Drawn by the Father
Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday - Year B
St Thérèse of Lisieux was a French Carmelite nun, who died at the young age of 24. Even though she died so young, her teachings on spiritual childhood and her “little way of trust and love” made the Christian pursuit of holiness practical for people of every age and state of life, and she was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997 by Pope St John Paul.
With childlike trust and confidence, Thérèse used to entrust herself unconditionally into Jesus’ hands. This spiritual approach was seen in her daily prayers and activities, including her profound devotion to the Holy Mass and Eucharistic adoration. She kept her eyes constantly fixed on Jesus, encouraging others to contemplate the great gift of the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. She wrote, “Do you realize that Jesus is there in the tabernacles expressly for you, for you alone? He burns with desire to come into your heart.”
During Thérèse’s lifetime, weekly or daily reception of the Eucharist was not common and required permission from a spiritual director or a priest. She received permission to receive Holy Communion on all the major feasts. She wrote, “Receive Communion often, very often ... there you have the sole remedy, if you want to be cured.” In her writings, she described the Eucharistic adoration as Heaven on earth, saying, “Heaven for me is hidden in a little host where Jesus is hidden for love. I go to that divine furnace to draw out life, and there my sweet saviour listens to me night and day.”
The Eucharist is the food of saints, as seen in the life of St Thérèse. It is also food on our journey, on our pilgrimage through this life, to the life of Heaven.
You will probably be able to relate to the importance of eating good wholesome food to maintain energy levels and keep healthy. The science of nutrition has developed enormously over the past few decades.
We now know the importance of certain foods and nutrients for the development of children’s brains and bones. We know which foods are bad for the health of our hearts and which can cause strokes and other diseases. Sport scientists recommend certain diets and nutrients in order to bring out the best performance in athletes.
The example of an endurance athlete needing the correct nourishment to perform optimally is perhaps the best one to carry forward into an understanding of the importance of the Eucharist in keeping us spiritually healthy. Poor physical nourishment results in poor performance and low energy levels. Similarly, we need the Eucharist to remain in communion with God and spiritually strong.
In the Bible, Elijah is mostly portrayed as an invincible prophet who fearlessly stands up to the king and other prophets, but today's first reading shows him vulnerable, discouraged and afraid. In his despair, he wished that he were dead. He says, “Lord, I have had enough; take my life”. In this frame of mind, he falls asleep out of exhaustion. And we see that God responds by providing him with nourishment. Twice an angel wakes Elijah and orders him to eat. He is given heavenly food for his long journey to Horeb, the mountain of God.
Horeb, the mountain of God in the reading, may be a mountain in the far south on the Sinai Peninsula close to Egypt, and the 40 days and 40 nights tells us that this was a long hard journey. This long journey of Elijah is a good metaphor of the life journey of us human beings. And Elijah, as he is portrayed in today’s first reading, is also an image of us. We are also vulnerable and discouraged and afraid at times.
In the same way that God nourished and provided for Elijah for the journey, he nourishes and provides for us. The Eucharist is our food on our journey through life, with its joys and beauty, and also its sorrows and difficulties.
Today’s Gospel passage opens with the people complaining that Jesus had said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” This reminds us of the way the Israelites grumbled about God to Moses in the desert after the escape from Egypt. God’s response was to give the Israelites manna which seemed to come down from heaven. Here in today’s Gospel, however, they are complaining because Jesus describes himself as coming down from ‘heaven’. They are shocked by such apparent arrogance. “We know who this man is,” the people say. “We know he is Joseph’s son from Nazareth.
How can he say he came down from heaven?” But, of course, they clearly do not know Jesus’ full identity. This is a reminder that the crucial and fundamental issue for us who are modern-day disciples of Jesus, is to grow in our understanding of Jesus’ identity. To know Jesus as the Son of God is to be on a journey of transformation.
The Responsorial Psalm picks up on our Eucharistic and nourishment themes: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” The Eucharist is a beautiful manifestation of God’s goodness to us. If you seek the goodness of God, look for it in the Eucharist. Receive the Eucharist, taste the bread of life, and you will know that God is good.
What is this goodness? In what sense do we say that God is good? One glimpse of this is the humility of a God who would give himself out of love for us under the little form of bread. The Creator of the Universe, God and the Son of God, so humbles himself for our salvation, that he gives himself under a little piece of bread. And so, love and humility are key points in recognising God’s goodness. Another crucial aspect of God’s goodness is his forgiveness. This too is expressed in the Eucharist, which is offered for the forgiveness of sins.
The second reading challenges us to imitate God’s goodness. St Paul says to the Ephesians and us: “Try, then, to imitate God, as children of his that he loves …”. How should we do this? The reading contains the essence of the answer to this question. Love others as God loves you. Give yourselves up for others in the way that Christ offered himself up for us. Be kind to one another and forgive one another as readily as God forgave you in Christ. The extraordinary thing is that all these aspects can be summed up in our experience of Jesus in the Eucharist. This is what God does for us in the Eucharist.
The Gospel says that we come to Jesus only because the Father draws us. We have the beautiful image of the Father longing for the salvation of all his children and making that possible through his Son, Jesus Christ. In order for that salvation to reach its fulfilment the Father continues to yearn for us and bring us to his Son. Jesus says that to hear the teaching of the Father and to learn from it, is to come to him.
We come to Jesus in the Eucharist and he comes to us. The Eucharist is the primary way of celebrating and sustaining contact with the Jesus, the Word of God. Henri de Lubac, the Jesuit theologian, wrote that to receive the Eucharist is to receive the whole of the Bible in a single mouthful. Jesus is the sum total of what God wants to say to us and give to us.
Jesus says that he is life-giving bread. What is this life that the Eucharist makes possible and gives to us? It is the fullness of human life the way God intended it to be. It means a human life that has taken on the divine - a human life capable of eternal life. And Jesus says that this life-giving bread is his flesh which he gives for the life of the world.
When we come to Mass and receive Holy Communion, we have the impression more often than not, that we are receiving Jesus in this sacrament. And this is true! But even more profoundly true is that it is not so much us who receive Jesus in Holy Communion, but it is he who receives us. We have been drawn to him by the Father, and he longs for us.
Our reception of Holy Communion is more a case of him receiving us, of him loving us. The paradox of us receiving in our hands and mouths the divine humility of God under the appearance of a little piece of bread is actually this humble God receiving us, drawing us, loving us, and giving us life!