More than a century ago, a poor family from a small village in Eastern Europe decided to migrate to America. Their friends and relatives threw a “going away” party for them. They were given several loaves of hard bread and blocks of cheese for the voyage. A week later, the family boarded an Italian ship. Since they had never been out of their village before and no one on board spoke their language, they were overwhelmed by what they saw and heard.

Because the weather was cold and wet, the family immediately went to their third class cabin below deck. There they stayed, eating their provisions of bread and cheese sparingly. On the last day of the trip, the weather cleared up. The oldest boy, who had grown restless, asked his father for permission to explore the ship. When his teenaged son did not return within the hour, the father went looking for him. He found him in a big dining room, sitting at a table, eating from a plate overflowing with vegetables, meat and even desert.

The father’s heart stopped. He had visions of spending his first days in America in jail for there was no way he could pay for all the food that his son had ordered and was eating. When the boy saw how frightened his father looked, he said, “Don’t worry, papa, it’s free. While we’ve been fasting on rations of bred and cheese, everyone else has been feasting on banquets like this. They’re included in the price of the ticket!”

That story fits in well with the message of today’s gospel. The world is filled with people who, like that poor Serbian family, journey through life, totally unaware of the incredible banquet that God spreads before them every day. This banquet, which we call Holy Communion, is the banquet that Jesus is talking about when he told the crowd, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

Understandably, those who first listened to what Jesus said were disturbed. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” The notion of eating anyone’s flesh was quite unsettling. Certainly, Jesus was not talking about ordinary bread here.

The difference between the living bread, which Jesus speaks of, and bread that you can buy at the store is beyond comparison. When we eat that kind of bread, it enters our body and changes into us.  When we eat the living bread, however, the opposite happens. The living bread doesn’t change into us; rather, we change into the living bread. When we reverently partake of Holy Communion, we are transformed into the body of Christ. We take on the life of Christ. Jesus told the crowd, “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”

Think of the words spoken at the consecration, which sum up what Jesus said at the Last Supper. “This is my body which will be given up for you…this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.”  And this we have done since they were first spoken. The Eucharist is our link with Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. The Eucharist is our tangible reminder of God’s unconditional love for us.

Mindful of Jesus’ profound love for us, we allow the Eucharist to transform us. We are then empowered to heed the command we are given at the end of Mass to love and serve the Lord. Yes, the Eucharist can transform us into people of love.

The first reading speaks about the wisdom of God, who invites us to a dinner. “Come and eat and drink and live forever,” we are told. God gives us the dream of living in peace and happiness for all eternity. That becomes possible when we endeavor to love.

Paul knows how human we are. He speaks of our failings, urging us to understand the will of God. Deep down, we want to be with God, but too often, we ignore God’s wise counsel for getting there, such as allowing the Eucharist to change us.  Many people go through the motions of taking communion but with little appreciation for what they are receiving.  They act as though what they receive is still bread and wine; then they wonder why this sacrament has no impact on them.  They may have the faith and the knowledge all right, but if they are not attentive to what is going on, they cannot receive the fullness of grace that is being offered.

St. Thomas Aquinas observed that a mouse cannot receive Holy Communion if it eats a consecrated host since it lacks knowledge and faith, even though Christ remains present. He went on to argue that a believer who consumes consecrated bread, but believes that it is not consecrated, does not receive Christ either. He also reasoned that the same is true for non-believers who partake of Holy Communion despite what others believe. They receive the Eucharist, Aquinas notes, “not as sacrament, but as simple food.”

What about believers who are inattentive while receiving Holy Communion? We may be receiving Christ but not the fullness of grace that he has to offer, for we can only receive fully what we are fully disposed to receive. Come attentively and reverently to receive the Lord. Sense his presence in your midst. Reverence the encounter. Respond convincingly with the word, “Amen,” as a sign that you savor what is being offered you in the sacrament.

How tragic that the Serbian family made their voyage to America unaware that meals came with their tickets, but what is even more tragic is for us to turn this banquet into a lifeless routine by failing to make this encounter with Jesus a personal prayerful encounter every time we’re given the chance to feast on him. 

There are so many ideas, visions of the Assumption of Mary. The images of her Assumption into heaven that most see are from paintings, pictures of Mary rising up through the clouds surrounded by flocks of angels.

Even though these pictures stir the imagination and get us all to think about Mary’s Assumption into heaven, one thing is clear, our relationship with Mary our Mother and how her Assumption into heaven is part of the salvation of us all. After all, we are on a journey to our salvation.

The actual belief, the dogma, associated with today’s feast is that our Lady, at the end of her life, was taken into God’s company, body and soul. In our case, when we die, there will be a gap between our entering God’s presence and the final resurrection of our bodies that we profess in the creed as we say “ we look for the resurrection of the dead and life of the world to come.

With our Lady, there was no gap. She’s already in that state of Glory, which Christ himself is, and which we hopefully will be at the end of time. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians. What I am saying is with God’s grace, we will follow.

We should understand Mary in light of the mystery of the Church. Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, tells us that Mary is a symbol or icon of the Church, of all Christians. She is a model of the Church, and the Assumption of Mary points to a profound gift to all believers, the resurrection of the body!

The preface for today’s feast reads: “She was taken up to heaven as the beginning and the pattern of the Church in its perfection, and a sign of hope and comfort for your people on their pilgrim way.”

Mary’s Assumption is a symbol of the resurrection of all believers, of what the Church, as the mystical body of Christ and the Bride of Christ will experience at the end of history.

Christ is our model, of course. But Mary was a human person, like you and I except for one thing. She was free from sin. Through her son’s Resurrection and Ascension into heaven, she was then freed from death and brought into the heavenly kingdom by God.

The dogma of the Assumption means that the Virgin Mary now experiences in heaven that union of glorified body and soul, which her son enjoys. Well, enough about the dogma but we need to understand the basics to see our own participation in what is to come at the end of our lives.

Every year when we encounter this gospel reading on this Feast, I am struck that Mary is on a journey. The passage from Luke begins and ends with her traveling, embarking, really, on the greatest adventure in human history. Pope Benedict has described this moment, the Visitation, as the first Eucharistic procession, with Mary carrying Christ out into the world in her womb.

One of the documents of the Second Vatican Council even describes us as “the pilgrim people of God.” We are on a journey, guided by faith, sustained by hope, with the gospel as our guide. This gospel reading today reminds us of something we can easily forget: we are all pilgrims, on our journeys and as the gospel reminds us of another pilgrim on that journey- a trip that transcends time and place- is Mary.

Her earthly pilgrimage took her to places she never imagined; From Nazareth to Calvary. Hers was a life like no other in history. She lived the will of God.

Her Assumption was not the end of her journey, for her journey lives in each of us. She is praying for us and her journey, like ours, will find completeness when Jesus comes again at the end of time to bring her children home to the Father.

So we ask her on this feast to join us on our own mission, our own pilgrimage through life- to uplift us, to encourage us, to walk with us. This most Blessed of all women knows our struggles, our sufferings, our limitations. She lived with them herself. Yes, she was holy, but she was also human.

And like us, Mary was in a hurry. She set out in haste to Judah. In a few minutes, if I ever stop talking, and end this homily, we will be rushing out the door, getting into our cars, going to a late breakfast at our favorite restaurant, rushing to get in line for the ferry to get to the other side of the world, or to just go home.

But before we do that, we will stop and pray. We pray to our heavenly mother for her intercession with our Heavenly Father, as we ready ourselves to accept her sons sacrifice through his body and blood in the Eucharist. We pray for Mary’s companionship and support as we ourselves set out in haste to all the places we need to be.

We turn our hearts to this woman “full of Grace” imploring her to “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” So let us see the picture of this woman’ Full of Grace” that is so vividly portrayed in the reading this morning from Revelation. Let this picture enliven our hearts to reach out to The Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Divine Mother as a child reaches out to their mother.

I leave you with these words from a homily given by Pope John Paul II on 15 August, 2001, The Feast of the Assumption:

“Today the children of the Church on earth are joyfully celebrating the virgin’s passing to the celestial city, the Heavenly Jerusalem. This is what the Armenian liturgy sings today. I make these words my own, thinking of my apostolic pilgrimage to Kazakhstan and Armenia in which, please God, I shall be setting out in just over a month.

To you Mary, I entrust the success of this new stage in my service to the Church and to the world. I ask you to help believers to be watchmen of

the hope that does not disappoint and never to stop proclaiming that Christ is victorious over evil and death. Faithful Woman, enlighten the humanity of our time so that it may understand that every human life is not extinguished in a handful of dust, but is called to a destiny of eternal

happiness. Mary, who are the joy of heaven and earth, may you watch over and pray for us, and for the whole world, now and forever, AMEN”.
 

The Power of the Bread of Life

This morning we confront once again readings from the so-called “Bread of Life narrative.” The Bread of Life narrative takes up five chapters in the Gospel of John, and contains the central Biblical proofs for the Catholic belief that our celebration of the Eucharist is the celebration of Jesus entering our bodies as the Real Presence of God, body, blood, soul, and divinity; Jesus, literally in us.

By now, you might just be stifling a yawn. For you have heard Father Rick, myself, and other clergy talk about the Eucharist and the Bread of Life many times. Indeed, any concept, no matter how meaningful and relevant to our physical and spiritual lives can seem a little dry or abstract unless you see it in action in real life.

In our readings tonight, the Eucharist is in action for three different people or sets of people. In our reading from the first Book of Kings, the prophet Elijah has been preaching and teaching the Jewish people. Like every preacher, the people weren’t always hanging on his every word.

Elijah traveled from town to town and he was tired. He wasn’t driving his car to these places but hoofing it. Between the challenge of the journey, and the challenge of the audience, he was worn out and ready to give up. But God sustains him by an angel giving him food and drink. The food and drink God provides is a foreshadowing of the food and drink Jesus Himself would provide at a later point in salvation history. Elijah is fortified and is ready to resume his work on behalf of God.

In our second reading, Paul remarks how the Eucharist, for him and all of Jesus’ followers, not only feeds us spiritually but also redeems us. The Eucharist unleashes the power of the Holy Spirit, helping us to turn away from anger, malice, and violence and toward compassion, forgiveness, and even Christ-like sacrifice.

Finally, in the Bread of Life Gospel reading from John we read from tonight (this morning) Jesus reminds us that if the apostles eat his flesh, they will not die. It is a formulation which must have seemed rather strange to them, for theologians tell us the words “eat his flesh” here should be interpreted more as something like gnawing on his flesh, as someone who is very hungry might do when presented with a turkey drumstick.  But the apostles would come to understand this concept only later, after Jesus instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday. The Eucharist would turn the key for them, as it does for us, to the door of salvation. These rather ordinary people would, because of the power of the Eucharist, become extraordinary agents of God’s mercy and compassion.

But this is only really the beginning of the story. For we are ordinary people much like the apostles. And much like the apostles, we are given the extraordinary privilege of being offered the Eucharist. And we, much like the apostles, can also become extraordinary agents of God’s mercy and compassion.

We can talk a lot about the Eucharist. We can honor it, as we should. We go to rather significant lengths to protect the species of the Eucharist, preserving it in tabernacles, adoring it through exposition and benediction.

But, brothers and sisters, to really understand the power of the Bread of Life, the Eucharist, we must go deeper. For if we believe that Christ is literally in us, through the Eucharist, then we must, as Father Rick noted last week, literally put on Christ. We are called to be transformed by it, not merely accept it.

Here I have a confession to make. Despite many years as a cradle Catholic, and many years as a deacon, this notion of the Eucharist as transforming us was only superficially clear to me. For we can believe that Jesus is in the Eucharist. We can believe in the Real Presence. But we may not always see what the Real Presence in us through the Eucharist can do for those who receive it. And so let me share a personal experience that I went through these past few weeks. This experience was an awesome gift from the Lord, played out in a most ordinary way, but with extraordinary impact.

We have many wonderful parishioners here at St. Hubert. And I normally don’t call out them out from the pulpit but I am going to make an exception this morning. Many of you in this parish know Joanie Smith. She is a long-time member of this parish, who has offered her services to us in many ways over the years. She is a loving, giving, but modest person who frankly we can take for granted.

Many months ago, Joanie agreed to take care of a neighbor named Thor, an old man who had had a severe stroke. Joanie is a nurse, and was very dissatisfied with Thor’s care in a nursing home. So remarkably, she brought him to his old house, moved in with him, and took care of him. Many of you have seen Thor at church, brought to our parish by Joanie every Sunday until very recently.

Joanie has done this without any hope of compensation. Thor’s finances are a little complicated, and Joanie has asked for nothing for herself. Thor is not her father, or even her relative. He was a neighbor, but Thor had lots of neighbors. These last several weeks, it has become clear that Thor was near the end of his life. Joanie has been waiting on him hand and foot, waking every two hours to give him his medicine. I must confess somewhat shamefully that I had not given him or her much thought until Marcia Halligan, our parish administrator, asked me to look in on her.  

Like old Elijah in our first reading, people who try to serve God have good days and bad. They can get very tired because of the sheer fatigue serving others can bring. This was true of Joanie. When I visited her she was very tired, on the verge of tears at times. But I brought something with me that sustained and transformed her as it has so many people over almost 2,000 years. It was the Eucharist.

Perhaps, brothers and sisters, I have been a little dense. But in a way that I had never appreciated before, the Bread of Life, the Eucharist, is not just a concept. Oh, we should believe the concept. But we should really believe the wonderful things it does. Watching Joanie put on Christ through the Eucharist was an exceptional revelation, a remarkable gift of God’s grace. And I praise God and thank Joanie for sharing her service-based love for Thor, with me.

Thor passed away a few days ago. But the Bread of Life endures for those in this life and the next. And so let us pray brothers and sisters, the next time we hear the term Bread of Life, we not only acknowledge the concept but also recognize its power. Let us not just read about the Bread of Life, talk about the Bread of Life, and believe in the Bread of Life, let us act on it in our own lives and the lives of others.      
 

Last week, we heard about the miraculous feeding of 5000 men in the gospel. Today and for the next three Sundays we hear John’s discourse on the meaning of that miracle—how it is a sign that Jesus is ultimately our true nourishment.

The readings opened with the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land. In the gospel, the crowds journeyed by boat to Capernaum looking for Jesus.  Whenever we are on a journey, we need directions or we are apt to venture off course and get lost. I recall years ago, a friend calling to tell me that she and her husband had taken the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston to visit me. “Now,” she asked, “ how do we get to Langley from Kingston?”  They knew where they wanted to go, all right, but they needed directions first.  I had to patiently explain that to get to Langley, one had to catch the ferry to Clinton, not Kingston.

Life is much like a journey. When I graduated from college, I never imagined that 38 years later, I would find myself standing here at a pulpit in Langley. (To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of Langley back then!) Like many of my peers then, I was searching for my niche in life, for whatever and whomever would bring me happiness, but I was often more concerned about putting food on the table than pondering my long range goals in life.

I wasn’t much different from the crowds in today’s readings. The Israelites were free from slavery yet they were disenchanted.  Lacking food, they would have preferred to remain in Egypt and eaten their fill of bread, even if that meant being slaves again. As we heard, their needs were soon filled with manna and quail. (What was called bread from heaven can be found even today in the Sinai desert, produced each spring by certain insects feeding on tamarisk trees.)

The crowds in the gospel weren’t much different. They too were primarily interested in satisfying their hunger. Could Jesus continue to feed them as he had the day before? Thus, they jumped into their boats and headed to Capernaum, looking for the man who miraculously feed so many with so little.

The restless hungry crowds left me wondering, “Is life simply the daily pursuit of putting something on the table to eat?” For many people, that is the bottom line. Of course, along with food, comes the quest for shelter, clothing, recreation, relationships and all else that defines our notion of the American dream.

The opening line of the Declaration of Independence asserts that we are entitled to the pursuit of happiness, along with life and liberty, but the founding fathers did not provide us with any directions. Many of us presume that happiness is found in the quest for wealth, status and good health. That may be the American dream, yet, as many of us have discovered sooner or later, such happiness may be as fleeting as a sultry breeze on a stifling humid summer evening like those we have had lately.

Jesus observed that reality. In spite of their fill, having been fed the day before, the crowd was not yet satisfied. To remedy their emptiness, Jesus assures them that lasting happiness can be found in him. “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

What assuring words! In a nutshell, Jesus was prodding his listeners to move beyond the pursuit of their daily bread to seeking the bread of eternal life, ultimately seeing Jesus as the object of faith. For us Catholics, we equate what he is saying here to the Eucharist, the core of our faith. We believe that our gifts of bread and wine become for us the real presence of Jesus Christ, not mere symbols, and that the Eucharist keeps us moving in the right direction beyond the Mass through life, by separating us from sin, those deliberately chosen acts which distance us from God, who is the source of lasting happiness.

An obstacle for some toward Jesus’ message here is faith, which they see as an act of the mind, rather than the heart. Since the real presence of Jesus cannot be rationally explained, they opt not to believe, despite what Jesus said at the Last Supper.

In biblical times, faith described the glue which binds one person to another. A good comparison for faith would be the loyalty that fans have for their teams, a passion of the heart. This is what Jesus had in mind when he tells us, “Do not work for food that perishes but for food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”  Are we passionate about our faith?

In his book, Diary of a Country Priest, George Bernanos writes, “Faith is not a thing which one ‘loses,’ we merely cease to shape our lives by it.”  Ask yourself, are you allowing your faith to shape your life? If not, consider the advice Paul gives, for ultimately we cannot be Christian unless we put on Christ and allow ourselves to be created anew in God’s way of righteousness and holiness.

Like my misdirected friends, who never made it to Langley that day, we can veer off course on our life journey with the countless daily distractions that surround us, yet the direction for getting us the satisfying happiness we seek in life is simple enough. Simply put, Jesus is urging us to redirect our lives toward God. This means a reordering of expectations and values, a path that becomes evident through the power of daily prayer.  Monika Hellwig, one of America’s best Catholic theologians, summarized the lesson today well when she wrote, “Human yearning is not stilled by self-seeking or self-gratification, but by self-gift to God in trust and to other human beings in meeting their needs. To be nourished and sustained by Jesus means being empowered to live in this way.”

There is something unique about the location of our parish. I do not know of any other parish with a pasture nearby where sheep graze. Have you ever watched them? They move about with their eyes to the ground, always grazing, seeing only the patch of grass in front of them.  We may be more like sheep than we care to admit, for like them, we can be too focused on what we want to consider the consequences of our choices and actions. As we graze our way through life, how often have we fallen over a cliff of sorts because we didn’t see where we were going? God knows well that we need good shepherds to lead us.

Without someone to guide us, we can easily go astray. We have many leaders in our lives, beginning with our parents when we were kids, but as Jeremiah observes, not every shepherd could be trusted. He quotes God as chastising the leaders of ancient Israel who led the people astray. “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture. You have scattered my sheep and driven them away.” God then promises to bring the scattered flocks back to their meadow by raising up a king who would govern them wisely.

That promise was fulfilled when Jesus arrived on the scene.  Calling himself the good shepherd, he could see that many in the vast crowd were like “sheep without a shepherd,” so “he began to teach them many things.” In his wake, Jesus founded the Church to serve as our spiritual shepherd today.

Which shepherds do we trust and really listen to? I would like to think that every Christian listens to the wisdom of Jesus Christ, the good shepherd, but that isn’t so. Otherwise, our churches would be filled with people following the advice given in today’s gospel. Jesus, if you recall, invited the apostles to “come away to a deserted place and rest a while.” They had just returned from their first mission of sharing the good news with others and curing the sick. They needed a place to pray.

His timeless advice is meant for us as well. Jesus invites us to get away from the busy events of our lives and to make time to rejuvenate our spiritual well-being. He isn’t speaking of hiding out in some chat room on the internet. Instead, he is inviting us to find tranquility and awe in the presence of our God.

We can do that in any number of ways. For the sake of nurturing our faith, we gather each week to feed on both God’s word and the Eucharist. Alas, many people downplay the value of this time together. They remind me of sheep too intent on grazing to even notice the shepherd in their midst who seeks to guide them. When we ignore the opportunity to be in touch with the good shepherd, who then is taking his place as our shepherd?

We also need something more than the Mass to feed us. Jesus talked about a deserted place, which to me, means, a place apart from our daily commotions to be spend time in prayer with him. Think of all the many things you do in the course of a given day. How much of your time is time spent alone with Jesus? I suspect that those who make no time for daily prayer don’t give themselves the chance to see just how delightful prayer can be.

Perhaps one hiker can shed light on this for you. A woman was walking through the jungle when she suddenly came upon a pack of tigers. She ran and ran but the tigers were getting closer and closer. When she came to the edge of a cliff, she saw a vine hanging over the edge. With the tigers in pursuit, she climbed down the cliff, hanging on to the vine for dear life. She barely made it over the side before the tigers could pounce.

Looking down, she hears growls. Oh no! More tigers were waiting below. Looking up, she could see tigers above.  Now what? Then she is startled by a rustling in front of her. Two mice appear and begin gnawing on the vine she is clinging to.

The desperate woman then notices a beautiful bunch of strawberries growing wild in a nearby patch of grass. She looks down at the tigers below, she looks up at the tigers above, and she looks at the mice gnawing at the vine. The woman then reaches for one of the strawberries and puts it in her mouth and enjoys it thoroughly. If only for a moment, despite all the perils around her, the woman experiences bliss.

Tigers above, tigers below, and any number of distractions and challenges threaten to undo the vines we cling to. Our days are filled with predicaments demanding all of our time and energy, our good will and patience. But if we look hard enough, we will find “strawberries” to enjoy and savor, reminding us that our lives are so much more than the tigers we outrun. These are the “deserted places” Jesus is urging us to seek out, the moments and havens of rest and quiet prayer which Jesus invited his apostles to experience. Face it, the advice here is simple: we must consciously look for and embrace such moments of grace.

We do so when we take time to be alone in prayer, meditation, reflecting on scripture, or even day-dreaming with God. Whatever you want to call it, Jesus calls us to a take delight in these moments we spend with him for they can truly be filled with bliss. Through prayer, we find the grace we need to make the right choices for our daily journeys.

A month ago, Pope Benedict declared this to be the Year of the Priest. Since we are called to serve as shepherds of Christ’s flock today, we stand in need of your prayers. Pray that my brother priests and I foster in our hearts a yearning for spiritual perfection upon which the effectiveness of our ministry rest. Pray that we remain strong in our calling to serve as your shepherds. Pray that we are given the strength, understanding and wisdom we need to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.  Pray for the grace we need to stay focused on our calling in life. Thank you.