality. And when that doesn't happen, just move on.

The apostles went out at Jesus' command and as we learn later, they are elated when they return, because they themselves were getting the hang of being apostles, being sent by Jesus. By doing what he did, they could begin to see results. And that of course is the best way to get someone even more interested in being your disciple, in learning from you.

I think the lesson here is clear, but unfortunately still hard to follow. The steps to be an apostle for Jesus are first of all to be prepared. But that preparation does not need to be a theology degree. However, we should know what we are talking about, and we should be living a life that reflects our Christian beliefs. No one will believe a hypocrite. Second, we should be bold, and here is my particular hang up. I'm not bold. If someone else brings up the topic, I can talk all day about Jesus. But I don't seem to have the courage to just say to someone, even a friend, “I'd like to tell you about the most important person in my life”. Boldness has to be learned, and it is learned by doing what the apostles did – going fourth. And who is to be our companion? We married couples should be natural apostles, and you find a lot of married couples who minister together in some area or other. But most don't. And if you aren't married, it's still great to have a companion in ministry, a dear friend, another person who like you is just about ready to be an apostle, but needs a little push, so you push each other. Finally, we always have to remember that we are part of God's plan, not all of it. Maybe we are to sew the seeds and someone else will harvest; and maybe the seed we try to sew will be rejected. The important thing for an apostle is that the seed be sewn. The rest is up to God.

You can only become an apostle by doing what the apostles did. That's the real school, that's how the first apostles learned their vocation.

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 6:1-6

When I first became a deacon I went back to Montana for a summer vacation. While I was visiting my relatives who live around the little town of Belt, they had talked with the local pastor about having a Mass of thanksgiving where I would assist and also preach. I think my mother engineered the whole thing. So the day came and I walked out with the priest in an alb too small for me, and as the mass progressed it was obvious that he had not celebrated with a deacon ever, so we kept stumbling over each other. When I gave my sermon, my uncles sat there with their arms crossed, looking hostile and upset that they were missing a whole morning working on their farms, and my two aunts were making whispered comments to each other. When it was all over we went to a local restaurant where we sat around a large table and had breakfast. The conversation was mostly about the weather and crop prices – nothing about what we had just experienced. So I kind of identified with Jesus in today's gospel. It says “They took offense” at him. The Greek word is Skandalon, or stumbling block – He was a stumbling block to them. After all they had watched him grow up; that had seen him play in the streets. He probably ran errands for some of them. They remember a fairly ordinary kid who was learning the carpentry trade. And here he was, preaching with authority, quoting scripture, rumors of miracles in his wake. And he didn't seem to be able to work many miracles here, at least for anyone who was watching. They always thought old Levi was healthier than he looked, so when he got up and walked around, no surprise.

The villagers of Nazareth were scandalized by Jesus. They prejudged him based upon their familiarity with him. And because of this they turned their backs, they didn't listen; and if we were to read further, they eventually decided to throw him off of a cliff. After all, he was blaspheming. And because of their prejudging, they did not recognize that God was moving among them.

There are a lot of stumbling blocks that keep us from experiencing God in our midst. Perhaps the first and foremost is the doctrine that Jesus is at once God and Man, that God walked around not just in a human body, but as a real flesh and blood human being. Not a disguise, a reality. We don't have much trouble with God being the creator of the universe, or the source of the Moral law. What is a stumbling block is the idea that God is a human being and that means that every human being looks like God. Another stumbling block is the teaching that we are to love our enemies. Biblical love is not just an abstract good feeling towards someone. I can do that. Biblical love means we do something because of our love. How do you and I love our enemies? Jesus told us that if we were forced to walk a mile with him we should walk two. He told us that before we approach the altar, we are to seek reconciliation. And I could go on. Christianity is full of stumbling blocks,

I don't know how many times someone has said “I wish God would just tell me what to do!” Had Jesus appeared in Nazareth like he did at the transfiguration, clothed in light, so obviously God that his apostles fell on their faces, you can bet the Nazareans would. have hung on every word of His teaching. But God is not going to speak to us like that. Nevertheless, he does speak to us, all the time. Our problem is always that we don't hear him because of stumbling blocks.

He speaks to us through other people. Do you know that in every Mass he has something to say to you? Matthew Kelly suggests that we keep a mass journal, and at the end of Mass we write down one thing that struck a cord – just one thing – and make it the subject of our prayer and mediation that week. And you may believe a little bit that he speaks to you through a figure of authority – the pope, the bishop, the pastor – but he might also be speaking to you through one of your children or a neighbor who has nothing good to say about anybody. You have to listen.

He speaks to us in nature. Take a walk on a beautiful day and see how God speaks to you through beauty. Be sensitive to what is going on. Saint Francis learned this lesson; he would stop and listen to the birds, he would marvel at the sun and the moon; he even referred to death, natural death, as his sister. My heart is always gladdened when I see a beautiful flower, or a hummingbird. For some reason they always seem to lift my thoughts to God.

He speaks to us through scripture. You know this as well as I do. Do you do anything about it? We deacons like other clergy are obligated to read some bible every day. And even there, the very word of God that is passing from the page to our minds is sometimes skimmed over because our minds are busy with other things. If God speaks through the scriptures, it would seem logical that we would find time to sit for a few minutes, at least, with the scriptures every day. But I suspect most of us don't.

And finally, God speaks to us through the poor. Jesus himself said, “What you do for the least of my brothers you do for me.” If we truly want to meet Jesus we need to actually meet the poor – and I mean by that not just people who are deprived of material goods, but people who are deprived of the things we take for granted. Much of my own ministry involves people who are extremely old and have lost physical and or mental capacity. They are poor, but if we believe Jesus, this is where we can encounter him, where we can learn from him.

Stumbling blocks. The terrible thing is that if Jesus is among us, and he is, we are not recognizing it because of stumbling blocks. And it would be terrible if we got all the way through our lives and never recognized that he has been with us, speaking to us all the time.

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 5:21 - 43

Is this just another story about how Jesus can heal people? Or is there something more going on here. It's peculiar, in a way, because as you can see in your missalette, we could just tell the story of the little girl and leave out that thing in the middle about the woman with the bleeding problem. Are these really two stories or is it one. Mark means for his audience to consider the two events together. Unfortunately, we can't ask Mark what he was talking about, but there have been many people who saw something more profound here.

Father Ronald Rolheiser has perhaps one of the most unusual ideas. He says the two women in this situation have one thing in common: they cannot bear children, they cannot become pregnant. A woman who is having a constant hemorrhage would be unapproachable. Even today, Orthodox Jews are not supposed to engage in marital relations if there is any bleeding going on. And the little girl, whose age is specified as twelve, is one year short of the traditional age when she can become engaged. So neither can become pregnant, neither can give life. And Jesus restores both to this possibility. Maybe the lesson here is that if we want to be spiritually fertile we have to be touched by Jesus; only through a relationship with him can be bring others to him.

But I just mention that because I think it's interesting. Another way to look at the story is this. It is all about Jesus' ongoing ministry; it is about fear and faith. It is, in fact, all about God, since Jesus told us that if you see Him, you have seen the father.

Jarius, the first character, is an important man. Given his position in town, he would not naturally be a follower of Jesus; in fact as we see elsewhere, officials in the Jewish religion didn't have much use for Jesus. But Jarius' daughter is dying and he puts himself out; it says he “fell at his feet” – got down on his knees – and begged Jesus to save his daughter. He must have feared the reaction of his fellow pharisees and scribes and the proper members of his synagogue, but he overcame that fear and had faith. And Jesus responds with a ministry of presence – he goes off with him.

The second character is the woman. Mark in a few short words shows us how desperate she is. The hemorrhage makes her an outcast; she is unclean, and what she touches is unclean. If she sits on a chair, you can't use the chair; if she lies on a bed, same thing. It was kind of like being a leper. And she's done everything she can to get rid of her affliction, to the point of having nothing left. Not only is she unclean, she is broke and probably friendless. So when she reaches out to touch Jesus' garment, she is doing something unlawful; she is making him unclean. You could get stoned for that. But she overcomes her fear, and has faith, and Jesus responds with a ministry of promise. She feels that she has been healed, and Jesus tells her that it is her faith that healed her and accepts her back into society by calling her “daughter”. And if we were to read the Greek, it says something like “Go in peace and be cured permanently”. Jesus promises that she won't be troubled by this again.

The third character is the little girl. She doesn't have a speaking part. But if she's like twelve year old girls I've known, and I've known many, she probably spoke a great deal. And she didn't understand what was happening – what child would? But as she felt the life going out of her she must have felt fear, fear of the unknown – and it was up to her parents to have the faith. After they have been told she has died, and that they should not bother the teacher, Jesus tells them not to fear, but to have faith. And the parents continue with Jesus to the little girl's bedside; they overcome their fear, they have faith. And Jesus responds with a ministry of power. He takes the little girl by the hand – he's already unclean, after all, so he might as well touch a dead body – and Mark quotes Jesus here, using the actual Aramaic words that Jesus spoke “Talitha kum”. And she rises. Mark uses the same word he will use when he describes Jesus rising, something his readers would not have missed. And the only other time Jesus' actual words are quoted are when Mark describes Jesus passion and he calls out in aramaic, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani”.

Now it would be nice if Jesus were walking among us in the flesh, healing the terrible things that happen to people, the things that no one deserves. How I wish he would heal the people I see slipping away into Alzheimer's disease; how I used to pray that he would cure this patient with cancer, that one with leukemia. And if Jesus were walking among us, no child would be cut off from life, never having an opportunity to live his potential.

Mark's readers were just like you and I in essential respects. They were Christians living in a pagan society, and so are we. They got in trouble for opposing the spirit of the times, and so do we when we oppose abortion or physician assisted suicide, or try to defend traditional marriage, or nowadays, want some orderly way to deal with refugees from other countries while protecting what we value about our country. There are many ways you can get in trouble just like Mark's readers. All those possibilities make us fear, and fear can lead to inaction. But Jesus shows us that he is with us, he holds out the promise that in the end things will turn out right; and that he has the power to bring about the kingdom of God, where things will be on earth as they are in heaven.

And that should make us lose our fear and strengthen our faith and desire to be partners in making a new world where God;'s will is done.

Eleventh Sunday in Ordiinary Time, cycle B

Mark 4:26 --34

When I was growing up I had several uncles who were farmers. Most of the time they planted wheat. In the fall they would plant “winter wheat”, a hardy variety that actually came to maturity in the spring; and then they would plant “summer wheat” a fast-growing variety that could be harvested in the fall. Although they had chickens and pigs and an occasional cow, they really relied on the wheat crops to make most of their income. This was “dry land” farming. Some areas, close to rivers and streams, could be irrigated with diverted water, but my uncles pretty much depended on rain. And that meant that there were years where the summer crop did not come through – from drought, sometimes, and hail other times. The winter wheat was more reliable, but wasn't enough by itself. So I witnessed the kind of anxiety Jesus was talking about, especially as the season progressed. My uncles would walk the fields, looking at the growth, trying to see promising signs; and when the wheat was almost ready to harvest, they would look to the skies, knowing that rain could delay and hail could ruin the harvest. Being a dryland farmer was very exciting. But a day would come most years when they would get the crop in and clean up the equipment and rest for a while.

Jesus tells us about the kingdom of heaven with two parables. One is the parable of the anxious farmer, and the other, the parable of the mustard seed. And we are invited, I guess, to see ourselves in these little stories.

In the story of the anxious farmer, Is that you and I? Is Jesus telling us to sew good seed and count on God to bring it to fruition? The farmer, after all, knows not how the seed would sprout and grow. Perhaps that is a good lesson. But maybe we are the farmer who recognizes when the crop is ready to harvest, and we devote our energies to harvesting. I like that image a bit better. Because all around us, as Jesus told us in another parable, “the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few”. In our modern times we are too diffident; we have been given the Church, the scriptures, teachers like Pope Francis – and all of us because of what we have been given can recognize when the Holy Spirit is moving among those around us. Jesus told his disciples that they would be fishers of men, that they should go into all the world teaching and baptizing. And all of us have been given the opportunity to be men and women of mission, people who should be anxiously looking for signs that the harvest is ready, and then gently and with love, helping our friends to become closer to the Lord, to deepen their relationship with the Lord. We are not expected to make the kingdom come; that's God's work, that's the soil, that's the part where we don't understand what is happening. But we are supposed to be there at the harvest, we are supposed to be the harvesters.

And the story of the mustard seed. Mark puts these two stories together, and there are similarities. Just as the farmer doesn't know how seeds grow, we don't know how a mustard seed gets to be a big plant with birds nests in it. But Jesus says we can learn something about the kingdom from contemplating a mustard seed. I think the key words here are “Once it is sewn”. The mustard seed is full of potential, it just needs the opportunity, the right circumstances. And maybe that's our lesson as well. The kingdom, after all, is where everyone is given the opportunity to become the best version of themselves that they can, as Matthew Kelly is always preaching. But we all know that becoming the best version of oneself requires three things: first, you have to have an idea of what that looks like. If in my case I thought the best version of myself should be a racing jockey, I'm probably not being realistic. We have to look at what we have been given by God and how we can grow those talents and virtues. Second, we need to have the desire to make ourselves over, with God's help, to be this best version. And third, we need the means. If I am in the business of sewing mustard seeds, and we all are, because we are a community, how are we encouraging each other to be the best versions of themselves? I think especially of our young people, the future of the church. I think of young parents, who have it in their power to become domestic churches, bringing up their children to be faithful Catholic Christians, but who more often than not have very little involvement in the Church – and we all know that children who grow up in these kinds of homes are probably not going to have anything to do with the Church when they become adults. I don't know why, but God, who promises that if the mustard seed is sewn, he will do the rest, has decided to let his people do the sewing, and we aren't doing it very well. So this is a good Sunday to ask those questions. Is the way I live my life showing my neighbors, my family, my friends, what it is like to be faithful? Am I praying for those I love that they will catch fire and find in themselves the desire to become the best version of themselves they can be? And what am I doing materially to help people realize their true potential? Am I working with some ministry that directs its energies along these lines? Am I supporting such efforts with part of my charitable giving? How am I sewing mustard seeds?

That's what Christianity is about, after all.

Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 3:20 – 35

What is the sin against the Holy Spirit that cannot be forgiven? In other words, is there a limit to God's mercy? That's what Jesus seems to be saying, after all.

I think the readings for this weekend help us to determine that. In Jesus' time, whether you were a Sadducee or a Pharisee or a tax collector, you had grown up hearing the stories of your people-- the story of the escape from Egypt; the feats of Moses and Joshua and King David; the sayings of the prophets. That was the equivalent of grade school; you learned what made you part of the nation of Israel. Those stories sustained you whether you were in exile, or whether you were living far from your native land, or whether you were living in Palestine under Roman rule. God was on your side, that's what the stories said. Someday God would return to His people. And there were many ways you would be able to tell – one of the first predictions was in the Book of Genesis – you just heard that reading. God curses the serpent, and promises that “her offspring...” will crush his head, and he will strike at his heel. In other words, and this isn't the only place we find the promise – the promised one will have power over demons. And the whole of Palestine has witnessed Jesus driving out demons. In In fact the demons themselves testified that Jesus was the promised one – if you read the part of Mark just before this part, you would see that. So what could be more clear?

But those who knew the law best, the teachers, the Pharisees, could not accept this; they called Jesus evil, they said, “He uses the power of the devil to cast out devils”. Jesus of course showed them what a ridiculous idea this was. But there was another group who did not believe. The Pharisees who knew the law best, did not believe; but Jesus' relatives, who knew Jesus best, did not believe either. They said, “He is mad!” I am excepting Mary of course. I suspect she came along to make sure that the mob made up of Jesus relatives did not cause him harm, because forcibly bringing him home with the intention of locking him up in what passed for the local psychiatric ward could very well end up badly, given the crowds that were following him avidly.

And that is the sin against the Holy Spirit. You see, the Holy Spirit offers to guide each of us. But to be guided requires humility; it requires at the very least, the acknowledgment that you need to be guided. And that's a very hard lesson for us to learn. After all, we spend much of our lives trying to increase our ability to control everything. Two year olds act up because they are trying to assert that they are persons distinct from their mothers. Teenagers rebel against their parents because they are forming their own value systems, which are almost always not quite the value systems of their parents. People who are starting out in their careers set goals for themselves and try to achieve these; and they are almost always things that give them more control over their lives. The Pharisees were not bad people; but if they admitted that Jesus drove out demons by the power of God, their whole world would be turned upside down. And if Jesus' relatives, probably also not bad people, were to admit that Jesus who had abruptly left his job in their home town and was wandering around Galilee causing trouble was sane, they would also have to admit that God had been in their midst all those years – and that would have turned their world upside down.

That's what the Holy Spirit does – He turns your world upside down. And if you have the humility to recognize that you need this to happen in your life, he will. Having your world turned upside down is basically what is meant by repentance. Jesus is saying that if you don't see the need to change yourself, if you don't see that you are a sinner and the only way you can do something about it is to allow the Holy Spirit to change you, then there is nothing anyone can do for you; that's the unforgivable sin.

Pope Francis in his recent exhortation, said that there are two heresies troubling modern Christians. One is gnosticism; that's when I think I can control my life and my eternal destiny by knowing the right stuff. It isn't just knowing of course; it's being certain that I am right and then living accordingly. The other heresy is pelagianism. Here I believe that if my behavior is good enough, my life will go well and my eternal destiny is assured. And the Pharisees and the relatives of Jesus are guilty of both of these.

Jesus tells us how we can be sure we are on the right track, how we can know that we are being lead by the Holy Spirit. We are his brothers and sisters and even closer – his mother – if we hear the word of God and keep it. God's word isn't hard to find. It is expressed in scripture, in Sacrament, in our brother and sister Christians (because he said where two or three are gathered together in his name, He would be there). If we look to God's word for direction in leading our lives, in dealing with other people, in drawing closer to God, and then if we deliberately follow those insights,those leadings, we will be putting ourselves under the direction of the Holy Spirit. If we are not doing those things, can there be any hope for us?

Corpus Christi, 2018

Mark 14:12 – 16, 22 – 26

When I was growing up, I had two grandmothers. One was Scotch-Irish, and the other was very German, the daughter of immigrants. They didn't like each other much. But what they had in common was that whenever I visited one of them, I got fed. My German grandmother was a very good baker, and she would put out cinnamon rolls and pie. My Scotch-Irish grandmother wasn't much of a cook, but she could make custard, so that is what she served me. Now either of them could have just opened a pack of cookies and I would probably have eaten that – I was, after all, a growing boy. But what they served me had to pass through their hands – they had to put a little of themselves into it.

I do a lot of cooking myself, and when I'm feeding someone, I like that feeling myself. I tell my wife that's why I don't take her out to supper more often; it seems so impersonal to just order from a menu. She of course thinks that I'm just cheap. But I think most people recognize that preparing food for someone they love with their own hands is kind of special. We put something of ourselves into what we serve.

Jesus spent his public years teaching and working miracles. He did on a couple of occasions prepare food for people – remember the miracles in which he fed large numbers of people with very small amounts of food? But other than blessing the food he didn't do much preparation; he rather multiplied the food.

And so, after he had taught all he could by word and example, he came to the Last Supper, which we've just heard about. And this time he fed his disciples with himself – he put himself into what he served, more so by far than my grandmothers did. And I think that's a good way to understand the Eucharist.

It is God reaching down to us, feeding us with what he has lovingly prepared, feeding us not a symbol, but the very being of His Son. It is an act of Love on his part, giving us, as he did on the cross, his entire self. It is an embrace of a lover, a kiss given by a parent to a child. It cannot be more intimate, and it tells us that God loves our bodies as much as he loves our souls.

Have you ever thought about what a visitor from outer space would think if he watched our Sunday Liturgy? He would of course conclude that most of us must come here to receive the little white wafer; in fact, some of us don't even begin to pay attention to what is going on until we come forward for communion. And after receiving the wafer, some of us leave before the mass is even finished; Our visitor would definitely conclude that receiving that bit of bread was the whole point of the Liturgy. And he would notice that only a small fraction of us partake of the cup. He would conclude that this isn't nearly as important as the wafer, even though Jesus has told his followers to eat his body, the consecrated host, and drink his blood – the consecrated wine. Our visitor could be forgiven because he probably doesn't know that we receive the whole of Christ in either form. But by our actions we perhaps downplay the covenant significance of the Eucharist. God feeds us individually with heavenly bread, and feeds us communally, brings us once again into the covenant, with the heavenly wine, which we share from the same cup.

Many years ago when I was first ordained I gave a sermon on the Eucharist in which I stated that it was a symbol. Someone wrote a letter to the bishop accusing me of heresy, even though I had mentioned in the same sermon that the bread and wine became the body and blood of Christ. But even though that is the case, it is a symbol, nonetheless. When we receive the Eucharist, God is symbolizing his fatherly love for us, but we are symbolizing our desire to become more like His Son. Since the Resurrected Christ is one, when we receive his body and blood we are declaring, in a sense, that we want to be part of each other. We are all eating and drinking the same thing.

The host that we consume is made of greatly refined wheat, but what Jesus used was probably something like a soft taco or pita bread. It was necessary to eat the other things on the table. You didn't have utensils, so you tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in the food, or picked up a piece of food with it. Jesus means for us to see that the Eucharist is like that – it's what we have to have to be open to all the blessings God wants for us. The wine, on the other hand, would have been the best the apostles could have gotten. It was, after all, Passover, and the wine was part of a celebration. Jesus means the Eucharist to point toward that celebration in heaven, the great banquet to which we are all invited.

But symbols, even sacred symbols, do not really mean much unless they move us into some sort of action. We can be daily communicants, but if we are not trying to live out the meaning of the Eucharist, we won't get the sacramental graces.

On this feast of Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, let us remember that God loves us so much that he puts his whole self into the food he prepares for us. Let us pray that we respond to this love with our whole selves.