Homily for the Week of August 26, 2012

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time - B 2012 First Reading: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21 Second Reading: Ephesians 5:21-32 [2a, 25-32] Gospel: John 6: 60-69 Each of us came to church today for different reasons. Many of us did because we believe it is the right thing to do each week. But others may need a special favor from God for ourselves or others, or this weekend may be a special occasion for us, or maybe we start doing something we may put off doing for a long time. But for all of us today we want to hear Jesus offer us words of comfort, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, healing and joy. But we may also want to hear Jesus advise us how to love better and how to make difficult choices. This week a person stopped by to pick up a copy of her Baptism record. The name of her mother on the document reminded her of her grandmother who came from Italy. She started telling me about her grandmother. She said her grandmother was often confused by Americans’ pursuit of quick happiness, Her grandmother commented on all the industrial bakery-made bread, asking, “Why do people eat these things? They have no taste.” The grandmother would proclaim that life was too short to eat anything but good bread or to drink anything other than good wine. She said that every Saturday night of her childhood was spent with her grandmother making their own bread, their own pizza and their own pasta for the family. Indeed, why do we settle for the quick and easy and not invest our time and energy in something that really pleases. Most of us remember the time spent with our grandparents and family. Making bread and fixing meals from scratch every Saturday night was about far more than eating. It was about growing together as a family. It was an experience in learning how to “abide” with one another. The invitation from Joshua to the people of Israel was to make a choice about whom they would serve, that is, whom would they choose to live with? The invitation from Jesus, though spoken in the reverse, is the same: “Do you also want to leave?” This is the choice we must make, and we must make it continually. Whom do we want to serve? The answer to this question provides the primary orientation of our lives. Jesus is all too often rejected by those who find His words too much to bear. We have been listening to the “Bread of Life” section of the Gospel of John for six weeks. In John, John presents Jesus as a person who talks to us directly and accepting very few excuses, no rationalizing and no fudging. It is all black and white, tough and direct. John lets us hear from Jesus that unless we receive the Eucharist in Holy Communion we will have no life within us. But contrary to what we may think, Jesus was not speaking about life with His Father after death. Jesus was speaking about the here and now. Jesus was offering us something special right now. At one time or other you may have heard about what are called in our Catholic religion as the last things. The last things are 4 things that we believe happens at the end of our life. These are death, judgment, heaven or hell. But what you may not have thought much about is that these last 4 things which we are waiting for God to do in the future are already part of our lives right here and now. In the Gospel today Jesus says to Peter: The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. That means that if you and I believe and live the way we believe, we already have life. We do not have to die physically to achieve it. In our second reading today from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians about wives and husbands is a difficult one. Paul actually zeros in on ordinary human relationships. Paul is actually trying to explain to us how we are to live in relationship with one another in order to have a quality life. There is a Biblical rule of thumb that the bigger the problem the more verses are given to it. The section on husband loving their wives three to four times longer than the part about wives loving their husbands. The weight of the reading is directed toward husbands. This is to be our relationship with our religion. That is why Jesus often calls those who followed him as His body. You and I are his body on earth. Few of us want to hear that our relationship with the Jesus should be so intimate that no one can think of me without thinking of the Jesus. Conversely, no one should be able to think of the us who are here today without thinking of Jesus' presence among us. And that intimate relationship with Jesus is expressed especially when we receive Holy Communion. Many of Jesus' followers left Him because of His direct and unapologetic preaching that we must receive the Bread of Life in order to be the Body of Christ. The Apostles knew this was hard, too, but they had discovered the truth, Master, to whom shall we go?' We, too, must choose. Will my choice be what I want or what God wants? Jesus never promised that being a disciple would be easy, but He did promise that being a disciple would be worth the effort. As we saw from the Gospel today, our faith is not just knowing facts about Jesus or God or the Church. It must be lived. All the saints can tell us that God leads us in our faith by small steps. Today, God may be asking us to take the next step.

Homily for the Week of August 5, 2012

18th Sunday 2012 First Reading: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15 Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54 Second Reading: Ephesians 4:17, 20-24 Gospel: John 6:24-35 In your time outdoors and appreciating God’s beautiful gifts, most of you must have noticed how birds or small animals search for food. In my kitchen I have three large windows overlooking the lawn. In early morning there are birds of every kind out on the grass finding food. I so often think to myself that birds like most animals spend much of their time finding food and water and trying to survive. And then there are food fights. It is amusing to see how a group of black birds attack other birds competing for the same food. Have you ever had the experience of being hungry and but did not know what you wanted to eat? So you walked around the kitchen, opening cabinets and looking inside, opening the refrigerator and standing in front of it, and checking the contents of the freezer, or where ever you think there might be something to eat or snack on. After a while you find something that appeals to you. You eat it and then find yourself satisfied for a time. In a sense we spend a lifetime searching for food because food is a basic necessity as is water and clothes and a place to live which we call home. Without food and proper food, we die. Unfortunately there are millions of starving children and adults in the world, and sometimes even very close to us. There is an urgency all around us for the food that comes into our life. Marathon runners load up on carbohydrates before a race; some flirt with steroids to make them stronger. We are advised by doctors and nutritionist to fill our Plate wisely with plenty of fruits and veggies for healthy eating. Whether or not we believe it, healthy weight is not a diet but a lifestyle. But at times when we don’t find what satisfies any of these hungers we start mumbling or grumbling. We complain. We get upset. And this is what was happening with Moses in our first reading today. The Jewish people were in the desert. Water and food were scarce. They had no patience with their situation. They were grumbling. They had been rescued by God from many years of Slavery and death. But they still complained because they had no food. So at night the fields are covered with manna or bread. But they got tired of this menu and still complained. They wondered where God was, and Moses told them that it was God who gave them the bread. It was God’s gift to them to keep them alive. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is asking for the same thing. He is asking for trust. The people did not always respond with faith when they witnessed a miracle or a sign. We see in today’s passage that, despite having witnessed and participated in the feeding of the five thousand just a few days before there was still no faith, no trust. The people wanted yet another sign. Part of the problem for the Jewish people and for the ones with Jesus is that the people did not have to do anything. They did not have to work for their freedom or for their bread; it was simply given. They began to expect a god–king who would give them their land of milk and honey with no effort on their part.Today we hear Jesus promising bread that would never leave the people hungry. Instead of focusing on what Jesus was really offering, the people thought only of their bellies. They could not make the leap from their self-centered expectations of God to a set of expectations based on what God had to offer. He tells them that he is the bread of life. God tells them that NO ONE WHO COMES TO ME WILL EVER BE HUNGRY. And as a divine nutritionist he gives us some advice that we should be seeking food that does not get stale. They wondered for a while, and then they say to him: GIVE US SOME OF THIS FOOD. This food, however, will remind us to lay aside our former lives. Jesus reminds us to spend all of our time and money on food that will not rot or spoil,but on spiritual food. Hopefully, whenever we come to church it is because we believe that Jesus is indeed our food. But is not only food that gives us life. We are also hungry for other things that give us life. We are hungry for friendship. So we satisfy this hunger by making friends, going to parties, cookouts, parades, joining groups and organization. Many of you satisfy this hunger by getting married and by forming special one to one relationships. We also hunger for things of mind so we read, listen to the news, buy newspapers. We also hunger for time off; for a vacation, a time to do just what we want to do, or even for breaks. But spiritually we are all hungry for finding God. So often our religion and our spirituality is based on what we want rather than on what God wants. One of the reasons that religion in our culture is losing influence is that what we want is our free bread. We want religion without responsibility. Too many want a good preacher on television so they don’t have to get up on Sunday and drive to a church. Too many base their faith on the entertainment some churches offer, the “feel-goods” that we expect God to pass out to us. These things are the “food that perishes.” It is food based on something that never lasts, rather than on trust in God. Following our reading from Exodus that we had today God told Moses to pick up some of the manna, the bread on the ground and put it away in a jar and set it in special place in the synagogue so that people would see it and remember what God had done. The saved manna would cause them to worship the Lord. We do the same in our Catholic Churches. We place the bread of Eucharist in a place call the tabernacle for all to see. When we forget what God has done and lose our trust, we should look to where our Bread of Life is kept: the Tabernacle. There we can remember and begin to trust again. A Catholic church is never empty. It is the home of Jesus our bread of life.