Homily from the Parish Priest for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“What I miss above all at the moment is coming to Mass in person and receiving Holy Communion”. Sentiments I’ve heard expressed so often during the pandemic when churches were closed. “Thank God for the livestreaming” – I’d heard that too – “but it’s not the same; it’s no substitute”. Indeed we’ve reached thousands more through our livestreaming facility – that’s why we’re getting it upgraded – but we realise too that, cautiously as the virus is indeed still out there, we want to welcome people back to church in person. Indeed to be Church we need to be physically present. And thanks be to God, gradually, that is now happening, and even invitation to refreshments in the Arrupe Hall or spilling out into the piazza and corridor and Reception foyer, so things are moving back to some new normality. New normality because coming here gathered around the altar and meeting each other in person is what a parish community is all about, what a eucharistic community is all about, what the Body of Christ is all about.
But another phrase I’ve heard during the pandemic from our many volunteers working with the homeless at this time – we have been starved of the eucharist but this is actually living out the eucharist on the streets of London. For me the eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass, is not just what we do here for an hour of our time on a Sunday, or even a couple of hours if you add in the continuation of the eucharist in our sharing with each other over refreshments. Rather the words ‘Go in peace, glorifying the Lord with your life’ is the heart of the eucharist. Nourished, strengthened by his body and blood, we are sent into the world to live out the eucharist.
And we continue this Sunday in this series of readings which will now run throughout August inviting us to deepen our faith in this central mystery and what difference it makes to our lives. For me the eucharist is the greatest gift God can give me. As a priest it is the most important thing I do. Not because it is a ritual, not because I have the opportunity to say some words hopefully of encouragement and maybe challenge to myself and those who listen, but because here in the Lord’s promise “I am the bread of life” I have the very reason to live and to minister in his name. Every dimension of our lives as Catholics is rooted in what the Lord has given us as a memorial of his sacrifice on the cross. The love that he showed us in his broken body is the love he invites us to embrace in our giving of ourselves to others. When we say Amen to receive the broken body, the broken body of Christ, we say yes to sharing that love he has shown us with others around us. The eucharist does not start and end. The Mass is never finished. Rather we live it out in our work, in families and relationships, in our caring for the weakest in society, in our life.
Last week we had the feeding of the multitude – that great miracle which foreshadows that great gift of himself in his body and blood. And so this week – in the wake of that miracle performed – Our Lord begins a series of teachings on the eucharist for his disciples. He reminds his followers of the miracles God worked throughout the Old Testament – miracles which strengthened them for their journey, by referring to the bread given to Moses and their ancestors. Indeed the First Reading from Exodus invites us to think of how the Lord worked his power for a nation in need, through the plagues of Egypt, through Moses the sweetening of the water to quench the thirst of a nation, and then there was the manna given to his people to nourish them in their hunger as they missed the food of their Egyptian sojourn. And now in this new covenant God gives us something even greater still, the gift of himself in the self-gift of his Son.
Through his becoming human and dying for us, through the making present truly and substantially the very body of Christ broken for us, in making present truly and substantially the very blood of Christ spilt out of love for us, we believe we are strengthened on our pilgrimage of life, we learn how to be more fully human as he was perfectly human, we are drawn through this sacramental presence into communion with him and with each other as we proclaim and we live out the central mystery of our faith, the faith that he died out of sacrificial love for us, he rose again, and we proclaim the mystery until – we also believe – he will come again in glory.
At the very heart of the great Eucharistic Prayer the priest proclaims every time he stands at the altar of sacrifice we all proclaim – ‘the Mystery of Faith’. ‘Bread turned into his body’, ‘wine turned into His blood’ – this miracle completes and enshrines the prayer said silently by the priest on all our behalf as the gifts of bread and wine are prepared: “by the mystery – the mystery of this water and wine – may we become participants in the divinity of the one Who shared our humanity”. In the sacrifice of the Mass we embrace the mystery, we proclaim it, and we are called to live it. Each time we approach the altar to receive Holy Communion we say yes to this and so say yes to our Christian calling. Each time we respond “Amen” to those words, which express the central mystery of our faith, ‘the Body of Christ’.
Our Catholic faith centred on the Mass is such a wonderful gift to us. So God forbid if this should ever become our own private devotional life. No, the Eucharist is not – if nothing else – a private matter – because it embraces the whole world. Yes – the Eucharist is about life, the gift of life, and a life shared: a sharing in a communion between peoples, between nations, because each one of us, each human being is created in his image, and so is called to be part of the Body of Christ.
As we hear these gospels from St John on the bread of life during this month we are invited to prepare and to renew our faith in the eucharist. As we come together to celebrate the eucharist we pray that we enter more deeply into the central mystery of our faith – that in his broken body we are given the true meaning of our lives, a life with so many abundant gifts to celebrate and ultimately the gift of life eternal in glory with him.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ