19th Sunday Year B - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2012

I am not sure how many athletes will have competed in the London Olympics by the time the last events are finished. I am not sure how many of those thousands who compete will go home with gold or silver or bronze medals.  But I do know that the vast majority of athletes there will win nothing – … the vast majority.  The winners will get the accolades.  The losers?  Some will get criticism.  Most will simply be forgotten or ignored.  How many of them will be better people from their experience of victory or defeat?  How many of them will learn from their experience to become more fully human, more genuinely alive?

Whatever about the Olympics, I think that losing can be a far greater occasion for genuine human growth than winning.  Look at your own lives, and at those experiences that became the context for your becoming more gracious, more sensitive and compassionate, wiser, more human, more fully alive.

In today's Gospel, Jesus is talking about our becoming more alive, more humanly alive.  He sees it happening by our coming to him, our believing him [that is, our trusting him and his way and entrusting ourselves to him and his way.]  Today he used the metaphor of himself a

s  bread – as the bread come down from heaven, as the bread of life, as the bread that ensures our living, beyond death, forever.

Elsewhere in the Gospel Jesus uses other metaphors to refer to himself and his mission: living water, light of the world, good shepherd, a vine of which we are the branches.  The images are all driving at the same point.  To the extent that we follow him, attach to him, nourish ourselves on him, are refreshed by him, are led and supported by him, we will become more alive, more human.

Interestingly, Jesus became source of life for us not by winning but by losing – by his being killed: The bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world …  intriguingly, for the life of the world that would kill him.  What was significant about his death, however, was not so much his losing, his failure, as the unshakeable love that sustained and motivated him in the midst of his brutalizing death and defeat.  Yet his failure was important.  As the Epistle to the Hebrews noted: He became perfect through suffering.  In suffering, he touched into, drew from and actualised the deepest recesses of his humanity – and, in the process, he became fully alive.

He says that the way to life for us is to believe him – that is, to trust him and his way.  A favourite author of mine once wrote: "If we don't love, we are already dead.  If we do love, they will kill us!"

Taking part in Eucharist is challenging; but it confirms what life already teaches us:  The setbacks, the disappointments, the little defeats that punctuate our lives can be, have been and will be the arena where we learn best to love, to grow, to become more beautifully human and life-giving to others.  As we shall insist after the Consecration at today's Mass: "When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again."