19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, B August 8, 2021
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Elijah the prophet is depressed, worn out, ready to give up and die. But then he gets up and walks 40 days and 40 nights. What changed? God gave him some hearth cakes – bread – to eat. This bread gave him that strength. But that bread is a mere foreshadowing of the Eucharist. If the symbol is powerful enough to keep him going 40 days, how much more powerful must the real thing be? “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” That’s how powerful, enough to give eternal life.
But it’s not as simple as taking a bite out of a host at Mass. Just before that, Jesus also says “whoever believes has eternal life.” Which is it, eating his flesh or believing? Both. The Eucharist is only helpful if you received with faith. The crowd shows that that faith can be hard to accept. “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? How can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’” We know where the hosts for Mass come from. We buy them from some sisters, unwrap the plastic and put them in the golden bowl. How could we say these pieces of bread actually become God?
Before we get to that claim, we first have to deal with another claim that Jesus makes here. At the heart of the Eucharist – at the heart of all the sacraments – is this claim that Jesus is more than the son of a carpenter. For all his earthly reality as a human being, he was nonetheless a divine person. We’ve now reached the moment in John chapter 6 where the crowd will begin to reject what Jesus is saying… in part because they are all too familiar, too comfortable with what they already know. They can’t seem to accept that he came down from heaven, because he was also born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth.
In response, Jesus lays the real challenge bare: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him.” Last week, Jesus made it clear that believing, that faith takes work. Now he’s making it clear that faith is a gift and without it, you can’t understand what he’s saying. In the gospel of John especially, when people get confused or struggle to understand, Jesus increases the difficulty of what he’s saying. He puts more pressure, uses harder concepts, and becomes more confrontational. Why? To push people beyond indifference; to push them to realize they need help. There is no neutral position and we can’t take the right side with divine help. We need the gift of faith.
So how do we increase our faith? Well, the first thing is the one that’s so obvious we might overlook it. Ask for it. No one can come to me unless the Father draw him. Okay, so ask the Father to draw you to his Son. Jesus promises that faith brings miracles, peace, and that it even creates joy in the midst of suffering. If we want these things, then ask for them. “Give me faith, Father.” Faith that Jesus is real, that Jesus is God, that Jesus loves me personally. Give me faith that Jesus in truly present in the Eucharist, that it really gives eternal life.
Maybe you don’t realize this, but it is possible to want faith and not have it. As I’ve said before, faith is more than an idea – it is a habit, an ability to trust the divine truths that I cannot see for myself. So, we can find ourselves in a position where we want more faith, where we even ask for it, but we recognize that we don’t have it or that we don’t have as much as we want. After we ask for it, what do we do?
Act like you have it. Seriously. Imitate people who do have great faith. The point is not to fool other people into thinking you have faith – that would be dishonest and hypocritical. The point is that faith is a habit and habits require practice. It’s sort of like powering your house. The power has to come from outside, but you do need to have the right wires in place. If we want the joy and peace that come from greater faith, we need put up good wires and take out bad wires.
One form of bad wiring can be seen in the crowd’s over-familiarity with Jesus. When you grow up Catholic, the Sacraments and the Church can become too commonplace. If we repeatedly treat them like something earthly and ordinary, it should not surprise us that we start to believe that they are. It’s hard to have faith that the Eucharist is God himself if I treat it like a cracker. If an alien came down to earth and watched you receive communion, what would he think about what you believe? Would he be able to tell that you think it is a sacred moment?
So often people seem completely uninterested, utterly bored when they receive communion. They don’t even look at the host, they hold up their hands carelessly, they pop the host in their mouth absent-mindedly as they hurry out the door. Has familiarity with the Eucharist led to contempt? To boredom? To a loss of faith? Rip that bad wire out.
And this translates to the whole body of Christ, the Church. Do we act like the Church is the body of Christ or like it is a business? Are we members of the body, or just customers? Are we focused on our own convenience, comfort, and preferences? The Church is not a business. She is not just some non-profit organization that we choose to support or not if we like the way it is run. She is the Bride of Christ and the Kingdom of God. Her sacraments are supernatural encounters, her teachings really are from God himself, and her tradition is guided by the Holy Spirit. But it takes faith to see this, especially in the face of corruption. If we treat the Church like a business, if we respond to changes and challenges like unsatisfied customers, then we should not be surprised when we lose faith that it is anything more than a business.
If you want what the Eucharist offers – eternal life – then receive it with faith. If you want faith, ask for it and then start acting like you have it, even if you don’t. Root out bad habits of irreverence and carelessness towards the Eucharist. Challenge the tendency to treat the parish like a burger king. Build up the good habits: Confession before communion. Receive communion with intentional reverence. Observe silence inside the Church before and after Mass. Act like a member of the Body of Christ, the Church by prioritizing what you can contribute to it instead of what you can get from it.
The Church and the Eucharist are more than they appear, greater even than the bread that sustains Elijah in the desert, but it takes faith to see it. That faith is a gift – ask for it. That faith is also a habit – act on it. Then taste and see goodness of the Lord.