euphemos

This weekend marks the beginning of a new stage in your journey of formation. We are resuming the climb after a bit of a switchback on the mountain road where we slowed for the turn and to admire the view.

From here, there are two dangers and one joy that I want you to keep in sight.

How are you doing? Have you caught yourself complaining about something that you once recognized as a gift, like the Children of Israel complained about Manna in the desert?

You will.

“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Is he advocating cannibalism?

Jesus doubles down – oh.. Unless you gnaw (and that’s the word he uses) the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.

We hear this talk of eating his flesh and blood, and it makes us cringe a little bit. It sounds… weird, even when we understand it. Why did he put it so… intensely?

Because God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, but God understands us intimately.

Because we should approach the Eucharist like a dog gets on a bone, or a teenager attacks dinner. We don’t just daintily snack… we gnaw. We don’t just sip, we drink deeply. 

God is calling us to a kind of passion that can only be compared to a ravenous hunger that, when satisfied, does not leave us guilty and nauseated and swearing we will never eat again, but full of life and joy.

This Jesus, this Eucharist, is the food and drink that Wisdom prepares.

Although all the talk of sheep and shepherds means I’d love to talk about my goats today, and there are at least five different homilies in today’s readings, I haven’t forgotten that I owe you time, so hear this one thing:

Rest awhile – Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.

We stink at resting. We relax, but with activity or amusements so that relaxation is often busy-ness. Those of us blessed to have a day off from work often fill that day with running errands. We don’t even pretend to make an effort to keep Sunday as a day of rest, working and shopping and “doing” all day. Even churches hold business meetings on Sunday, which really gets my goat.

Theologians argue about whether God causes suffering, or God allows suffering as a consequence of living in a world where Adam chose to reject God and sin. I almost spent this morning talking about suffering, and God’s role in allowing or ultimately causing suffering in the context of that first reading from the book of Job, but that is not the most important question.

You might remember that although we are in Year B of our three year cycle of Gospel readings from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we are taking a summer break from Saint Mark’s Gospel to spend a few weeks in Saint John’s Bread of Life Discourse in John chapter 6. This portion of scripture is so special and important to Catholics, because these scriptures are essential to our understanding of Christ in the Eucharist.

Last Sunday, we saw the power of God in Christ Jesus with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Jesus reveals himself as the fulfillment of what Elisha the prophet prefigured.

The Catechism defines a prophet as someone sent by God to form the people in the hope of salvation. Today, Jesus is established as not simply A Prophet, but The Prophet who the people always knew to expect. The one who would reveal clearly how we can do what God desires.

More than that, Jesus says he is the bread of life from heaven. He is the reality to which manna pointed.

Next week, think about manna as you hear the people asking “who is this?” When the manna first came down, the people said “man hu?” which means, what is this… We still ask that question about Jesus and about the Eucharist. What is this? Who is this?