Gospel (Except USA)John 6:60-69Who shall we go to? You are the Holy One of God. After hearing his doctrine many of the followers of Jesus said, ‘This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’ Jesus was aware that his followers were complaining about it and said, ‘Does this upset you? What if you should see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before? ‘It is the spirit that gives life,the flesh has nothing to offer.The words I have spoken to you are spiritand they are life. ‘But there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the outset those who did not believe, and who it was that would betray him. He went on, ‘This is why I told you that no one could come to me unless the Father allows him.’ After this, many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him.Then Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.’ Gospel (USA)John 6:60–69To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Many of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. 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. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “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.” (i) Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time When I go into the primary school classes I am often struck by the questions that the children ask about God. At one level they are simple questions but at another level they can be very profound, questions like, ‘Who made God?’ ‘Will my cat go to heaven?’ I can struggle to come up with answers to these questions that make sense to the children. We all have questions about life and God that we struggle to answer. However, children have a great freedom around asking these questions in public. As adults we can keep our questions to ourselves. There are lots of questions asked in the gospels. It can be interesting to read the gospels with an eye to the questions that are being asked. Many of these questions are asked by people of Jesus, such as the young man who came up to him and asked, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ or the scribe who asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Like a lot of the questions that are asked of Jesus, these are questions that we could all make our own. Jesus himself asks many questions throughout the gospels, as when he asked the blind Bartimaeus, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ or when he asked the disciples of John the Baptise, ‘What are you looking for?’ Again, we can hear all these questions of Jesus as addressed to ourselves, to which we are being invited to give our own answer. We find one of Jesus’ questions in today’s gospel reading. It has been described as one of the most moving questions in the four gospels. We are told that many of Jesus’ disciples had just stopped going with him. Having responded to his call to follow him, they walked away, because they found his language about the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood completely unacceptable. They said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ At this very moment when many of Jesus’ disciples stopped going with him, he turned to the Twelve and asked them, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ It was a courageous question to ask. Jesus was taking the risk of being left on his own. Yet, Jesus was respecting the freedom of his closest disciples to walk away, if they chose to do so. He wanted them to stay faithful to him, but he would not coerce them. He wanted them to continue believing in him, but he knew that faith in him was a gift that had to be freely accepted. No one would be forced to stay with him. How would the twelve disciples respond to Jesus’ question? It was Simon Peter who spoke up on behalf of them all, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God’. At this moment when so many of his disciples were leaving him, Jesus must have been very heartened by Simon Peter’s answer. We can hear this question of Jesus as addressed to each one of us personally ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ We became the Lord’s disciples when our parents presented us for baptism. We confirmed our baptism for ourselves when we celebrated our Confirmation. On that day we made our own personal ‘yes’ to the Lord’s call to come to him, to receive him into our lives as the Bread of Life and to take him as our way, our truth and our life. Yet, as we go through life, we repeatedly need to confirm that ‘yes’ for ourselves. This is especially so because we live in a time when there are less supports for our faith in the Lord and the way of life that flows from our faith. It is said in the gospel reading that ‘many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him’. That is certainly true of today. The Lord and all he stands for has become a very distant horizon for many who have been baptized and confirmed. This makes the Lord’s question to us, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ all the more timely. Jesus was offering his disciples something very precious in today’s gospel reading, ‘The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life’. All he has been saying about himself as the Bread of life who alone can satisfy the deepest hungers and thirsts of our hearts are Spirit-inspired words that, if responded to in faith, can bring us life to the full. This is true of all of Jesus’ words in the gospels. Jesus doesn’t simply give us the gift of his life-giving words. He also gives us the gift of his very self. He gave us this gift on the cross and he renews this gift of himself to us at every Eucharist. Yet, the Lord’s extraordinary gift of himself needs to be received. We need to continue choosing the one who has chosen to gift us so abundantly out of his love for us. That is why we need to keep making Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question our own, especially in these times, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life and we believe’. And/Or (ii) Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time The story is told of a man who met an old school friend whom he hadn’t seen for years. There was an attractive woman by his side. Smiling, the man asked his friend, ‘By any chance, is this your wife?’ With a twinkle in his eye, the man replied, ‘Not by chance, my friend, but by choice’. We make choices every day. Some of these choices are deeply significant and shape the rest of our lives, as when a man and a woman choose to give themselves to each other in marriage for life. The more significant the choice we make, the more important it becomes to choose well. For us as followers of the Lord, to choose well is to choose as the Lord would want us to choose, to choose in a way that corresponds to his desire for our lives and for our world. The readings today focus on significant moments of choice in the life of God’s people. In the first reading, Joshua put a fundamental choice before the people. They must choose either to serve the local gods of the land or to serve the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. Joshua was aware that the people had already chosen the Lord, but he also knew that their choice of the Lord, like every important choice in life, had to be renewed again and again. In the gospel reading Jesus faced his own disciples with a significant choice. They must choose either to follow him or to walk away from him and take another path. Jesus was aware that his disciples had already chosen to follow him, but, like Joshua, he also knew that this was a choice the disciples needed to renew over and over again. The more significant the choice that we make, the more we need to remake that choice throughout our lives. The decision to serve the Lord, to follow the Lord, is the most significant choice we could make in life. In choosing the Lord, we are choosing a way of life, a way of looking at life and a way of living life. In making such a choice and re-making it over and over again, we are taking a fundamental stance in life, a gospel stance, one that influences a whole range of other choices we will make in life. That is not to say that everything we say and do will always be shaped by that stance. None of us are totally consistent. Yet, we will probably be aware when what we say and do is not in tune with our choice of the Lord, and we will at least have the desire to bring our choices more into line with our choice of the Lord. It might seem strange to some that this very basic life-choice was initially made for us, by our parents when they brought us to the church for baptism. Yet, that choice they made for us was not any stranger than the many other choices they made for us out of love for us, such as their choice to feed us, to clothe us and to keep us warm. There comes a time in all our lives when we have to confirm for ourselves the choice of the Lord that our parents made for us. One of the key moments we make their choice our own is when we come to the Eucharist. In a sense, at every Mass, the Lord turns and says to us, ‘What about you, do you want to go away?’ At every Mass, we are given the opportunity to say with Simon Peter in the gospel reading, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God’. That is one of the reasons why the church, from earliest times, has given such a high priority to the Sunday Eucharist. It is at the Sunday Eucharist that we re-make the most fundamental choice we can make in life, the choice Jesus put before his disciples, and that Joshua put to the people of Israel. We come here week after week to say ‘Yes’, to say ‘Amen’ to our choice of the Lord. When it comes to remaining faithful to that fundamental choice of the Lord, we are very dependant on each other. We need the example of each other’s faithfulness. Being with others who themselves keep coming back to re-make that choice of the Lord, helps me to keep making that same choice. The people of Israel must have been greatly supported in their choosing by Joshua when he came forward and said, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’. The other disciples in the gospel reading must have been enormously steadied when Peter stood up and said, on their behalf’, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the message of eternal life’. We need the likes of Joshua and Peter to give a lead, to encourage the rest of us. In a way, we are called to be a Joshua and a Peter for each other, to support each other in the re-making and living of our choice of the Lord. My faithfulness to my choice of the Lord makes it easier for everyone else to be faithful to theirs. My lack of faithfulness makes it more difficult for everybody else. Paul’s words to the church of Thessalonica about 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus is as valid today as it was then, ‘Encourage one another, and build up each other, as indeed you are doing’. And/Or (iii) Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Most of us were probably baptized as infants. Our parents presented us for baptism shortly after we were born. At some level, they sensed that being christened, becoming a Christian, was a blessing that they should open us up to at a very early age. At baptism we were united with Christ in a special way, becoming members of his body, the church, receiving a share of his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who prompted us to cry out ‘Abba, Father’ to God, as Christ did. In presenting us for baptism our parents were making a very fundamental decision on our behalf. They made that decision for us because they valued their own relationship with Christ and with his church. I suspect that all of us who are at Mass here this morning are grateful to our parents for making such a fundamental decision for us so early in our lives. As we grew into childhood and then into adolescence and into adulthood, we will have had opportunities to make our own the decision our parents made for us. Your presence here at Mass today is a sign that you have done just that. The weekly Eucharist is our opportunity to renew our baptism, to keep on making for ourselves the choice of Christ that our parents made for us. The Eucharist has always been understood in the church since the earliest days as a sacrament of initiation, the third sacrament of initiation after baptism and confirmation. Of the three sacraments of initiation, the Eucharist is the only one that we celebrate repeatedly. We can only be baptized and confirmed once, whereas we can celebrate the Eucharist on a weekly or even a daily basis. Because the Eucharist is a sacrament of initiation, in coming to the Eucharist we are making a statement that we want to belong to Christ and to his church. Coming to Mass is a public statement that we want to remain in Christ and in his church. There may be times in our lives when we are unsure whether or not we want to go on making that statement. Many members of Christ’s church find themselves asking at some point in the course of their lives whether or not they want to go on belonging. They can find themselves hesitating, and for a whole variety of reasons. We are given a good example of that kind of hesitation among believers in today’s gospel reading. The evangelist tells us that many of Jesus’ followers found his teaching on the Eucharist intolerable. They could not accept his talk about the need to eat his flesh and to drink his blood. Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist became a stumbling block for them. As a result, the evangelist tells us, ‘many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him’. Even in Jesus’ own lifetime, it seems, not everyone who became one of his disciples went on to remain one. Jesus did not hold on to people against their will. In the gospel reading he even turns to the twelve and says to them, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ He took the risk of loosing his key associates. Even though he had chosen them for a special mission, he waited on them to choose him freely, without compulsion. His teaching on the Eucharist was a moment of decision for his own disciples. It brought to a head where they stood – did they want to stay with him or leave him? Did they want to confirm their initial decision to be his followers or to reverse it? The Eucharist remains that kind of moment of decision today for Jesus’ disciples. Our presence or absence at the Eucharist is making an important statement about where we stand in regard to Christ and his church. Even though there may be people here this morning who wonder about the strength of their faith and who are very aware of the reality of religious doubt within them, your presence here is a sign that at some level you want to make your own Peter’s confession of faith in today’s gospel reading: ‘Lord who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God’. It is as if Peter was saying, ‘If I don’t give my life to you, who or what do I give it too?’ Many of those who were baptized into Christ have ceased to come to Sunday Eucharist, as we know. Yet, many of these do come to Mass at Christmas and Easter, or even just at Christmas. That too is a statement. They have not given up on the Eucharist completely or on Christ and his church, and he has certainly not given up on them. The Lord continues to draw us to himself, even when, like the disciples in the gospel reading, we stop going with him. A little later in John’s gospel, Jesus says of himself, ‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself’. The Lord draws us to himself because he loves us with a greater love. ‘No one has greater love than this’, he says, ‘than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’. Yet, in drawing us he awaits our assent to being drawn. Genuine love is always respectful of freedom. Our assent to the drawing of the Lord can take time to mature and it can involve many twists and turns. Peter who made the wonderful confession of faith in today’s gospel reading went on to deny the Lord publicly. Yet, the Lord gave Peter the opportunity to renew his earlier public profession of faith. The Lord gives us the same opportunity and he will give it as often as we need it. And/Or (iv) Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time One of the more painful experiences of life is when we offer the gift of friendship to someone and that gift is not really received. We are drawn to someone, for whatever reason, and we feel a desire to befriend them. Yet, over time, we discover that our longing to befriend them is not matched by a corresponding desire on their part to befriend us. We then have to begin to deal with the sense of loss that follows on from that realization. It can also happen that those who do respond to our offer of the gift of friendship and become our friends do not remain our friends. They drift away from us over time, and that too can be a painful experience. At the end of the day, we cannot force our friendship on someone; we can make the offer and then it is up to the other person to freely respond or not. There is a sense in which we are helpless before the mystery of human freedom. We have all had our own experiences of the mystery of the freedom of the other person, and sometimes that experience can bring us a lot of joy; at other times it can bring us heartbreak. The gospels suggest that Jesus himself experienced that sense of helplessness before the mystery of human freedom. He came to call men and women into a relationship of love with himself, and through him, with God the Father, who sent him into the world. Yet, many did not respond to his call; they saw his offer of God’s friendship as a threat to their way of life. Others did respond to his call, but they did not remain with him. They initially accepted him as the revelation of God’s love for the world, but over time they moved on from him. That is what we find happening in this morning’s gospel reading. Jesus had been speaking at length about himself as the bread of life; he declared that he would soon give his flesh as bread for the life of the world; he invited people to eat his flesh and drink his blood and, thereby, to draw life from him. According to this morning’s gospel reading, some of Jesus’ own followers who had been listening to this long teaching of Jesus could not accept it. ‘This is intolerable language’, they said, ‘how could anyone accept it?’ The gospel reading goes on to declare that, as a result, many of Jesus’ disciples left him and stopped going with him. Here Jesus stood before the mystery of human freedom. Jesus might have succeeded in holding on to these disciples, if he had gone back on what he had said. Yet, he had to be true to himself, true to what he had received from God. As he says in the gospel reading, ‘the words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life’. Words that are full of God’s Spirit and that are life-giving have to stand, even if it means that the family of disciples that Jesus is gathering about himself is reduced in numbers. Jesus it seems was not prepared to compromise his teaching, his way of life, for the sake of having a larger number of followers. Indeed, the gospel reading suggests that he was even prepared to loose members of the twelve, those of his disciples who were closest to him, rather than compromise his message. He turns to the twelve and says, ‘What about you? Do you want to go away too?’ Although he wanted them to stay with him, he put it up to them to freely choose to stay with him. He did not try to hold on to them against their will. He left himself vulnerable to the mystery of human freedom. He was prepared to stand alone if the twelve had freely chosen to join the other disciples who were moving on from him. The Lord continues to make himself vulnerable to the mystery of human freedom today. He continues to speak words to us that are spirit and life. He continues to offer us the gift of God’s love and life. Yet, he waits for us to freely respond to his offer. He desperately wants us to follow him because he wants us to have life and have it to the full, but he will not force himself upon us. At some point in our lives, we have to make our own free response to the Lord’s question, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ Our parents brought us to the church for baptism; we had no choice in that matter. Our parents did that for us because in some sense they wanted what they knew the Lord wanted for us. Yet, there comes a point in our lives when we have to say our own personal ‘yes’ to the baptism that we received, when, in one shape or form, we have to make our own the confession of Peter in this morning’s gospel reading, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God’. Our coming to the Eucharist on a Sunday is one key opportunity to say our own personal ‘yes’ to the Lord’s call to be faithful to him and his message. And/Or (v) Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time In our culture success can often be equated with large numbers. A successful television programme is one that has a very large viewing audience. If the numbers watching declines, the programme is in trouble. Democracy is based, to some extent, on the principle of numbers. The candidate with the most votes gets elected. Every political party is anxious to maximize their vote on election day. In all kinds of ways, numbers matter in our society. The schools with the biggest number of graduates going on to University are considered the better schools. If some event that is organized only attracts a small crowd it is considered a failure. The gospel reading this morning suggests that Jesus was not too concerned about numbers. The gospels for the last four Sundays have been taken from chapter 6 of John’s gospel where Jesus speaks of himself as the Bread of Life and of the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have life. In this morning’s gospel reading some of Jesus’ own disciples express their unease with this language. ‘This is intolerable language’, they say, ‘How could anyone accept it?’ Jesus is portrayed in that reading as being very aware that some of his followers were complaining. Yet, he did not make any effort to soften his teaching in order to hold on to his numbers. Rather, he insists that the words he has been speaking, all his words, are spirit and life. As a result, the gospel tells us that ‘many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him’. Jesus suddenly lost a whole swathe of his following. From the perspective of the culture of the time and of our own culture he was suddenly less successful. According to the gospel reading, Jesus even turned to the Twelve apostles, his core group, and asked them, ‘What about you? Do you want to go away too?’ He was prepared to suffer a haemorrhage from that core group rather than compromise on the teaching that he had given. It seems that numbers were not important to him. What was important to him was proclaiming the truth as he had heard it from God his Father. On this occasion Jesus held onto the Twelve. Peter, their spokesperson, grasped the moment to declare their faithfulness to Jesus, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life’. Yet, Jesus would go on to lose even some the Twelve. At the time of his passion Judas betrayed him and Peter denied him. If success is to be measured by numbers, by the end of his earthly life, Jesus was a total failure. The gospel reading this morning, and indeed the whole life of Jesus, shows that the value of something does not bear any necessary relation to the number of people who support it. Popularity is not necessarily a good indication of where truth is to be found. We can be tempted to think that because a lot of people reject some viewpoint that, therefore, it must be wrong. Numbers are not everything. We follow Jesus not because he was or is popular but because, in the word of Peter in the gospel reading, we recognize that he has the message of eternal life, or in the language of Jesus himself in that same reading, we acknowledge that the words that he speaks are spirit and life. We will find some of his teaching very challenging. We may be tempted to say, in the words of some of the disciples, ‘This is intolerable language. How can anyone accept it?’ We may not be troubled so much by his identification of himself as the Bread of Life or his call to eat his flesh and drink his blood. It may be some other aspect of his teaching, perhaps his challenging words in the Sermon on the Mount, to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us. Some people react negatively to some of Jesus’ parables. They feel sorry for the older son in the parable of the prodigal son and for the men who worked all day and who got the same wages as those who worked for the last hour in the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. It should not surprise us when we find ourselves struggling with some of what Jesus says. In the language of the prophet Isaiah, God’s thoughts are not our thoughts; God’s ways are not our ways. It has been said that Jesus comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. We all need Jesus to do both for us. We need his comforting and sustaining presence when we are afflicted, but sometimes we need his disturbing presence in our comfort. The teaching and the life of Jesus will always challenge us at some level of our being. There may even be times when we will feel like walking away from it. That is why it is so important for us to keep renewing our response to the Lord’s presence and invitation. The Eucharist is the primary moment when we commit ourselves again to the Lord’s vision for our lives; it is our weekly opportunity to make our own those words of Peter in today’s gospel reading, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life’. And/Or (vi) Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Terry Anderson was an American journalist who was held captive in Lebanon for seven years during the civil war there. In spite of everything he went through, he continued to be a man of deep faith. He subsequently wrote a book of poems on his experience entitled Den of Lions. In one of those poems he describes a Eucharist in a Lebanese prison. ‘Five men huddled close/ against the night and our oppressors/ around a bit of stale bread/ hoarded from a scanty meal/ and a candle, lit not only as/ a symbol but to read the text by./ The priest’s as poorly clad/ as drawn with strain as any,/ but his voice is calm, his face serene’. The poem concludes, ‘The familiar prayers come/ straight out of our hearts./ Once again, Christ’s promise is fulfilled; his presence fills us./ The miracle is real’. His poem is a truly remarkable profession of faith in the Eucharist in an hour of great darkness. This morning’s gospel reading is the conclusion of that long teaching in chapter 6 of John’s gospel on Jesus as the Bread of Life. Towards the end of that teaching Jesus says, ‘my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them’. Jesus is declaring there that he wants to give us the gift of his flesh and blood, the gift of himself. He gave that gift of himself to all humanity on the cross. At every Eucharist he renews this gift of himself to us. Saint Paul declares in his first letter to the church in Corinth, ‘As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’. Paul recognized very clearly the intimate connection between the Lord’s self-gift to us in his death on the cross and his self-gift to us in the Eucharist. It is evident from Terry Anderson’s poem that those five men in that Lebanese prison also deeply appreciated the extra-ordinary gift they were being given in that simple Eucharist. That same self-emptying love of Jesus on the cross was sacramentally present to them in the Eucharist. This is a love through which Jesus gathers people into communion with each other and with himself. It is fitting that one of the terms we have come to use for the Eucharist is ‘Holy Communion’. Through the Eucharist, we are brought into a deeply spiritual communion with each other and with the Lord. The Eucharist is an extra-ordinary gift from the Lord to us, and, yet, today’s gospel shows that some of his own followers were slow to receive this gift. They struggled to accept Jesus’ self-gift of his flesh and blood. ‘This is intolerable language’, they said, ‘How could anyone accept it?’ When Jesus spoke of himself as the Bread of Life he had initially met opposition from the Jewish religious authorities. Yet, now, the opposition was coming from his own disciples. The gospel reading goes on to tell us that because of Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist, ‘many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him’. I often think that this is one of the more poignant verses in the gospels. It can resonate with some of us because there may have been times in our lives when we felt like walking away from the Eucharist. We can do so for a whole variety of reasons. Perhaps, like the disciples in the gospel reading, we cannot quite bring ourselves to believe in it. Jesus was helpless before the decision of some of his disciples to leave him. He is profoundly respectful of the mystery of human freedom, even when that freedom expresses itself in ways that are not in keeping with his desire for us. When faced with the Lord’s gifts, we can always turn away. At its deepest level, faith is a gift; it is due to the working of God’s grace in our lives. Yet, at another level, faith is a choice. The Lord has chosen us first and having chosen us he keeps on investing in us. Yet, he waits for us to respond to his choice of us with our own personal choice of him, a choice we make not just as individuals but within a community. That is why in today’s gospel reading, after many of his disciples had ceased going with him, he turns to the twelve and says, ‘What about you? Do you want to go away too?’ It is a question that is addressed to all of us; it calls on us to make our own personal choice of the Lord who has chosen us. In response to that question, we can do no better than make our own the answer of Peter, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life’. We give expression to that answer of Peter every time we come to the Eucharist. Our decision to come to the Eucharist every Sunday is a very concrete way of choosing the Lord and all he stands for. In that sense, the Eucharist is both the sacrament of the Lord’s giving of himself to us and of our personal and communal giving of ourselves to him. And/Or (vii) Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time Terry Anderson was an American journalist who was held captive in Lebanon for seven years during the civil war there. In spite of everything he went through, he continued to be a man of deep faith. He subsequently wrote a book of poems on his experience entitled Den of Lions. In one of those poems he describes a Eucharist in a Lebanese prison. ‘Five men huddled close/ against the night and our oppressors/ around a bit of stale bread/ hoarded from a scanty meal/ and a candle, lit not only as/ a symbol but to read the text by./ The priest’s as poorly clad/ as drawn with strain as any,/ but his voice is calm, his face serene’. The poem concludes, ‘The familiar prayers come/ straight out of our hearts./ Once again, Christ’s promise is fulfilled; his presence fills us./ The miracle is real’. His poem is a truly remarkable profession of faith in the Eucharist in an hour of great darkness. Some of us will soon be on our way to a celebration of the Eucharist in a very different setting to that Lebanese prison. We will gather with 500,000 others in the Phoenix Park with Pope Francis as the main celebrant. Yet, it is the very same Eucharist that we will be celebrating as was celebrated in that Lebanese prison. Just before today’s gospel reading, Jesus had said, ‘my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them’. Jesus is declaring there that he wants to give us the gift of his flesh and blood, the gift of himself. He gave that gift of himself to all humanity on the cross. At every Eucharist he renews this gift of himself to us. It is evident from Terry Anderson’s poem that those five men in that Lebanese prison deeply appreciated the extra-ordinary gift they were being given in that simple Eucharist. That same self-emptying love of Jesus on the cross was sacramentally present to them in the Eucharist, to us at our Eucharist in this church this morning. This is a love through which Jesus gathers people into communion with each other and with himself. It is fitting that one of the terms we have come to use for the Eucharist is ‘Holy Communion’. Through the Eucharist, we are brought into a deeply spiritual communion with each other and with the Lord. The Eucharist is an extra-ordinary gift from the Lord to us, and, yet, today’s gospel shows that some of his own followers were slow to receive this gift. They struggled to accept Jesus’ self-gift of his flesh and blood. ‘This is intolerable language’, they said, ‘How could anyone accept it?’ Just prior to our gospel reading, when Jesus first spoke of himself as the Bread of Life come down from heaven, he had the Jewish religious authorities strongly objected to his language. Yet, now, the opposition was coming from his own disciples. The gospel reading goes on to tell us that because of Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist, ‘many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him’. I often think that this is one of the more poignant verses in the gospels. It can resonate with some of us because there may have been times in our lives when we felt like walking away from the Eucharist. We can do so for a whole variety of reasons. Perhaps, like the disciples in the gospel reading, we cannot quite bring ourselves to believe in this extraordinary gift of the Lord to us. Jesus was helpless before the decision of some of his disciples to leave him. He is profoundly respectful of the mystery of human freedom, even when that freedom expresses itself in ways that are not in keeping with his desire for us. When faced with the Lord’s gifts, we too can always turn away. At its deepest level, faith is a gift; it is due to the working of God’s grace in our lives. Yet, at another level, faith is a choice. Yes, the Lord has chosen us first and having chosen us he keeps on investing in us. Yet, he waits for us to respond to his choice of us with our own personal choice of him, a choice we make not just as individuals but within a community. That is why in today’s gospel reading, after many of his disciples had ceased going with him, he turns to the twelve and says, ‘What about you? Do you want to go away too?’ It is a question that is addressed to all of us. In response to that question, we can do no better than make our own the answer of Peter, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life’. Peter spoke on behalf of the others who had chosen to stay; he speaks for us all. We give expression to that answer of Peter every time we come to the Eucharist. Our decision to come to the Mass on Sunday, wherever it is celebrated, expresses our desire to of keep on choosing the Lord and all he stands for. The Eucharist is not only the sacrament of the Lord’s giving of himself to us but also of our personal and communal giving of ourselves to him. And/Or (viii) Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time We make all sorts of choices every day of the week. Many of them are not all that significant. Nothing much would change if we made a different choice. There are other choices that shape us for life, such as a man or woman’s choice of their future spouse, or our choice of a friend, or our choice of the course of studies or a career. These are fundamental choices that shape a lot of our other choices. There is an even more fundamental choice we have to make in life, which is the choice of the value system by which we will live. That level of choice can bring us into the realm of the spiritual or the religious. The choice we make at this deepest level of our being impacts on every other choice we make, everything we say and do. As believers who belong to the family of the church, our deepest choice is of the Lord. In the course of the gospels, Jesus says, ‘you did not choose me but I chose you’. The Lord has chosen us in love and we have responded to his choice of us by choosing him. When did we make our choice of the Lord? We might find it hard to identify a particular moment when we made that fundamental choice. Our parents made that choice for us when they brought us to the church for baptism. As we got older, we had to confirm their choice for ourselves. We can associate the confirming of our parents’ choice with the Sacrament of Confirmation, when we claim our baptism for ourselves. Yet, as we go through life, we have to continually confirm our own choice of the Lord. We can drift from the Lord and his way, for all sorts of reasons. It is not always the case that we consciously turn away from the Lord and his community of faith, but he ceases to be a presence for us. We can then discover that there is something missing in our lives, and we come back to the Lord as the one who gives meaning and direction to our lives. The more fundamental the choice, the more we have to keep renewing it, especially in those moments when it is put to the test. We find such a moment in today’s gospel reading. Jesus had been offering himself to his disciples as their Bread of Life who had come down from heaven, inviting them to eat his body and drink his blood. Those who had earlier chosen to follow him found this teaching difficult to accept. ‘This is intolerable language’, they said. They found that they could not confirm their earlier choice of Jesus. In the words of the gospel reading, ‘many of his disciples left him, and stopped going with him’. The Lord’s loving choice of them hadn’t changed, but they could not respond by continuing to choose him. When people leave a closely knit group, as the disciple of Jesus were at that time, it can have an unsettling impact on everyone else. Others can find themselves asking, ‘Why am I staying if so many are leaving?’ Jesus brought this question to a head for his remaining disciples by asking them, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ Peter spoke up on behalf of the others, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life’. Peter and those for whom he spoke recognized that, even though Jesus’ teaching was challenging, his words had a life giving quality; they were words of spirit and life. They were shaped by the Holy Spirit who brings life to all. There are moments in all our lives when the Lord can say to us, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ The Lord has chosen us out of love, but he wants our choice of him to be free. He wants it to be rooted deep within us. He recognizes that living by his values, following in his way, allowing his words of spirit and life to shape our lives, requires a deliberate choice on our part, a choice that needs to be regularly confirmed. Our faith, our relationship with the Lord, is a gift. He has first loved us; he has taken the initiative towards us in love. Yet, faith is also a human choice, a graced choice. The Lord who has chosen us waits for us to choose him and to do so over and over again. In today’s first reading, Joshua said to the people, ‘Choose today whom you wish to serve’. That is the fundamental choice before which we all stand throughout our lives. Whom or what do we wish to serve with our whole lives? Jesus who has given his whole life to us calls on us to give our lives to him, to love him with all our mind, soul, heart and strength. Choosing the Lord, in this fundamental sense, will involve choosing those whom the Lord has gathered around himself, the community of believers, the church, in all its frailty and weakness. In choosing to stay with Jesus, Peter was also choosing to stay with the other disciples, one of whom, Judas, would go on to betray Jesus. Today’s gospel reading invites us to hear the Lord’s question, ‘What about you?’ as addressed to each one of us personally. And/Or (ix) Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time We make choices every day. Some of these choices are deeply significant and shape the rest of our lives, as when a man and a woman choose to give themselves to each other in marriage for life. The more significant the choice we make, the more important it becomes to choose well. We carefully consider our significant choices, such as the choice young people make when they fill in their CAO form, or the choice people make when it comes to a place to live. The readings today focus on significant moments of choice in the life of God’s people. In the first reading, Joshua put a fundamental choice before the people. They must choose either to serve the local gods of the land or to serve the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. Joshua was aware that the people had already chosen the Lord, but he also knew that their choice of the Lord, like many of the most important choices in life, needed to be renewed again and again. In the gospel reading Jesus faced his own disciples with a significant choice. They must choose either to follow him or to walk away from him and take another path. Jesus was aware that his disciples had already chosen to follow him, but, like Joshua, he also knew that this was a choice the disciples needed to renew over and over again. The more significant the choice that we make, the more we need to remake that choice throughout our lives. The decision to serve the Lord, to follow the Lord, is the most significant choice we could make in life. In choosing the Lord, we are choosing a way of life, a way of looking at life and a way of living life. In making such a choice and re-making it over and over again, we are taking a fundamental stance in life, one that influences a whole range of other choices we will make in life. That is not to say that everything we say and do will always be shaped by that fundamental stance. None of us are totally consistent. Yet, if we are in any way self reflective, we will probably be aware when what we say and do is not in tune with our choice of the Lord, and we will at least have the desire to bring our lives more fully into line with our choice of the Lord. It might seem strange to some that this very basic life-choice for the Lord was initially made for us by our parents, when they brought us to the church for baptism as infants. Yet, that choice they made for us as infants was not any stranger than the many other choices they made for us out of love for us at that age; we were simply not able to choose for ourselves. There comes a time in all our lives when we have to confirm for ourselves the choice of the Lord that our parents made for us. One of the key moments we make our parent’s choice our own is when we come to the Eucharist. In a sense, at every Mass, the Lord turns and says to us what he said to Peter, ‘What about you, do you want to go away?’ At every Mass, we are given the opportunity to say with Simon Peter in the gospel reading, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God’. That is one of the reasons why the church, from earliest times, has given such a high priority to our presence at the Sunday Eucharist. It is at the Sunday Eucharist that we re-make the most fundamental choice we can make in life, the choice Jesus put before his disciples, and that Joshua put before the people of Israel. We come to Mass Sunday and Sunday to renew our baptismal choice of the Lord. Past choices need to be kept alive by renewed commitment. When it comes to remaining faithful to that fundamental choice of the Lord, we are very dependant on each other. We need the example of each other’s faithfulness. Being with others at Mass who themselves keep coming back to re-make that choice of the Lord, helps me to keep remaking that same choice. That is why our presence at Sunday is important for everyone else. The people of Israel must have been greatly supported in their choosing the Lord by Joshua who came forward and said, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’. In the gospel reading, the disciples must have been enormously steadied when Peter stood up and said, on their behalf, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the message of eternal life’. We all need the likes of Joshua and Peter to give a lead, to encourage the rest of us, when our own faith may be faltering. There are times in life when our faith in challenged, when we are tempted to wander off, as some of the disciples did in the gospel reading. It is above all then that we need each other’s witness, each other’s faithfulness. In that sense, we are all called to be a Joshua and a Peter for each other, to support each other in the re-making and living of our choice of the Lord.25th August >> Fr. Martin's Homilies/Reflections on Today's Mass Readings for The Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) (Inc. John 6:60-69) ‘You have the message of eternal life’.
Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Homilies (9)
Fr. Martin Hogan.
See Also
24th August >> Fr. Martin's Reflections/Homilies on Today's Mass Readings for The Feast of Saint Bartholomew, Apostle (Inc. John 1:45-51): ‘You will see greater things’.Best Practices and Homily Resources for Catholic Priests26th August >> Fr. Martin's Reflections/Homilies on Today's Mass Readings for Monday, Twenty First Week in Ordinary Time (Inc. Matthew 23:13-22) ‘You who shut up the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces’.Best Practices and Homily Resources for Catholic Priests