A Privileged Encounter with God
Homily for Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year B
In October 2020 the body of a 15-year old who died in 2006 was relocated to its final resting place in the church of Saint Mary Major, in Assisi, Italy, the city made famous by St Francis and St Clare. In the procession to relocate the body were cardinals, bishops, important politicians and thousands of other people. He was beatified, declared a blessed, on 10th of October 2020, and since then hundreds of thousands have prayed before his new tomb.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am sure we will agree that there is something lovable about all 15-year olds, but let’s agree that it is somewhat exceptional that such honour be given to this boy. In a real sense he has reached what every human being, young or old, should desire and ask for. He is our first millennial saint: Blessed Carlo Acutis. He was born in 1991 and died at the age of 15 in 2006. In many ways, he was a typical teenager. He loved his PlayStation and making videos of his dogs. He liked Nike track shoes and jeans, and he had a cell phone and an email address. He was noted for his cheerfulness, computer skills, and deep devotion to the Eucharist, which became a core focus of his life.
He called the Eucharist “his highway to heaven” and in this he has something to teach us about the importance of what happens here at Mass and when we receive Holy Communion. He used his computer knowledge and talents to create a website that documented the Eucharistic miracles that have occurred in history. His advice to teenagers was: “Be originals and not photocopies!” He used a diary to track his progress in the spiritual life. In it he jotted down, “Sadness is looking at oneself, happiness is looking at God. Conversion is nothing but a movement of the eyes.”
Why start with this memory of Blessed Carlo? Well, it would be hard for us to overstate the importance and centrality of the Eucharist in our Catholic Christian lives. What we do here in the Mass is the source and summit of
the entire Christian life. Over the next five weeks we will be reading Jesus’ great teaching on the Eucharist from John chapter 6. This sustained meditation on the teaching of Jesus will deepen our understanding and appreciation of the Eucharist, which we most often refer to as ‘the Mass”. Our understanding and appreciation of the Eucharist should awaken in us a hunger for the Eucharist, and a longing to celebrate it and receive Holy Communion. Carlo Acutis teaches us and shows us that the Eucharist is the food of saints.
This teaching on the Eucharist in John chapter 6 is introduced by the story of the feeding of the multitude with the five loaves and the two fish, that we have just heard. This record of the miracle is found in all four Gospels, giving us a sense of just how important it was for the early Church. And in the telling of the story of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish we have a summary of the celebration of the Mass. This understanding of the miracle as a parable of the Mass is not just an afterthought or wishful thinking. In fact the whole story of the feeding of the five thousand is woven out of strands of the first Passover, when the Israelites escaped from Egypt, and then Moses and the feeding of the Israelites with manna in the desert, and finally, of the Eucharist as it was celebrated by the early Church, following the instruction of Jesus.
In this story the extraordinary magnetic appeal of Jesus is seen in that a great crowd followed Jesus. These were a people who were hungering for more; they were looking for meaning, for purpose, for truth. And they found in Jesus a satisfaction of these longings. Today as we listen to this Gospel we can recognise in ourselves the same hunger for life, for meaning and purpose.
The Mass is a gathering of the people of God to himself in the same way that the people were drawn to and gathered around Jesus in our Gospel for today. At the beginning of Eucharistic Prayer number 3, the priest prays: “you never cease to gather a people to yourself, so that from the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice may be offered to your name.” And again at the end of this Eucharistic Prayer, the priest prays: “Listen graciously to the prayers of this family, whom you have summoned before you: in your compassion, O merciful Father, gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world.” Right here and now, we are a people who have been summoned and gathered together by God.
In the passage today we hear that Jesus went up the mountain. In the Scriptures, over and over again, the going up of mountains was symbolic of an encounter with God. Likewise, here in John’s Gospel, going up the mountain is meant to signify for us that the Eucharist is an encounter with the divine. The Mass is where heaven and earth meet. Imagine if we could always come to Mass with the consciousness that here we have a privileged encounter with God.
Then John says that Jesus sat down with his disciples. In the ancient world this was the position of the teacher, with his disciples sitting at his feet. This is representative of the Liturgy of the Word at Mass, when we listen to the Lord speaking to us. When we hear the Word of God proclaimed to us during the Mass, and when the Word is broken open for us in the homily, it is Jesus the Teacher who is instructing us.
John says that this all occurred around the time of the Passover Feast. In saying this he is linking the feeding of the multitude with the celebration of the Eucharist which is linked to the Passover. The Jewish Feast of the Passover is a celebration of liberation from slavery in Egypt. The institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross took place over the Feast of Passover. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, his death and resurrection, freed us from the slavery of sin. And every time we celebrate the Mass we are participating in that one sacrifice of Jesus, and our liberation, and the graces that flow from the cross, are made present once again, here and now.
Consider the little, seemingly insignificant boy with the five barley loaves and the two fish. There is a link with the first reading from the second Book of Kings where, under Elisha, twenty barley loaves were enough to feed one hundred men. These few resources are symbolic of the littleness of our resources and of our weaknesses and frailty and little faith, with which the Lord does great things. When we come to Mass, we bring our lives, our hopes, our dreams and sorrows, and we present them with our little gifts of bread and wine, to be united with the self-offering of Jesus.
Imagine what became of the little boy who provided the loaves and fish. What impact would this event have had on his life? Perhaps he was at Jesus’ side when Jesus gave out the loaves and fish. Perhaps he never tired of telling the story of this miracle and how he had been right there. Perhaps he became a great disciple of Jesus. This is a hint of the impact that every celebration of the Eucharist can have on our lives.
Whenever we hear the language of Jesus taking bread, blessing it, giving thanks and giving it to the people, we have a representation of the Eucharist. The Jewish meal blessing is a giving thanks to God for the gifts we receive from his hand. The word, eucharist, means thanksgiving. This language in today’s Gospel is not coincidence. Not only do we use the exact words of Jesus at the Last Supper, “Take this all of you and eat of it,” but we also pray a whole eucharistic prayer which introduced by a Jewish meal blessing, which goes, “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer.”
The Gospel says that the people had their fill. Only Jesus in the Eucharist can fully satisfy our deepest longings and yearnings. And in this passage we hear about the twelve baskets of fragments that were gathered up - twelve representing the twelve tribes of Israel being gathered into a new Israel, the Church. The baskets are also one for each of the apostles who would pass this celebration of the Eucharist on to the Church. We become the new gathered and fed people of Israel every time we celebrate the Eucharist.
What does this mean for us? We are called to recognise that we are part of an ancient tradition following the instruction of Jesus to do this in memory of him. We are called to know what it is that we are doing here at Mass, and whom it is that we are receiving. This Sunday and in the next few weeks we can renew and deepen our own experience of Eucharist and our relationship to the Eucharist.