Homily from the Parish Priest for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings for Year A: Isaiah 55:1-3; Romans 8:35-39; Matthew 14:13-21
It’s truly wonderful to see you here at Farm Street today. At this time when many aren’t feeling confident coming into the city and when it’s getting more and more expensive coming by road with the extension and increase in the congestion charge – we’re campaigning for that to be reversed collectively with other churches, faith groups and other businesses, and on behalf of the Church specifically for an exemption for Sunday. So we know how difficult it is to come in at the moment – so thank you for coming.
The Gospel we hear this Sunday is well known but that means we need to listen to it more carefully when we hear it each time. The Church invites us today to reflect more deeply on what coming to Mass really means, what receiving Holy Communion means, what this most central part of our faith, which we are called to celebrate together, is all about. Faith above all in a God who wants to feed us in abundance, who wants to strengthen and nourish us, and through the gift of his body and blood wants to draw us more closely to himself together – gathered together as a Church rather scattered now but drawn to be together.
These last few months have been traumatic and I think we are just entering into the full impact of this upheaval in our lives as society. It is traumatic too for the Christian community. We are scattered – many unable to travel and following us through the livestream, others feeling more and more distanced from the Church, others perhaps forming a group where faith is shared, perhaps built on reading and studying Scripture – a very positive sign of this time. And yet many seem to be saying they have been missing the Eucharist, so central it is to our being Church. We have aimed to bring the Eucharist to those at home through livestreaming. This has in fact increased our congregation threefold. Those tuning in numbered 15,000 in Holy Week with nearly 7,000 on Good Friday and came from all over Britain and from every continent. Now you might say our parish community is 3 times as large. And we would like to hear from those who are joining us on livestream – we really do because we want to make you feel truly welcome among us as a community of faith. A community of faith in Christ, gathered up from the scattered small communities which are forming in the digital world and at home. To be church we are called to be ‘ekklesia’, the gathered assembly, one community of faith where everyone is welcome.
When we gather around the altar at Mass, whether at home or in church, we never do so simply as individuals. When we gather around the altar we are also called to be part of Christ’s body the Church with the mandate to bring others, and especially those at the margins - the unfed, the unnourished, those on the peripheries of the multitude - to meet Christ. What more important time than this for us to show how we are united as Christians as we discern the yearning for the common good of a humanity showing its unity as we emerge from this time of pandemic in which we’ve all been in it together. We are surely seeing a surge of energy to end discrimination for all, Christians and others together showing their anger at the evil of racism, fighting to ensure everyone is treated with the dignity they deserve. How much we see a yearning to respect, to feed, to shelter, those on the edge of the multitude who have lost jobs, livelihoods, and homes too. To go out to them to bring the Table of the Lord to them in their distress. At that Table all must be fed and given the care they deserve as human beings. To take our place at the Table of the 5,000 we cannot simply receive the Eucharist ourselves as individuals in isolation but we are called to live out the Eucharist in the world.
This is faith in the Eucharist, lived out as a Church at the heart of society. Yes, to profess a faith in the Eucharist at this time of great upheaval is quite an undertaking. This is a tough time to be a Christian. Because it is a time to refocus ourselves, it is a time to press the reset button. Coming together to meet Jesus as he feeds the crowd requires us to go away changed. To be truly a member of Christ’s Body to bring about what the Eucharist is all about, where everyone has a place at the supper, and especially those who seem left out of society, in limbo, left behind or consigned to the abyss.
Pope Francis sums this up well: “The Eucharist is not a sacrament ‘for me’; it is the sacrament of the many, who form one body, God’s holy and faithful people… Whoever receives it cannot fail to be a builder of unity, because building unity has become part of his or her ‘spiritual DNA’”. This week we are called as Church, scattered now gathered together and strengthened by the gift of himself, to live out the Eucharist together.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ