21st Sunday
of Ordinary Time
The last couple of weeks have been crazy-busy with photos to process, press releases to write, an issue of the Salesian Bulletin to get to press. So, a week overdue, here's last week's homily.
John 6: 60-69
Aug. 26, 2012
Christian Brothers, Iona College,
N.R.
St. Timothy, Greenwich, Conn.
“This saying is hard; who can accept it?” (John 6:
60).
Which saying would that be? Those who study the Sacred Scriptures are
inclined to think that this phrase, this objection from Jesus’ disciples—note that it’s his disciples,
those who’ve been following him and listening to his sermons for some
time—refers to the 1st part of his discourse on the Bread of Life: that Jesus’ word, his teaching, is the new
manner in which God feeds his people, better and more effective for eternal
life than the manna with which Moses fed the Hebrews in the Sinai desert.
They say that because the passage we read last
week, vv. 51-58, seems to interrupt the flow between the rest of the discourse
and this reaction; i.e., today’s passage follows naturally from vv. 22-51a.
At the same time, the Gospel of John as we have it
now does include vv. 51b-58, which apparently is John’s version of the
institution of the Holy Eucharist. John doesn’t include the Eucharist in his
account of the Last Supper. And our
passage today about some, or even many, of the disciples reacting negatively to
Jesus’ teaching can well be taken as a response also to Jesus’ demanding that
we eat his flesh and drink his blood if we hope to reach eternal life.
As is very often the case when we read John’s
Gospel, it’s not a question of choosing between one interpretation and another;
John likes to leave us with both-and. Both
believing that Jesus’ teaching and nourishment surpass those of Moses—that
Christianity has surpassed or perfected Judaism, which was THE issue for John’s
readers at the end of the 1st century; and
believing that the Eucharist is the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, are
fundamental teaching for John and for the Church. And both call for our response, our
reaction: “Does this shock you? Some of you do not believe. Do you also want to leave?” (6:61,64,67).
Jesus remarks to those who’ve been scandalized by
his teaching, “It’s the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail”
(6:63). Recognizing that Jesus’ teaching
is Spirit-filled, Peter responds on behalf of the 12: “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” (6:68-69).
This seems to be St. John’s version of Peter’s
confession of faith, a parallel to the famous scene in Matthew’s Gospel when
Peter proclaims: “You are the Christ, the
Son of the living God” (16:16), which draws Jesus’ response that he’ll build
his Church upon Peter, the Rock, and give him the keys to the kingdom of heaven
(16:18). In John that commission to
Peter comes after the resurrection, after Peter has recommitted himself to
Jesus, and Jesus tells him, “Feed my lambs; tend my sheep” (21:15-17).
Each of us is asked the same fundamental
questions. Do we believe Jesus’
teachings? Do we truly believe that his
words are Spirit-filled; that they are life?
Will we remain with him, or will we walk away because his teachings are
hard?
G.K. Chesterton famously observed that Christianity
has not been tried and found wanting—in its substance, in its truth; it has
been tried and found difficult—to practice.
It does demand of us real commitment:
to Jesus, to what he teaches, to the Church that is his body and that
transmits his teaching from one generation to another and interprets that
teaching, with his authority, in the context of new ages and new cultures.
A Catholic News Service
story on Aug. 17[1]
opened with this paragraph: “The
percentage of Catholics practicing their faith is declining almost everywhere
around the globe. Almost all bishops
report it, but it’s difficult to prove statistically.” The story detailed that, based on reports
that the bishops of the world submit annually to Rome, a working document has
been prepared for the next Synod of Bishops, whose topic will be the new
evangelization—or, if you will, the re-evangelization of those peoples and
cultures who have fallen away from belief or at least from practice of the
faith. According to this document, the
bishops consistently describe “a weakening of faith in Christian communities, a
diminished regard for the authority of the magisterium, an individualistic
approach to belonging to the Church, a decline in religious practice, and a
disengagement in transmitting the faith to new generations.”
That decline in practice and that individualism are
pretty evident when we look around: the
numbers of baptisms, first Communions, confirmations, and marriages down;
church attendance down; ignorance and even public dissent from basic church
teachings—on doctrine, such as whether the Eucharist truly is the Body of
Christ or is merely a symbol; on morals, notably about sexual behavior,
so-called “gay marriage,” and abortion.
Regularly, we see prominent public figures (politicians, academics,
writers, and at least one philanthropist—in the news just a couple of weeks ago[2])
describing themselves as good, practicing Catholics even as they lecture the
bishops on what the Church teaches, or should teach if it would just get into
the 21st century. Recently we’ve heard
the leading organization of Catholic nuns in our country say, in effect, to the
Holy See, “How dare you find fault with how we live as religious and what
doctrinal opinions we espouse!”
Even today’s Scripture selections give us a bit of
an opportunity to reflect on the “hard teachings” of the Gospel. You may have observed that the lectionary
offers both a long and a short version of the 2d reading—not only here but also
in the selections offered for the celebration of marriage, by the way. That’s because it’s not fashionable nowadays,
not politically correct, to take what Paul writes and deal with it head-on. If it’s the inspired Word of God, then we
have to wrestle with it, not ignore it and pretend it’s not there. Taken as a whole, including the Eastern
Mediterranean culture of the 1st century from which Paul was writing, the
passage isn’t “male chauvinism” but a hard challenge to all of us to “be
subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21), to be
submissive to one another as to Christ, to love one another as Christ loves
us—and he loves us enuf that he “handed himself over” for us, gave himself up
in death, “to sanctify” us (5:25-26).
Even so should a husband love his wife, and a wife her husband—and a
priest love his flock—all striving to foster the sanctity of the others. “This is a great mystery, but I speak in
reference to Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:32)—the last line of the reading. It’s a mystery—which, by the way, is the
Greek word for what Latin calls sacramentum, the precise word that the Vulgate uses in this verse—it’s a mystery that
marriage is a reflection of Christ’s love for the Church and the Church’s love
for Christ; a mystery that’s hard to live out in practice (as you know better
than I do), which is why the permanence of marriage, the openness of marriage
at all times to new life, the oneness of marriage (one man, one woman, made one
in Christ)—all that is “a hard teaching” that causes some to walk away from the
Church, and thus from Christ, who teaches the Church.
If we truly believe with St. Peter and the 12 that
Jesus has the words of eternal life, that he is the Holy One of God, then we
will read, study, meditate upon, and make our own his words: the Gospels, the letters of Paul and the
other apostles, Revelation; the Old Testament too; and the updating and practical
application of all these to contemporary life by the successors of Peter and
the 12 in the Church—the Church which remains ever subordinate to Christ her
head (Eph 5:23).
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