(Eighteenth Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was given on August 1, 2021 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Exodus 16:2-16; Psalm 78: 3-4, 23-25, 54; Ephesians 4:17-24; John 6:24-35.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Eighteenth Sunday 2021]
When I was first ordained back in 1985, I remember a man
coming up to me one day after a Sunday Mass, carrying his two children. He had one in each arm. The oldest was four years-old; the other was
two. The man said to me, “You know, Fr.
Ray, when I came up to you to receive Communion today my four year-old son
wanted to know if he could say ‘Hi’ to Jesus.
I told him, ‘No!’” “Wow,” I said
to him, “You mean that your son already understands that what I give out at
Communion time is really the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ?” I was impressed. But the father replied, “Oh no, Fr. Ray, you
don’t understand. My son said that
because he thinks that YOU look like Jesus!”
So much for my brilliant deductions.
Naturally it is extremely difficult for any child of four to
recognize the Lord’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament. But of course it’s also just as difficult for
the rest of us. Sadly, age does not
necessarily increase the quality of our spiritual awareness and vision. And spiritual vision is what we need in order
to be aware of the fact that the Eucharist is not a symbol, but is truly the
Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Savior of the world.
In a sense you could say that we need to put on “spiritual
glasses” if we want to be able to see Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. But those glasses are not easily
acquired.
Maybe part of the difficulty we have in recognizing the
Lord’s presence in this sacrament is that we don’t expect the Almighty,
omniscient, eternal God to be present in such a small “package.” As Mother Teresa once put it: “How much
smaller could he have made himself than a little piece of bread—the Bread of
Life? How much more weak and helpless?”
The idea that God would give himself to human beings in this
way can be difficult to grasp and understand.
But we’re not the only ones in history who have had this problem. The crowd that Jesus faced in the sixth
chapter of John’s Gospel (where today’s gospel reading is taken from) also
faced this difficulty.
I find it interesting that the crowd back then had no
trouble whatsoever accepting the miracle of the loaves. That didn’t challenge their faith at
all. As we heard in last weekend’s
gospel reading, after they ate the meal Jesus gave them they were so happy that
were ready to carry our Lord off and make him their king!
It was only when Jesus began to instruct them on heavenly
food (i.e., the Holy Eucharist) that the trouble began. We see the conflict between our Lord and the
crowd beginning to develop in this week’s reading. But it gets even worse in the later verses of
John 6.
Our Lord first of all said to the crowd, “I know why you
want to see me again. It’s because I fed
you with earthly food. It’s because I
gave you all a good meal of bread and fish.
But now I want to tell you about another kind of food—another kind of
bread—a ‘heavenly’ kind of bread.”
Of course, as happened so often in our Lord’s ministry, the
crowd misunderstood him completely. They
thought he was going to give them a new kind of manna, akin to what the Hebrews
got in the desert at the time of Moses (we heard about that in our first
reading today)—except that this manna (this new manna) would never spoil. Well, they thought that sounded like a great
idea, so they said to our Lord, “Sir, give us this bread always!”
Jesus responded by setting them straight. He said, in effect, “I’m not talking about
manna like the kind Moses gave you; I’m talking about myself. I am the Bread of Life!”
That’s when the trouble began. This was a truth that this particular crowd
could not accept. That’s clear from what
we’re told in the rest of John 6. Finally
it came to the point where some of them said, “This sort of talk is hard to
endure! How can anyone take it seriously?” And many walked away from Jesus at that
point—even some who had previously been his loyal followers.
There’s an old hymn that has the line in it: “Look beyond
the bread you eat; see your Savior and your Lord.” That’s the challenge of faith that faces each
and every one of us. It’s the challenge
to recognize the presence of Jesus Christ—Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity—in
the Holy Eucharist.
And it is possible to do.
Whenever I brought my grandmother Communion in the latter years of her
life, she would always say to me before I left, “Thank you, Raymond, for
bringing God to me.” Not “Thank you,
Raymond, for bringing ‘the bread’ to me”; not “Thank you, Raymond, for bringing
‘the host’ to me”; rather “Thank you, Raymond, for bringing GOD to me.”
My grandmother was a woman who had a simple—but a very
deep—faith. My grandmother was a woman whose spiritual vision was 20/20,
especially when it came to the Holy Eucharist.
Let us pray today at this Mass, that our spiritual vision
will be the same.