The Bread of Life

Dali's Sacrament of the Last Supper

In the Gospel, the miracle of the loaves and fish prefigures the Eucharist, a sacrificial meal of thanksgiving for the gift of God’s eternal life through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Eucharist nourishes the life of God in us. Jesus Christ, gloriously alive, is truly present in the bread and wine.

The word of God in Sunday’s liturgy first takes us back to sixth century Israel. “Come to me,” God pleads. I will give you the basic needs of life.

Paul, in his letter to the Christian community at Rome poses the question, “What will separate us from the love of Christ?” Nothing! God loves us unconditionally.

In the Gospel, Jesus hears about the tragic death of John the Baptist, and seeks to be by himself. But the crowds follow him. He cures the sick and satisfies the hungry crowd. People have many hungers. Some hunger for bread; others for justice and freedom; and still others for peace.

To understand the liturgy of the Eucharist, contemplate Jesus’s Last Supper.

Jesus had to leave us, and yet he wanted to stay with us. How did he solve this? Listen to his words: “This is my body; this is my blood.” The bread and wine look and feel and taste like bread and wine, but they become the real presence of the risen Christ.

The second challenge Jesus faced was he wanted to die for each one of us, and yet he could die only once as a human being. How did Jesus solve this? Listen to his words: “Do this in memory of me.” The same victim who was crucified once outside Jerusalem centuries ago returns whenever we celebrate the liturgy of the Eucharist.

The third challenge was that Jesus wanted to be one with us, and yet this was impossible this side of heaven. How did Jesus solve this challenge? Listen to his words: “Take and eat; take and drink.” Jesus invites us to become one with him in Communion.

Yes, Jesus left us and stays. The Victim (the lamb, the sacrifice) returns to us today and every day. He gave us Communion.

What is the purpose? To form us into a faith community. Paul wrote, “Because the bread is one, we, though many, are one body.” This bread we eat and this blood we drink should not only form us into a more loving faith community but also should empower us to reach out compassionately to others with a helping hand.

At a family meal, perhaps this may be our prayer:
O God, bless this faith family of yours.
May you always remind us of the strength we have
united in faith, hope, and love with you, O God.
Help us to open our hearts, to listen, to extend a helping hand,
and to rejoice when one of us has cause for celebration.
O God, we pray that we always will live in your presence,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lent: a Time to Draw Nearer to God

Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness

Our Lenten journey from ashes to Easter has begun. Last Wednesday we heard, “Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.” Dust represents human life: transitory and fragile. But the sign of the cross with ashes on our forehead symbolizes that Jesus Christ has redeemed our “dust.” God lives within us and we live within God.

Lent is a forty-day retreat: a time to ask again what are our most important priorities.  Yes, it time to follow Jesus into the wilderness, not only to get our priorities straight in light of our ultimate purpose in life but to replenish ourselves with the gifts of the Spirit (for example, wisdom, intelligence, good judgment, courage). Lent is a time to recall how the Hebrews of old saw the desert: not only as an abode of wild beasts but a place where a person encountered God and where God encountered the person.

In today’s busier-than-ever world, with its many distractions and temptations, we need this retreat more than ever.

So, what are we bringing into the wilderness. Maybe we feel dissatisfied. Things are OK, maybe you're building an impressive resume, but what does it all mean in the end? Maybe you’re facing challenges, have to make tough decisions. Listen to Jesus's response in the wilderness when He confronts the devil: God instead of material things, a God-centered instead of a self-centered life, service instead of power.

In the beginning, the Book of Genesis says, God fashioned a magnificent universe and created man and woman to enjoy it. Enter the snake, setting people against one another and against God. The man and woman wanted divine status, to be self-sufficient. They lost their friendship with God; they fell from grace.

Ever since, although we are intrinsically good, we have a tendency to choose evil. Human beings have cried out for God’s healing power.

And then, God became one of us in Jesus, so we could experience God's friendship anew. Paul observes that, just as we fell from grace through the first Adam, so now through the crucified and risen Christ, we have God's friendship again.

In the Gospel according to Matthew, would Jesus simply satisfy his physical hunger at the expense of his mission in life? No. Would he work signs and wonders simply so people would puff up his ego? No. Would he seek power so that people would kowtow to him? No. Jesus will not make a god out of material goods, celebrity status or political power.

Lent reminds us that it is time to ask God for the grace to get our priorities straight. It's a time for prayer; a time to do without unnecessary things so that the needy can have necessary things; a time to reach out with a helping hand through volunteer service or charitable giving or whatever.
For hundreds of years, Lent has focused on these three disciplines: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Re-discover and re-treat yourself to these age-old disciplines again this Lent.

Give Thanks to God for Newman's Life

Sketch of a Young St. John Henry Newman

Sunday's word of God takes us back in our imaginations to the ninth century before Jesus, to a man of God by the name of Elisha. And a foreigner, a Syrian army general, begs the prophet to heal him. To the general’s surprise, Elisha simply suggests that he bathe in the Jordan River. The Syrian does so, is cured, and this foreigner praises the God of Israel.

Paul, in his letter to Timothy, speaks about the hardships he has endured. Paul invites us to give thanks for the gift of God’s life, bestowed upon us in the waters of baptism, nurtured in this liturgy, and ours forever in a transformed heavenly life.

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus heals ten people of leprosy. Only one, a foreigner, returns to give thanks to God.

Gratitude is a theme in today's word of God. I would like to highlight the grateful and faith-filled life of John Henry Newman, whom Pope Francis canonized in Rome today.

This nineteenth century Englishman spent the first half of his life as an Anglican (aka Episcopalian here) and the second half as a Roman Catholic. Newman influenced the so-called Oxford movement, an intellectual effort to return to the resources of our faith--the Bible, the sacraments, belief statements, authority in the Church and apostolic succession.

Newman's research eventually convinced him to join the Catholic Church. Two years later he was ordained a Catholic priest. Returning to England, Newman founded Oratory houses in Birmingham and London and then served as rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, which inspired his landmark book The Idea of a University. Newman wrote 40 books and 21,000 letters that survive.

The fullness of revelation, Newman emphasized, resides in the person of Jesus Christ. Belief statements try to capture, but never fully, the inexhaustible reality of the God-man. Hence, Christianity must develop over the centuries as we grow from childhood to adulthood. And there must be an authority on the truth or falsity of such developments.

Newman was a supporter of Christian unity at a time when Christianity was divided and religious bigotry commonplace.

In particular, he emphasized the active role of the laity: the “Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful as in a temple.” Newman's writings prefigured the spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The Church is always reform-able, holy yet made of sinners.

Revelation is a person. In other words, God reveals himself to us in Jesus and we describe this revelation in belief statements. The Eucharist is the font from which all the Church’s power flows. From this we go forth to love and serve.

I highlight two awesome prayers by John Henry Newman: the first about purpose in life:
“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but...I shall do His work...Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever, wherever I am.… If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him...God knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.”

The second prayer holds one of my favorite images of God: light. Newman’s poem “The Pillar of the Cloud,” written while he recovered from a severe illness, was made a hymn. Here is a very recognizable verse of the poem:
 “Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me...
So long Your power hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on” into God's eternal light.
Amen!

Experiencing God

James Tissot's "He sent them two by two."

The sixth century before Jesus was a catastrophic time for ancient Israel. Yet the author of Isaiah speaks about a bright future. Jerusalem will prosper again. A miracle! Centuries later in Jerusalem, Jesus brought new purpose in life—another miracle! Yes, our citizenship is in heaven. The author of Isaiah may be asking whether our lifestyle and behavior reflect our citizenship.

Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, proclaims that the death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection from the tomb is our salvation, eternal life. Paul celebrates that God through the life-giving waters of baptism has transformed us into “new creatures,” living temples of God, alive with the breath or life of God in us.

Paul writes that the power of God enabled him to endure all kinds of hardships for the sake of the Gospel. That same power of God enables us to practice a life of virtue.

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus sends forth disciples to continue his saving and healing work. They are to trust always in God's unconditional them for them. They reported back how they witnessed to the power of God with healings of the sick.

Now what does it mean to witness? I’m a witness not simply by seeing or saying something is true but if I actually experience it.

The disciples were witnesses to Jesus in that sense. They walked, talked, ate and prayed with him.
Peter, for example, reached out for Jesus’s hand in the Sea of Galilee. Doubting Thomas put his finger into Jesus’s side in the Jerusalem upper room.

We too are called to be witnesses. We testify to our core Christian beliefs: the triune God, the incarnation, the death/resurrection of Jesus, the dependable Spirit, the global community of disciples, life eternal. But what men and women look for, expect from us, is some visible sign that we have experienced what we believe.

We will evangelize effectively if we are a sort of sacrament, a symbol, an outward sign of God’s grace/presence in us. We must not simply know about God; we must experience God.

The heroes and heroines of Christianity knew/experienced God in their lives: Augustine, Francis and Clare of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa, and many more.

Faith from God empowers us to have a right relationship with the triune God as creator, redeemer, and sanctifier. Faith is richer and deeper than belief. Faith calls us to enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ, to follow Jesus who illuminates the darkness around us as we journey toward our heavenly home. Faith is about our relationship with God that we nurture, especially in the Eucharist.

Belief, on the other hand, is a statement about the essential truths of our faith that we proclaim e.g., in the fourth-century Nicene Creed.

From faith comes a confidence and purpose in life. We trust in a God who is always near to us. Successes convince us that it is possible to succeed. Our failures show us it is possible to survive and proceed.

We are in the hands of an all-good God. And with a can-do, faith-filled spirit, we can overcome the  challenges we face in life.  Why? Because God loves us unconditionally, because God is always near to us and because God ultimately will achieve His purpose for us and for this universe.  And to this divine providence, and to Jesus Christ, gloriously alive, our way, our truth and our life, we joyfully witness in our daily lives.

We, Though Many, Are One

Dali's Sacrament of the Last Supper

There have been many impressive meals in the course of human history. Some intimate, some grand.There was the first supper, so the Book of Genesis says, where the entre was forbidden fruit. There are state banquets, like the one this month at Buckingham Palace. There’s the Passover, the Seder, in remembrance of the Jews’ deliverance from their oppressors in ancient Egypt. The meal table is often the center of family life.

And in our global Christian family, the altar or table of the Lord is the center of our faith community.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, in Latin "Corpus Christi," and in Greek "eucharistia" or thanksgiving. We gather to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

St. Paul, in his letter to the Christian community at Corinth in Greece, highlights the sacredness of the Lord’s Supper. This sacrificial meal reenacts the life-giving death/resurrection of Jesus, the new and everlasting covenant God made with us.

This Lord’s Supper soon developed into the structure we know today: the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Herein, we worship and praise God for who he is and what he has done for us.

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus satisfies the hungry crowd in the so-called miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. People have so many hungers: some simply for bread; others for justice and freedom and peace. Jesus here satisfies the crowd’s physical hunger, and this wonder prefigures the liturgy of the Eucharist where the bread and wine become the body and blood of the risen Christ, satisfying our spiritual hunger.

At the last supper, think of three phrases Jesus said: This is my body…this is my blood. The bread and wine become sacramentally the Living Christ, his real presence among us.

The second phrase: Do this in remembrance of me. The same victim who died once for us centuries ago returns to this sacrificial meal sacramentally today and every day.

The third phrase: Take and eat…take and drink. Jesus invites us to become one with himself in communion.

And what is the purpose? Paul wrote: because the bread is one, we, though many, are one body. This not only forms us into a more vibrant community but also empowers us to reach out compassionately to one another. Where Jesus left off his earthly ministry, He asks us to continue.

Yes, the Eucharist unites us as the mystical body of Christ and empowers us to become "the hands and feet and voice" of Christ in our homes and workplaces and communities, until he comes again in glory at the end time to transform this universe of ours into a new heaven and a new earth.

Finding True Happiness

Jesus Healing the Blind Bartimaeus

The word of God today first takes us back to the prophet Jeremiah, who speaks about hope: a new beginning for a people now overwhelmed by tragedy but soon to enjoy peace. Jeremiah challenges us to hope always in God even when bad things happen. Sadly, this weekend our prayers are with the Pittsburgh community where eleven people at the Tree of Life synagogue were killed.

The letter to the Hebrews speaks of the saving work of Jesus, who through his death and resurrection re-established our relationship with God and one another. This challenges us to see our earthly life in light of our true purpose: being in relationship with God and one another forever.

In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus asks a blind man: “what do you want me to do?” The man answers: “I want to see.” Jesus says: “Your faith has saved you.” And the blind man saw.

Today I want to reflect briefly upon a man of extraordinary faith. Paul, initially known as Saul of Tarsus, was well educated in Judaism and Greco-Roman philosophy. He had been a rabid persecutor of Christians.

But on a journey to Damascus in Syria, he was awestruck by a light from heaven. The visionary experience of the risen Christ turned Paul’s life upside down. He became one of the greatest evangelizers, preaching salvation for all. This controversial religious genius established faith communities throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and authored letters shaping the history of Christian thought. Paul eventually was beheaded by order of the Roman emperor Nero.

I believe Paul, well versed in philosophy, had a keen insight into what makes human beings tick. Everyone yearns for happiness. We often do things that we think will make us happy, only to end up miserable. Why? Because we sometimes confuse pleasure with happiness.

Etched into Paul’s vision of human beings were the words of Jesus:  “I have come so that they may have life--God's life-- and have it more abundantly.”

For Paul, the path that leads to the fullness of life is discipline. Think about it. When we eat well, exercise often, and sleep regularly, we feel more fully alive physically. When we love, when we give priority to significant relationships, when we lend a helping hand to others, we’re more fully alive emotionally. When we study the achievements of the human spirit in various cultures, our world grows, and we’re more fully alive intellectually.

And when we take a few moments each day humbly with God in prayer, carefully contemplating God’s word, we experience more fully the transcendent dimension of our lives, the spiritual, the awesome presence of God.

All of these life-giving endeavors require discipline. Discipline sets us free to attain our ultimate purpose: life with God. Freedom is indeed a prerequisite for love.

St. Paul grasped this. He preached that Christ came to reconcile us with the Father and satisfies the craving for happiness that preoccupies our hearts: ultimately a yearning for friendship and intimacy with our Creator.

Seeking our True Purpose

Duccio's "Jesus calling Peter and Andrew"

In the Gospel according to Mark, we have the story of the energetic, well-to-do young man who is looking for something more. He wants eternal life. And oh, yes, he has observed all the commandments.

But he wants to know: what else should he do? And Jesus recognizes the potential for spiritual greatness within him and says: Go, sell what you have and follow me.

Sadly, this person couldn’t give up what he had. He couldn’t see the potential for spiritual greatness within himself, to follow Christ.

Yes, the so-called “good life” didn’t seem to satisfy him. He wanted to live for something more, for someone greater than himself. This is indeed the quest of many people.

Among the books Viktor Frankl authored is “Man’s Search for Meaning.” In prewar Vienna, Frankl had a wife, two children, a good psychiatric profession and a comfortable home. But as an inmate at the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, just outside of Munich, Germany, Frankl lost every earthly thing he treasured – family, profession, home.

These losses brought him face-to-face with the fundamental questions of human life: What should I be living for? What is my purpose?

Frankl discovered that people could put up with incredible hardships without losing their serenity and respect for others, provided they saw that these hardships had some ultimate meaning.

In their hearts, people yearn for something or someone beyond themselves that can give greater meaning and greater value to their lives.

Jesus in the Gospel recognized the potential for spiritual greatness in the young man, and when asked, gave him a pathway. But the man walked away.

I hope that each one of us recognizes and supports the potential for greatness within one another. And I hope that recognition will compel us to try, as best we can, to help one another to realize the incredible potential for good that we all have.