A Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, August 25, 2024
Prince of Peace Catholic Church – 8:00 & 10:00 Masses
Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Ephesians 5:2a, 25-32; John 6:60-69
Video – 8:00 Mass
Audio – 10:00 Mass
Today’s first reading and today’s Gospel reading both speak to us about CHOICE, what we choose to believe, what fundamental truths we choose to accept or to reject. These readings highlight the fact that each of us is free to choose; that God has given each of us free will so as to decide what we believe, how we live our lives, and, ultimately, where we spend eternity.
In our first reading the historical situation is that Moses has just died and Joshua, Moses’ successor, is about to lead God’s chosen people into their promised inheritance, the Holy Land. Joshua, in his first words as leader of God’s people, asks the people to decide whom they will serve, the Lord or some other god? Are you with me or not?
In today’s Gospel reading Jesus is asking a similar question when he asks his murmuring disciples “Do my teachings shock you?” And what is the shocking teaching he’s referring to? He had just doubled down on his teaching on the Eucharist…his insistence that if we are to have his life within us we must eat his flesh and drink his blood.
Like Joshua, Jesus is telling us today that we must each make a decision, a CHOICE, about who we are going to serve, about what we are going to believe.
Let’s face it, Jesus’ teachings are difficult…and in many ways they are shocking. I’d go so far to say that if we are not SHOCKED by His teachings then we’re misunderstanding Him. Jesus’ proclamation on the Eucharist was shocking. His disciples clearly understood that he was speaking LITERALLY, not metaphorically, not symbolically, and it was just too much for many of them to bear.
Jews at the time were forbidden from eating or drinking the blood of animals, so for Jesus to tell them that they must drink his blood was, well, scandalous to say the least. It’s also troublesome today for non-Catholic Christians who refuse to believe that he’s speaking literally in John’s Gospel.
And we know that Jesus did not walk back his words. He didn’t say, wait a minute, I was just speaking symbolically. I didn’t REALLY mean that you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood if you are to have life within you. No, he doubled down and insisted that this was literally true. And as a result of this difficult teaching, we see that many of his disciples left Him and returned to their former ways of life.
The same is true today, isn’t it? Rather than one holy Church, there are about 45,000 Christian denominations. And of these 45,000, it is only the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches that fully accept Jesus’ teaching about the Eucharist. Strangely, while many of these thousands of other ecclesial communities take literally nearly every other verse in the Bible, including those that are MEANT to be understood symbolically, they refuse to take this clear and linguistically supported teaching literally. Sadly, many Catholics don’t accept this teaching either.
Now back to the issue of choice. When many of his disciples leave him over this shocking teaching about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, Jesus turns to the Twelve, to his inner circle, and asks them if they are going to leave too? He asks them what their choice is going to be.
Peter, speaking for the Twelve, gives John’s version of his great confession. Peter says “Master, to whom shall we go?” Even if they don’t fully understand what He’s saying, the Twelve know that Jesus has the words of everlasting life.
So fast forward now to the year 2024 in this wonderful community of Sun City Center, nearly 2,000 years later. We are each asked the same question by Our Lord. Do we believe his difficult teachings, even though we may not fully understand them?
He’s asking each of us, “Do you accept my teachings – ALL of my teachings – given to you through the Sacred Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church, the Church I established on Peter, the rock, the one to whom I gave the keys of the Kingdom? The one who believed that in order for you to have life within you, you must eat my flesh and drink my blood? Do you choose to believe this, or will you go somewhere else?”
Each of us must make a choice to follow, or not to follow, Jesus who reveals himself to us today through his Word and through the teachings of the Church he established. He didn’t come to establish 45,000 denominations, each of which puts their own spin on his teachings. The truth is that He came to establish one holy, catholic and apostolic church on the shoulders of Peter, who promised not to abandon him. Peter, who professed for all of us up and down the ages that Jesus was the Messiah and that He – and He alone – has the words of everlasting life.
And as the Second Vatican Council of our one Holy Catholic Church made abundantly clear, the Eucharist, the real body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ himself, Jesus’ flesh and blood, present among us and for us at every Mass, is the SOURCE AND SUMMIT of our faith. There is nothing greater that we can believe about Christ than that he becomes truly present when the priest, acting in persona Christi – in the person of Christ – pronounces the words of consecration over the gifts of bread and wine and they become truly and substantially the resurrected Christ himself. This is truly a miracle and it’s the greatest gift we could ever receive.
And the other miracle is that if we worthily eat this sacred meal of Christ’s flesh and blood, we become like him. The Church Fathers tell us that by receiving the Eucharist we are conformed to Him. That we, in fact, SHARE IN HIS DIVINITY! That we become like him, divinized and sanctified, in the most radical way possible. DO WE BELIEVE THIS?
Jesus is asking us today to make a choice. Do we believe that he is substantially present among us today in the Eucharist, or do we believe that it is just some sort of symbol of His presence among us, as do the 45,000 other Christian denominations?
We must make a choice to believe or not to believe. To stay with him or to leave in pursuit of a less difficult teaching, a less demanding understanding of who He is and what He has done to rescue us from the power of sin and death.
And if we do believe, do we give Him the respect He deserves by approaching him with true thanksgiving for all He has done for us and fully respecting the conditions set by His Church for receiving Him? Are we approaching the altar in a State of Grace? Do we have sins we need to confess before we receive him? Is our mind elsewhere, or are we focused on the fact that JESUS HIMSELF is in our midst and that we are about to eat his flesh, that we are about to receive the most precious gift anyone in this life could ever receive?
Dear friends in Christ, we each need to make this most important choice. Do we truly believe the teachings of the Church, or do we just go through the motions, picking and choosing those teachings that suit us? Do we reject its difficult teachings or do we accept them? This is the question each of us must answer. And we must answer with the understanding that how we answer has both temporal and eternal consequences. Choose wisely.