17th Sunday Year B - Homily 6

 Homily 6-2021

I have to be careful with today’s Gospel passage. I have heard it so many times that I nearly know it by heart. And there lies the problem. Its familiarity means that it is too easy for me to not really hear it at all any more. And that is a pity. St John wrote about the incident because he had discovered for himself that genuinely trusting himself in a truly personal way to Jesus and to Jesus’ way of life was a sure way to coming to experience what he called “life in his name”.

There is much in today’s incident that can speak to us of Jesus and his way of life. I want to reflect on one of them, that is perhaps easy to overlook. John wrote: “Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and gave them out to all who were sitting ready.” He “gave thanks”. Whom did he thank? Was it the young boy? In case we are not sure, we can cast our minds forward to Jesus’ actions at his last supper [that Fr George will recall at the consecration of today’s Mass]. There we have: “On the night he was betrayed, he himself took bread, and giving you thanks, he said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples..”. Then he added, “This is my body which will be given up for you”.

So he “thanked” God. And he thanked God even “on the night he was betrayed”, even while he saw in the bread broken to be shared his own body soon to be similarly broken.

“He thanked God”. What for? My answer to that is: “God’s love for the world”. He must have been acutely sensitive to the presence of the loving God always and everywhere; and I suspect he deepened that constant awareness, even in the most taxing circumstances, by repeating it often.

I am convinced that coming to experience “life in Jesus’ name” will be a factor of how genuinely I train myself to be aware of God’s loving presence in the constant unfolding of my life, and to thank God deliberately, as Jesus did, until eventually it becomes second nature.