Since I am off recuperating from my surgery, I thought I would share a homily from when I was an associate pastor at St. Thomas the Apostle in Crystal Lake. I took many of the ideas for this homily from a talk on the Holy Eucharist from Fr. John Hardon. Please enjoy!!!
Homily for John 6:60-69
B-Twenty first Sunday in Ordinary time,
August 23, 2003
St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, Crystal Lake Illinois
Fr. Steven Lange
Today we end our teachings on the Eucharist that Jesus gives us through St. John. For the past few weeks we have read from the same chapter, starting with the account of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes. Next, we read Jesus teaching his disciples about the meaning of the sign-the meaning of the multiplication- that he would do a greater miracle in giving us the bread of life from heaven. He explained that this bread would be his own flesh for the life of the world. This brought about some opposition, how could Jesus give us his own body and blood as food and drink? Jesus answered them by calling them to faith, that indeed he would give his own flesh as food. This would be done by his dying on the cross and resurrecting from the dead.
Today, we read the last response of the vast majority of his disciples. They had enough. They must have thought something like this, “this Jesus giving us his own flesh as food is just too much.” They left. And even more of surprise, Jesus did nothing to try to get them to stay—He didn’t tell them that he meant it symbolically. The teaching was too hard for the majority of His disciples. Jesus had given them the gift of faith, but when the faith was tested, really believing and trusting in Jesus, in his words, in his divinity, they turned away.
In a sharp contrast to those who left, we read Peter’s profession of faith with the beautiful expression, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God." In other words, Peter was saying, I am not sure how you can give us your flesh and blood to eat, but we believe in you and trust your words. Peter struggled with this truth but he opened himself to grace and allowed himself to be filled with the light of understanding by Jesus.
The two responses to Jesus’ teaching on the bread of life show an interesting contrast; Peter, who had faith and asked God to help him believe, and the other disciples, the majority, who did not believe, rejected grace and left, no longer following Jesus. But John gives us the response of another disciple at the end of this passage. In the very next verses, unfortunately which we did not read today, St. John gives us Jesus response to Peter’s act of faith when Jesus answers them, “Did I not choose you twelve? Yet is not one of you a devil?” He was referring to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot; it was he who would betray him, one of the Twelve.” Many of the great saints have explained this passage by saying that St. John is revealing to us who Jesus meant when he said earlier in this gospel passage, “But there are some of you who do not believe.
Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.” It was Judas. Judas’ betrayal began when he rejected Jesus’ teaching on the Holy Eucharist but stayed in the company of the apostles. While the other disciples of Jesus at least left when they didn’t believe, Judas hypocritically stays with Jesus. The betrayal of Judas was really a denial and a refusal to accept in faith Jesus teaching of the Holy Eucharist--that Jesus is the Holy Eucharist. Later on, St. John in chapter 13th tells us that Judas receives the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper and because he doesn’t believe, he receives a sacrileges communion and satan enters into Judas.
For us as well as for Peter and the Disciples of Christ, faith in the Eucharist is the barometer of our Catholic faith. To believe in the Holy Eucharist is to believe in Jesus. To accept his teaching is to accept Christ himself. Every major break in Christianity has been over the meaning of the Eucharist. The vast majority of those who call themselves Christian no longer believe in the real presence at all or believe it incorrectly. There are hundreds of interpretations by protestants and sadly by some Judas’ in the Catholic Church of those words of Jesus “My flesh is real food, my blood is will drink,” “This is my Body…This is my Blood.” “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not have life you.” Only the Catholic Church in her infallible teachings understands these words correctly, that Jesus really meant what he said, because he is God who can neither deceive nor be deceived. To believe in the Eucharist as a who, that is, to believe that it is Jesus Christ, His whole person, physically, corporally, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, truly present is to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. To deny the reality of the Eucharist is really to deny Jesus and His One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church. Why? Because the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Church. Without the Eucharist there is no Church. And as one holy Jesuit priest told us, “Because without the Eucharist as a reality, there is no priesthood instituted by Christ, there is no sacrament of Holy Orders. In a word, there is no visible Church which Christ founded on the Apostles whom He ordained at the Last Supper in order that they might consecrate bread and wine to become the living Jesus Christ on earth in the Holy Eucharist.”
At the root of the great crisis in our Catholic faith today is a crisis of true faith, a crisis of faith in the Eucharist. True faith in Jesus is one in which a person believes with one’s whole mind and will, with one’s whole being that the Eucharist is Jesus Christ. We do not make any qualifications. The Eucharist is the exact Jesus who was conceived at Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, died on Calvary, rose on Easter Sunday, and ascended into Heaven on Ascension Thursday. A person with true faith is one who believes that although Jesus is in heaven, he is also just as truly still on earth. He is truly in every tabernacle and on every altar of the world in which, through a validly ordained Catholic priest acting in the person of Christ offers Holy Mass.
Jesus uses the body and voice of the priest. It is Jesus through the priest who says the words of consecration making truly present the whole Christ, with his Humanity and Divinity, with His eyes and lips and hands and feet and His Sacred Heart. A true believer believes that without the priest there is no Eucharist, there is no Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and hence there is no way, no way to reach Heaven. Without the Mass salvation ends. A true faith believes that Jesus Christ is now offering Himself in every Mass. He is on earth, with His human body and blood, and human will. A person with true faith believes that we receive Him in Holy Communion. That we receive Him no less than the Apostles did in the Last Supper. That He is now gloried. His body enters our body, His soul enters our soul. A person with a true living faith believes that this is no mere symbolism or metaphor. It is real, really, truly.
We need to take this information and what we have learned from these past weeks listening to the Sixth Chapter of St. John to prayer and study. Yes this is a “hard saying” so we must, like St. Peter, we must beg God to help us in our struggle to believe, in struggle to understand more deeply the mystery of the Eucharist. We must all personally become very devoted to the Holy Eucharist as the real, true present of Christ, as the Sacrifice of the Mass, that is his sacrifice on Calvary and to the Eucharist as Holy Communion-Christ coming intimately, and truly into our bodies and souls. We must come to realization that there is no solution to the problems of the world, to the problems of the Church or to the problems in our families except through the Holy Eucharist.
We must all do everything in our power to promote by word and example a deeper faith in the Eucharist as Real presence, Sacrifice of the Mass and Holy Communion. We must prayer for a deeper understanding of the Blessed Sacrament especially among priest. And we must live lives of reparation, begging God to pardon and enlighten those who neglect the Holy Eucharist by deserting Jesus, or by distorting the truth about His true presence in the Holy Eucharist. We must ask God to renew our reverence for the Eucharist and our reverence when we are in the sanctuary of the Church in front of the tabernacle. And finally, and I mean this literally, we must pray for the grace to be ready to pay any price, to suffer any pain for our belief in the Holy Eucharist and to suffer for those who don’t believe or who believe and don’t love the Holy Eucharist-Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ wants to work great miracles in our lives, in our Church and in the world, even greater miracles than we hear about in the gospels. But we must pray for a true faith, we need the help of God’s grace in order to truly choose Christ by believing in his teaching on the Holy Eucharist, we must love Him above all things and share His love, which he gives to us in the Holy Eucharist, with others.
Let us pray, Lord Jesus truly, physically present in the Holy Eucharist, we believe You are with us in the Blessed Sacrament. We believe You are inviting us to join with You in conquering the world for Your heavenly Father. But we are blind. Enlighten our minds. We are weak. Strengthen our hearts. Make us Apostles of the Eucharist in our day; make us Apostles of life through the Eucharist. Help us to understand the Eucharist now on earth by faith-as a prelude to seeing You, our Incarnate God, face to face, for all eternity. Amen. Holy Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, pray for us.
Amen!!!!!!!
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