20th Sunday Year B
See Commentary on John 6:51-58
Homily 1 - 2006
Sometimes our appreciation of the real presence of Jesus in the sacrament of Communion leads us to take less note of a more important real presence of Jesus that is the effect and purpose of his presence in Communion.
As the Gospel put it today: Whoever eat my flesh and drink my blood live in me and I live in them. Instead of simply putting live in, other translations express Jesus’ comment as "live continually", "dwell continually", "abide". All the options give us a better idea of what Jesus was saying. The momentary presence of Jesus in us in the action of Communion is the source of a continuing presence of Jesus with us in our daily lives. This abiding, continuing presence of Jesus in us is the presence of the real Jesus – (There is only one Jesus!). He is present in us, not through a change of our substance into his (as happens with the bread and wine), but through a change in our attitudes, our relationship with him, the depth of our intimacy. This change does not happen immediately, automatically, though (as it does with the bread and the wine). They are not alive, and free; they have no say.
But when we cooperate, freely, the real Jesus, really present to us, gradually changes us so that our lives - our thoughts, our attitudes, our choices - become conformed to his. As St Paul could say: I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me. It is a mysterious change – but wonderful. That is the purpose of Communion – what it’s for.
How do we cooperate with this fantastic opportunity - with the real Jesus constantly present with us, in such a way that we do change? This is an important question because, without our cooperation, his presence within us achieves nothing. How do we allow anyone to influence us, and to change us profoundly? We need to connect; we need to dialogue; we need to make choices.
So we need to connect with Jesus, in some kind of I-Thou, one on one, dialogue. This is the task of prayer in one shape or other. We need to listen to him, to seek to know him well, to touch in, if we can, to his heart, and to what burns within him. This can be helped and nourished by meditatively reading the scriptures. It can be helped, too, by taking time in quiet prayer and stillness to plumb the meaning of the shared eating and drinking of his body and blood in Communion - because the shared bread and wine are sacraments of his presence; they are signs. What are they telling us? What do they reveal of his heart and mind, his values, his priorities? We spend a brief time of quiet prayer and stillness together after Communion. We can also spend time in quiet thought afterwards, before the Blessed Sacrament, or anywhere.
We need to put our insights into practice in our daily lives. There is no formation without action. But we also need to reflect on our actions - on their outcomes on us and on others - and where they come from in us. Again, that can be one of the things we do in our praying.
The purpose of Communion is so that, as Jesus draws the Father’s life into him, we too might draw Jesus’ life into us: As the Gospel said: As I who am sent by the living Father myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me. The reality is mind-blowing. Communion is the source of a challenging transformation, a call to a profound commitment.
Homily 2 - 2009
When you have been truly loved, and have believed and accepted that love, you have changed; you have grown. A new you was created in the process. Whenever one you love has revealed to you their dream, and you have come to share that dream, you have found, not only new direction, but new energy as well. You have been created in the process. When one you love has helped you to see things the way they are, has opened your eyes to reality, has helped you see the truth of themselves, the truth of yourself, the truth of the world we live in, you became what you weren't before; you have become wise. A new you has been created in the process.
In today's Gospel, Jesus said: As I draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me draws life from me.
Let's take that one step at a time. Jesus spoke of himself as drawing life from the Father, as growing, changing, as being created anew. What was he referring to? I think it may have been something like this: As he explored the Father's love for him, and believed it, and surrendered himself to it, he experienced himself becoming more alive. As he came to understand the Father's dream for the world - that the world might become ever more alive - as he came to share that dream and let it take him over, he felt himself energised, and becoming more alive.
As he let the Father show him the truth: the truth about himself, and the way that the world really is, as innocence gave way to wisdom, he saw himself becoming what he hadn't been before - he drew life from the Father. And then he added: Whoever eats me draws life from me. Actually, the translation is too sanitised - the original language says something like: “devours”, or “chews”.
Let us look at that metaphorically, first, before we consider it sacramentally. It's a graphic metaphor, to say the least - to devour him, to chew him. There is a sense of deep hunger, of intensity, of urgency. He is inviting us to engage with him profoundly, to get inside him, or, rather, to get him inside us, and to draw life from him, just as he draws life from the Father. What he seems to be saying is that, to the extent that we let him love us, and believe his love for us - and that we let it flood our consciousness ... to the extent that we explore his dream for our world and gradually let it captivate and excite us ... to the extent that we let him show us the truth of himself, of ourselves and of our world ... then we become alive in ways we could never envisage - with a new spring in our step and a sparkle in our eye.
But, there's more: We eat him, not only metaphorically, but sacramentally. The Gospel that we heard today said: The bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world. What do we eat, what do we devour, in the Eucharist? He says it's his flesh. It's him in his humanity, and in all his vulnerability. It's his crucified flesh, because that's what the world he loved did to him - what the world that he loves, does to him. That's what we eat: his flesh given for the life of the world, his flesh tortured, and exploited by the world for the life of the world. Eating his flesh given for the life of the world – identifying with him honestly, with intensity and with urgency – engages, too, our vulnerability: loving can be costly.
Still, that flesh given for the life of the world on Friday was the same flesh raised by the Father on the Sunday. Life is strange, isn't it? fascinating, puzzling. Whatever shape it takes, it's life. Whoever eats me will draw life from me.
Homily 3 – 2012
It's vivid, strong language we're hearing today: flesh given for the life of the world, engaging with it by eating that flesh and drinking blood, and the transformation it brings about: drawing life from, living for ever, living in Christ and Christ living in us.
The Christ who, from his point of view, gave his life for the life of the world, in fact had that life savagely taken from him. Who was responsible for that brutal death? Pilate who ordered his execution? The Jewish priests who brought him to Pilate and demanded his death? Judas who betrayed him? The crowd that shouted for his death? The many who simply stood by and did nothing? The disciples who, at his arrest, deserted him in fear? Do we need stop there?
Why did they all do what they did in the way that they did it? Because they were human - like us. Because violence is the world's accepted way to deal with people who threaten or inconvenience us. Self-interest and violence are a universal condition. We might call it: the sin of the world. And it is there in the hearts of us all – in different guises, to different degrees, but there just the same, often unrecognised, hidden under more acceptable labels: common sense, the natural thing to do, self-defence, national interest, the demands of the market, and so on … Those more closely involved in crucifying Jesus were simply the ones through whom the violence and self-absorption present in us all took practical shape.
Yet, from the point of view of Jesus the victim, his death became the most intense expression of the opposite: of his love for this world that killed him. He gave his flesh for the life of the world. And today, at this Mass, he gives to us, complicit as we are in the same violence that killed him, that flesh of his to eat and his spilt blood to wash it down with. We took his life, and through that very sin of ours, he gives us life.
But the process of becoming alive is not mechanical. The bread and wine are sacraments, symbols of Jesus' flesh and blood - symbols that contain the reality they express. They are not the only symbols. We eat the bread and drink the wine – and our eating and drinking are symbols - symbols of, as he put it, our drawing life from him; somehow enabling, again as he put it, our living in him and his living in us.
It is not only the bread and wine that are transformed. We who feast on them do so in the hope that we might be transformed - transformed. Transformed into him… Transformed from our instinctive self-focus, self-protectiveness, our hidden violence, … transformed into people who, like Jesus, deliberately take the option to move beyond self-interest, to abandon the sterile ways of rivalry, opposition and mutual harm, to choose instead to love, and, in the process, to change our world.
Today, as we eat the bread and drink the wine – as we eat his flesh and drink his blood – very conscious of our complicity in the world's murderous ways, we do so together, complicit, now, in the ways of love and inclusion, breaking the one loaf and sharing the one cup. But, whereas our transformation depends totally on Jesus, it depends equally on ourselves – on our choice to co-operate with his Spirit as we find ourselves empowered to love, to forgive, to listen, to dialogue, and to pick ourselves up each time we fall and begin again. As we painfully die to our violent ways, slowly we undergo God.
Homily 4 - 2015
Two tunes have been playing in my head this past week. The louder one, and probably the one most exercising people’s minds, has been the public discussion about same-sex marriage. The other tune has been playing more softly; and I wonder how many others are likely even to have heard it. Yet both reflect a shared interest and closely intertwine; both are concerned, in their different ways, with our quality of life. The lyrics of the second tune are well enough known, at least by Christians like us. One line even warns that life without it is no life at all. Life with it, on the other hand, opens out to the promise of life that never ends, indeed to a life shared with no other than Christ himself, the life that he sources from his Father. We heard that tune in today’s Gospel.
The life that originates in God is love. Love is what everyone, in their different ways, yearns for – though people seek it in myriad places. The nagging question in the back of my mind asks, Will changing the legal definition of marriage affect the amount of love in our nation, the quality of our loving? To me, at least, other issues are secondary. Interestingly, for example, the Royal Commission into Domestic Violence is currently at work in Victoria. I ask myself, Does the legal definition of marriage have any bearing on the incidence of domestic violence in the community?
However we come eventually to legally define marriage, I also wonder whether the community’s attitudes to marriage have already moved well beyond its legal definition, not just on same sex marriage. People’s understanding of traditional marriage seems to have been in virtual meltdown for quite a long period, without much consensus. Is it for life? Is it about commitment, come what may? Is it all that important? Is it about equality? Is it primarily about personal relationship, or about having children? And if it is about children, how important is a stable relationship between biological father and mother? Is marriage about all of these issues, or only about some? And if some, which ones are negotiable, and which are not? And who decides? On most of these issues, do people simply decide for themselves? How do we followers of Jesus react to the concerns of the moment?
As Jesus approached the society of his time, he was concerned to do three things. Firstly, he spelt out, as interestingly as he could, what he saw to be Good News; and he endeavoured to live his message accordingly. Secondly, he called people to change their accustomed ways of seeing things, to convert and to follow him. But he left people free; he did not try to coerce them into doing the life-giving thing, because for him, the life-giving thing was to grow in love – and loving must be free or it is not love. Thirdly, as far as he could, he sought to empower people to change – by approaching them with genuine love, practical respect, with consistent realism and, consequently, with warm compassion.
In today’s confused and troubled world, that may translate like this: As far as possible, enjoy being married [and for those of us who are not currently married, enjoy whatever shapes our choices to love may take in life]; show how committed love makes good sense, despite the struggles in entails; and be prepared to talk about it sensitively to family, friends or politicians when opportunity knocks; be equally ready to listen to what others have to say; avoid the temptation to make others act the way we think they should; and always approach them with genuine love, practical respect, with consistent realism and, consequently, with warm compassion.
Let us be joyfully convinced that following Jesus means somehow living in him and realising that at the same time he also lives in us, drawing life from him, refreshed by his very flesh and blood, drawn inexorably by the hope of living with him for ever – as today’s Gospel so confidently assured us.
Homily 5 - 2018
Over the past three weeks Jesus has said of himself that he is the bread of life, the bread of God, living bread, true bread, bread from heaven. He has claimed that he gives life, eternal life, life for the world, and will raise us up on the last day. He insisted he would give this life to those who believed in him, that he would satisfy the hunger and thirst of all who would eat him as the bread of life, who would eat his flesh, who would drink his blood. He spoke of his flesh and blood as handed over for the life of the world, poured out for the life of the world.
What was he seeking to convey to us by all these challenging figures of speech? What is he telling us? He assumes that we can all be more alive, more fully alive, than we presently are. But what is life? What is eternal life? Would you say you are becoming more alive? more fully alive? And if you would, what do you mean? Is your experience of life changing? Is it improving? Is it becoming more [or less] satisfying? Do you yearn for more – to have more? or to be more?
Does Jesus help us with our answers? He says he gives us his blood. What does he mean? Have you ever given blood? What for? Have you ever had a blood transfusion? What did it do? It seems to have some connection with vitality. Is that what he is talking about? But what sort of vitality? He says he gives us his flesh to eat. We become what we eat. Is that his meaning? He talked about bread of life. He said he offered his flesh for the life of the world, out of love for the world, for people. Is he offering us vitality like his? the capacity to love like he does? to devote our life for the sake of the world?
If it is basically life that he is talking about, then he says that he makes it possible for us to live like that. But he does not live for us. We need to do the living ourselves. He provides the capacity; we make it real. But all this is conditional. For us to live like him, we need to believe in him. We need to trust his way, to live as he shows us through his own living and his teaching. He is not talking about believing things about him. It is much more involving than that. He is talking about relating to him, relating with him, entrusting ourselves to him. To live like he did involves essentially loving like he did.
It is fascinating to look at his language, at how it becomes increasingly vivid as the discussion progresses. He talks about flesh, blood, eating flesh, drinking blood. In fact, his word for eating changes as his talk goes on and means more literally devour. That supposes real intensity, that we want to live like him, with him, in love with him; that we really want to be absorbed in him, assimilated to him, enlivened by him.
Simply to receive Communion seems too weak a way to talk about what it is all about. The symbols, eating flesh, drinking blood, are too stark to think that their vitality and their effect can be measured, for example, simply by the number of times we piously receive Communion. They cry out that we take the symbols seriously. We need to want to devour him, to be radically transformed by him. And that depends totally on our deliberate, desired, conscious, active cooperation with him, and on our determination to live like him, to live in him, and to allow him to live in us – the real him, the nitty-gritty him, the flesh and blood Jesus who was prepared even to be crucified, rather than to back down on loving and forgiving this too often dreadful world – me, you, us, them, everyone!