"They all ate and were satisfied"
Luke 9
A Homily For the Solemnity of the Body and
Blood of Christ
Mark Payne, OSB
The apostles suggest to Jesus today that they
send the crowds away while there was still time for them to find
lodging and food. It seemed to make sense. It was already late in
the day and they were all in an out-of-the-way place without
provisions for the night. For Christians reading this story long
afterwards, however, the apostles' suggestion misses the whole
point of who Jesus is and what Jesus can do for us. We might sum
up the Gospel teaching today by saying that if Jesus can't give
it to me then I don't need it and I don't want it.
Yes, we do need a certain amount of food each
day and a reasonable amount of clothing and shelter. We cannot
expect to have these things fall down from the sky to meet our
needs. But with a modest amount of effort we humans can provide
these things for ourselves and even have enough left over for
people who are not able to fend for themselves.
On the other hand, securing our more important
needs is simply not in our control. Peace and justice,
forgiveness and hope, for example are significant human needs
that cannot be manufactured or collected in the field. Most
importantly, the fact that we and all our dearest friends will
die someday is a fact that no human being can escape and the
terrible truth of this fact casts an inescapable dread on the
whole of our lives. This is the problem with the apostles'
suggestion today. Sending people away from Christ so they can
forage on their own as the darkness draws near is exactly the
opposite of the reason why God sent the Lord to us in the first
place.
Without hope of eternal life, with the
corruption of death as the final word on the worth of each of us,
then everything we say or do, everything we humans accomplish is
an utter waste. The modern scientific explanation is that
"survival of the fittest" is the basic game-plan of
creation. Maybe that's way we are all in such a hurry to be
"number one." But even the triumphant survival of some
individuals over the rest of us is short-lived. Every creature on
earth is eventually recycled to provide the raw materials for
nature's next attempt at greatness. That includes, of course, you
and me.
The Bible, however, records that some of our
earliest ancestors had a growing conviction that human life must
mean more than this. They had a premonition that there must be a
God and this God must be well disposed to us and this God will
not tolerate anhiliation to be the last word about us. The story
of our ancestor Abram appearing before Melchizedek today is part
of our growing human hope that there will indeed be more for us,
even much more, than the grave. Melchizedek is called king of
Salem, that is the king of peace, and Melchizedek offers our
ancestor Abram today the gift of bread and wine as both blessings
in themselves and a promise of blessedness yet to come.
How much blessed we humans would finally turn
out to be was utterly beyond the hopes of the Biblical writer, of
Melchizedek and even of Abram and his descendents. The Gospel
today clearly is a last word on this hope of ours. As the
apostles distribute the bread and the fish to the crowds, these
staples of life are the promise and the reality of Jesus' triumph
even over death itself - for himself and for all of his brothers
and sisters. Either this hope of ours for eternal life in Jesus
is true and therefore nothing else really matters except Jesus or
it is false and then absolutely nothing else really matters.
The Paschal cycle is completed with today's
celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ. God's promise that
Jesus' resurrection has plenty of room for each one of us is
repeated everytime we share in this holy sacrament. When things
are going wrong for us, or as each day grows dark, and as the
time of our own death draws inexorably near, we are reassured and
re-energized that the hope of our ancestors is true. Sin, death,
darkness, and despair have no power over us. For on the night he
was betrayed, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it and
gave it to us.