18th Sunday Year B - Homily 6

Homily 6 - 2024

We are pretty familiar with John’s Gospel — how he would recount a past event and then go on to tease out, often at length, what it was really saying. That is precisely what he was doing with his original story of Jesus’ feeding the five thousand that we heard last week.

What was Jesus really up to? John’s Gospel today gave us the clue. Jesus protested to the crowds, “You are not looking for me because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted…”.

The bread was not the point of his miracle. It was pointing to something else — something immensely more important, as far as Jesus was concerned and, ultimately, immensely more important for themselves.

I think this is ultimately very important for ourselves, too. It is not just that it is pointing to the Eucharist. The question we need to answer is what does the Eucharist point to? Jesus gave a clue: “Work for food that endures to eternal life”.

We don’t get life simply by sitting around and eating more and more. Jesus was not talking about the number of times we receive the Eucharist. Receiving Eucharist is sacrament; it is symbolic. As Jesus said, it “gives life to the world”. And that requires that we “come to him” and that “we believe in him”.

Believe him: trust him, trust what he says, listen carefully, follow his example, watch how he lives. The other three Gospels summed up that basic message quite succinctly: “The Kingdom of God is close at hand… Repent… Believe the Good News.” For that, we need to “come to him”, to “trust him”. “Life to the world”, and the “Kingdom of God”, refer roughly to the same thing. Both point to a world where power is replaced by mutual respect, where the interests of the poor are determinants of legislation. And it calls for radical change, change fuelled by hope — a world where we are free to dream. “Believe the Good News”.

Jesus gave his life for that dream. It cost him everything. He was prepared to give that everything to the point of perfection. He called us to “walk with him” and to “believe him - trust him”. To allow ourselves to be thoroughly nourished by his love, his vision, to be changed like him, into him.

And that is what happens when we take Jesus seriously, when we take Eucharist seriously. Nothing automatic — but fruit of a wonderful work of cooperation.

I wonder if we Catholics, priests and laity, took all this more to heart, whether the traffic might be heading more towards us than away from us. It is never too late!