June

For the Life of the World

Let us review for a moment what has happened in the special season just gone by. I suppose this is a summary of the summaries! It leads to Sunday’s feast, which is a great remembrance of our salvation.

Holy Thursday: we saw Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, cleaning their feet, wiping off the dirt. Then on Good Friday we saw Jesus refuse the way of riches, honor, and pride, instead of following the way of love. He could have avoided the cross, but love said yes to God instead. It was the highest example of real, lasting love we know of. It showed us who God is, in the flesh.

The Sundays after Easter: After his resurrection, Jesus spoke to us about his sacrifice and his having risen from the dead, showing how these are signs of the Father’s love for the whole world. Then the Ascension. Jesus was going away, back to the Father. He was to take his love back to the Trinity—where it started—thus completing the circle. Therefore, he left us, and if that were the end of the story we would have only memories.

On Pentecost he sent his Spirit into our hearts. We ourselves, his followers, were to receive that Spirit and become his new and continuing body for the life of the world. There is only one condition: that we let go and allow his Holy Spirit dwell in our lives. Gradually we would sense with Spiritual eyes what The Holy Trinity is all about.

How, exactly, are we to let the Holy Spirit find this dwelling place within us? If we look around at our culture, it seems impossible. A lot of our neighbors have thrown away the idea of a soul altogether and even the notion of a God. Others just dive into the flesh pots, so to speak, and by doing so, deny that there is such a thing in them as a depth where some Holy Spirit could dwell.

But we do have such a depth, all of us and each of us. We just need to let go and learn to be loved by this Spirit of Jesus and of his Abba. Then it will occur to us why the Christ had promised the Holy Spirit and then sent it.

However, one unhandy fact remains. We are flesh and blood creatures, not merely spirits. Would Christ have gone away to heaven, leaving his followers to make their own way without him? No. The sacrament of his Body and Blood is the way we join in the complete life of Christ. Just as the Holy Spirit comes together with our spirit, the sacrament of Christ’s body becomes one with our own bodies in a gradual but intimate transformation.

To put it another way, we need Manna if we are to survive (First Reading)! Today’s Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ shows this. The great plan of God could get lost unless there were a Manna-like sacrament to draw our bodies and our spirits into Christ’s presence.

And so, now the Easter picture is complete. Christ remains in the world for all time. He is spiritually and physically present to the world in us, as often as we accept his body and dwell in his Spirit.

That is the reason for this final feast after Easter.

 

Copyright © 2023, John B. Foley, SJ All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

The Eucharist As Sacrifice

Once upon a time there was a Rabbi. Whenever he wanted God's presence, he went to a special place in the woods, lit a fire, said some prayers, and did a dance. Then God would appear to him.

When he died, his disciple carried on the tradition. If he wanted God's presence, he went to the same spot in the woods and lit the fire, but he didn't know the prayers, nor the dance, but it still worked. God came. Then he died. He also had a disciple. Whenever he wanted God's presence, he too went to the same place in the woods, but nobody had taught him how to light the fire or say the prayers or do the dance, but it still worked, God appeared.

In the end, this last one died, but he too had a pupil. One day this pupil wanted God's presence. So he searched for the place in the woods, but couldn't find it. And he didn't know how to light the fire or say the prayers or do the dance. All he knew was how to tell the story. But it worked. He discovered that whenever he told the story of how the others had found God, God would appear.

In essence, this story explains how sacred ritual, liturgy, works. Judaism calls this "making zikkaron". Christians call it “making memorial.” The idea is that a past event can be remembered, ritually recalled, in such a way that it becomes present again and can be participated in. How is this possible? We have no models in physics, metaphysics, or psychology by which to explain this. Like all ritual, it is beyond simple phenomenology. Ritual is best understood through metaphor, through story, as with the tale just told. God appears whenever certain stories get told.

This idea of making memorial can be helpful in understanding a very important aspect of the Eucharist, namely, the Eucharist as sacrifice. Among other things, the Eucharist is a memorial, a ritual re-enactment of Christ’s sacrifice of himself for us. Among all the dimensions of the Eucharist, this one, sacrifice, is perhaps the least understood. How is the Eucharist a sacrifice?

A sacrifice is any act of selflessness, of self-denial, which helps someone else. For example, the mother who freely gives up her own dreams of achievement so that her children might have her needed presence during their critical, nascent years is making a sacrifice for her children. They will mature more fully and healthily because of it. As Christians, we believe that Jesus, not unlike a loving mother, sacrificed his life for us, particularly in the way he gave himself for us in his death. Indeed we believe that we are "saved" by his death, by his sacrifice on Good Friday. But how? How can one person's death help someone else, centuries later?

Through the Eucharist.

The Eucharist, among other things, is a memorial of Jesus' sacrifice for us, of his great act of “being broken,” of giving himself over in love. Properly understood, the Eucharist, as a ritual, gives us another kind of “real presence.” It makes present for us the reality of Christ's dying as well as God's response to that, the resurrection, and invites us to participate in that event. What the Eucharist makes present is not an iconic Christ to be adored or even consumed, but the reality of Christ's dying and rising as an event to be participated in. But how can we participate in an event now long past in history?

Through memorial, through "making zikkaron". When we ritually tell the story of Jesus' sacrifice (in the Eucharistic prayer, the very heart of liturgy) we experience the "real presence" of the event of Christ's dying and rising. Moreover, that reality is given to us so that we might participate in it. How? We participate in Jesus' sacrifice for us when we, like him, let ourselves be broken down, when we, like him, become selfless. The Eucharist, as sacrifice, invites us to become like the kernels of wheat that make up the bread and the clusters of grapes that make up the wine, broken down and crushed so that we can become part of communal loaf and single cup.

Occasionally when St. Augustine was giving the Eucharist to a communicant, instead of saying, “The body of Christ,” he would say: “Receive what you are.” That puts things correctly. What is supposed to happen at the Eucharist is that we, the congregation, by sacrificing the things that divide us, should become the body and blood of Christ. Like the bread and wine, we, the people, are meant to be changed, to be transubstantiated.

The Eucharist, as sacrifice, asks us to become the bread of brokenness and the chalice of vulnerability.

The Most Cherished Gift

We celebrate the body and blood of Christ not as isolated objects of adoration but as food and drink, like the manna in the desert and the water brought forth from a rock.

Jesus makes it very clear how we are to approach his body and blood: “if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you. He who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal.”

The food that we eat every day, and the liquids we drink, become part of our bodies, sustaining them and allowing them to grow, function, and heal.

The food that is the body and blood of Christ does something far greater; it makes us one with God. “The man who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”

This is why the body and blood of Christ signify unity and peace: there is one Christ, and all who eat and drink the body and blood of Christ become one in the one Christ.

“We, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” There is no room for disunity among those who eat and drink the body and blood of Christ.

The mysterious reality of the Eucharist—“My flesh is real food and my blood real drink” (Gospel)—is a puzzle to some, a scandal to others.

It has always been so.

But for those who believe in Jesus’ teaching because they believe in Jesus Christ himself, the Eucharist is, among all his gifts to us, the most cherished and the cause of our deepest gratitude.

U.S. Bishops, The Eucharist and the Hungers
of the Human Family, 1975:18-19.

First Reading
Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a

1. “Do not forget the Lord, your God, … who guided you through the vast and terrible desert … and fed you … with manna.” Can we in this time of racial inequality, gun violence in schools, wars, and climate crisis relate to the Israelites in the desert? What is the manna God gives us now?

2. Are there situations which require blind trust on your part? With that in mind, discuss this line from the First Reading:

The Lord, your God, … brought forth water for you from the flinty rock and fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your fathers.

Second Reading
1 Corinthians 10:16-17

1. “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” Does it sound like the Eucharist is a prize just for good people, or for us all, weak included, that helps us to move forward?

2.“When we eat, we incorporate our food into ourselves. The opposite is true with regard to the Eucharist. When we partake of that bread we are transformed into it.” (Dianne Bergant, CSA, Preaching the New Lectionary: Year A). In your own words, explain what this means.

Gospel
John 6:51-58

1. When Jesus gives us himself in the Eucharist, does he give us just his presence, or does he give it in the action of the whole Paschal Mystery (passion, death, resurrection)? Discuss.

2. We are his body now. What does Pope Francis say Jesus would be doing today with his eyes, ears, heart, arms, legs, and brain to show his love? Implications?

The Lord, offering himself to us in the simplicity of bread, also invites us not to waste our lives in chasing the myriad illusions that we think we cannot do without, yet that leave us empty within. The Eucharist satisfies our hunger for material things and kindles our desire to serve. It raises us from our comfortable and lazy lifestyle and reminds us that we are not only mouths to be fed, but also his hands, to be used to help feed others.

It is especially urgent now to take care of those who hunger for food and for dignity, of those without work and those who struggle to carry on. And this we must do in a real way, as real as the Bread that Jesus gives us. Genuine closeness is needed, as are true bonds of solidarity. In the Eucharist, Jesus draws close to us: let us not turn away from those around us!

Pope Francis homily for Most Holy Body and Blood
June 14, 2020

• For the Church: that through our sharing in the Eucharist, we may be transformed more and more into the Body of Christ
• For deeper communion with Christ: that as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we may take on the mind and heart of Christ and continue the mission of Jesus
• For Christian unity: that Christ’s Body and Blood given for us may heal all the divisions within the Christian community and bind us together into one body in love and service
• For all who cannot receive the Eucharist, particularly those in isolation, in refugee centers, or imprisoned for their faith: that God will strengthen them and make God’s presence known to them through others
• For this Christian Community, many members but one body: that we may be a people of deep gratitude and allow God to continue to build us into a community of faith and love
• For all priests and those being ordained this spring:: that their lives will manifest God's love to all and their service help people experience communion with God and others
• For all who are suffering from famine or drought: that God will nurture them, sustain them on their journey, and supply the assistance they need
• For all who hunger spiritually: that through the manna of God’s Word, they may be nourished and find the way to live in peace and wholeness of life
• For all Eucharistic ministers particularly those who minister to the sick and homebound: that they may grow in faith through their service and be signs of God’s love, healing, and presence to others
• For all who have experienced violence: that God will protect them from further harm, right the injustices that have occurred, and give them hope
• For governmental and civic leaders: that God will give them wisdom to address the issues confronting society, insight into righting the injustices, and words that will unite the human family
• For all who are unemployed: that God will give them courage and hope, sustain them as they wait, and help them find new opportunities for work
• For all who are ill, particularly those with Ebola: that God will send healing to the sick, guide researchers to effective treatments, and give strength and wisdom to those who care for them
• For an end to violence in Ukraine, the Middle East, and all places of warfare: that God will give courage to all who are working for peace, help the voices of those who have experienced injustice to be heard, and turn the hearts toward dialogue
• For all who have died, particularly from disasters, accidents, or the Ebola virus: that they may share in the eternal banquet

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases: Bread that came down from heaven, whoever eats this bread will live forever, Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him
To the point: Jesus’ declaration that he is the "bread that came down from heaven" grounds his further declaration that those who eat "this bread will live forever." Jesus is the divine Word made flesh—a flesh and blood now given to us for food and drink so that we live in communion with him. The core of the mystery of Eucharist is the Son's self-giving that is our eternal Life.

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: The perishable bread God sends from heaven sustains the people who will themselves eventually perish. The promise of the Eucharist is that Jesus feeds us with imperishable food that is his very self so that we remain in him and live forever.
… to experience: We take in food for the sake of nourishment and plea- sure—we receive sustenance and delight. The food Jesus gives us, however, is for more than sustenance and delight—it is an invitation to receive so that we might give as he does.

 

Copyright 2014 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota.
All rights reserved.
Used by permission from Liturgical Press, St. Johns Abbey, P.O. Box 7500 Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500

The Church of Unity

“One bread, one body.” (1 Corinthians 10:17)
Moses instructed his people to remember how their God worked great wonders for them, brought them together, led them through the desert, fed them with a bread from heaven, freed them from slavery, and guided them through vast and dangerous lands.

So it is that we who call ourselves a “new Israel” might recall this as well. What brought us together? What has been our journey? What has led us through the desert and given us food and drink? What liberates us? These are the questions of our unity—our history, our sustenance, our common faith.

The celebration of diversity sounds throughout our communities these days, from Boston and San Diego to Beirut and Santiago, But what keeps us together? What is the cohesion and unity that gives flesh and blood to our faith? If there is nothing that unifies us, what is the point of diversity?

Our body is Jesus Christ. Our source of unity is not Europe or America, not liberal or conservative, not charism or tradition, not white or colored pigment, not male or female, not papist or evangelical. It is Christ.

Corpus Christi, the body and blood of Christ, is the marriage of God and us. This union took place not only in the Incarnation; it is reenacted in our Eucharists, whereby God in Christ is made one with our very flesh, the living sign that God is with and for us now and always.

  “I am the living bread come down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread shall live forever; the bread I give is my flesh for the life of the world.” For Christians there can be no life, if their life is not in Christ.

We often wonder: is there anything that is required of us to call ourselves Catholic, Christian? There is. To deny Christ is to deny our union. To deny that he is the very Word of God made flesh is to deny what we are. To deny that his death and Resurrection have saved us is to reject our cohesion. And to deny his real presence in our prayer together—especially our eucharistic prayer—is to reject our history and common identity.

We may be beset by sin or ignorance. We may fall short of what Christ has called us to. We may be confused by teachings or confounded by canon law, but we remain part of his body. If our particularity is all we have, if we think our individual lives are closed in upon themselves with their own isolated growth apart from the body of Christ, we develop cancerously, like separated and selfish cells.

But if the Eucharist is the celebration of our unity, it is our remembrance, our being remembered, put back together as one body in Jesus Christ who shared our flesh and blood. Our solidarity in this faith is greater than all our differences when we partake of one food and drink to nourish us on our way.

Our Communion lines to the altars of the world have all the splendor of tribes and customs, colors and song, classes and age. But they are processions to the one great gift we share. For this reason the refrain of Father John Foley’s majestic hymn of unity rings true:

One bread, one body, one Lord of all;
one cup of blessing which we bless;
and we, though many, throughout the earth,
we are one body in this one Lord.

First Century Strategies

Christians living in the twenty-first century are heirs of a richly complex and refined tradition. Contemporary understanding of the Eucharist frequently clouds our vision of the challenges faced by our first-century ancestors in the faith and the strategies they employed to meet these challenges.

Jesus’ Homily

Today’s passage reports that Jesus’ comments led his contemporaries to a violent dispute among themselves: “How can he give us his flesh to eat?” (Jn 6:52). No one interpreted this statement literally.

The violent dispute erupts because Jesus once again resorts to “anti-language” (see the commentary for Trinity Sunday). He uses familiar words like “manna” “bread come down from heaven” and “I am ... ” and creates new and jarring meanings. What was he really saying?

One clue is found in the verse that immediately follows today’s reading: “Jesus said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum” (Jn 6:59). It may be best to interpret today’s passage as part of a “midrashic homily” Jesus preached in the synagogue. (The Hebrew word midrash means interpretation or explanation.)

Homilies by definition always explain biblical texts and apply them to life. A homily never was and should not now be a sermon or a speech or a lecture. What biblical text was Jesus explaining? This is not an easy question to answer.

We know that first-century Judeans read the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) in the synagogue. It was divided into 150 sections which were read sequentially over a three-year period A second reading, called the Haphtarah, was drawn from the Prophets. Some scholars hypothesize that a third reading came from the 150 canonical psalms.

The Targumim

A search (for the “lectionary” envisoned above) would be a purely creative-imaginative exercise were it not for yet another ancient body of Jewish literature known as the Targumim (singular: Targum), which are paraphrases of the Hebrew Scriptures in the Aramaic language.

During the Babylonian Exile Israel gradually forgot its Hebrew language and adopted the language the Babylonians spoke: Aramaic or Chaldean. They could no longer understand the Hebrew Scriptures when these were read to them.

In the synagogues, therefore, one person would read from the Hebrew text while another person would translate, on the spot, into Aramaic. Gradually the translations became paraphrases, and in some instances the paraphrases became much longer than the text.

By the sixth and seventh centuries CE, two collections of such Targumim existed: the Babylonian and the Palestinian. The former in general is more literal, the latter more paraphrastic. In either case, scholars use great care in relying on these documents.

Even though they were collected in the sixth and seventh centuries, they do contain concepts that reach back to the time of Jesus.

While many modern believers might insist that Scripture should not be so challenging to understand and interpret, this small excursion into our biblical tradition shows how much more there is to learn.

What does the Eucharist and its relationship to manna mean to you?

Copyright © 1995 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, MN. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321

Commentary by Augustine
My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. (John 6:55)
You see on God’s altar bread and a cup. That is what the evidence of your eyes tells you, but your faith requires you to believe that the bread is the body of Christ, the cup the blood of Christ. In these few words we can say perhaps all that faith demands.

Faith, however, seeks understanding; so you may now say to me:

You have told us what we have to believe, but explain it so that we can understand it, because it is quite possible for someone to think along these lines: We know from whom our Lord Jesus Christ took his flesh—it was from the Virgin Mary.

As a baby, he was suckled, he was fed, he developed, he came to young man’s estate. He was slain on the cross, he was taken down from it, he was buried, he rose again on the third day. On the day of his own choosing, he ascended to heaven, taking his body with him; and it is from heaven that he will come to judge the living and the dead.

But now that he is there, seated at the right hand of the Father, how can bread be his body? And the cup, or rather what is in the cup, how can that be his blood? 

These things, my friends, are called sacraments, because our eyes see in them one thing, our understanding another. Our eyes see the material form; our understanding, its spiritual effect.

If, then, you want to know what the body of Christ is, you must listen to what the Apostle tells the faithful: “Now you are the body of Christ, and individually you are members of it.” (1 Cor 12:27) If that is so, it is the sacrament of yourselves that is placed on the Lord’s altar, and it is the sacrament of yourselves that you receive.

You reply “Amen” to what you are, and thereby agree that such you are. You hear the words “The body of Christ” and you reply “Amen.” Be, then, a member of Christ’s body, so that your “Amen” may accord with the truth.

Yes, but why all this in bread? Here let us not advance any ideas of our own, but listen to what the Apostle says over and over again when speaking of this sacrament: “Because there is one loaf, we, though we are many, form one body.”

Let your mind assimilate that and be glad, for there you will find unity, truth, piety, and love. He says, one loaf. And who is this one loaf? “We, though we are many, form one body.”

Now bear in mind that bread is not made of a single grain, but of many. Be, then, what you see, and receive what you are.

So much for what the Apostle says about the bread. As for the cup, what we have to believe is quite clear, although the Apostle does not mention it expressly.

Just as the unity of the faithful, which holy Scripture describes in the words: “They were of one mind and heart” in God, should be like the kneading together of many grains into one visible loaf, so with the wine.

Think how wine is made. Many grapes hang in a cluster, but their juice flows together into an indivisible liquid.

It was thus that Christ our Lord signified us, and his will that we should belong to him, when he hallowed the sacrament of our peace and unity on his altar.

Anyone, however, who receives this sacrament of unity and does not keep the bond of peace, does not receive it to his profit, but as a testimony against himself.

Sermon 272: PL 38, 1246-1248

Augustine (354-430) was born at Thagaste in Africa and received a Christian education, although he was not baptized until 387. In 391 he was ordained priest and in 395 he became coadjutor bishop to Valerius of Hippo, whom he succeeded in 396.

Augustine’s theology was formulated in the course of his struggle with three heresies: Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. His writings are voluminous and his influence on subsequent theology immense. He molded the thought of the Middle Ages down to the thirteenth century.

Yet he was above all a pastor and a great spiritual writer.

Copyright © 1992, New City Press.
All Rights Reserved.

Discerning the Body

I remember my shock when I first heard this kind of question and observation coming from someone who was clearly a nonbeliever, an outsider:

Do you Christians really believe that you are eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood? That sounds like cannibalism.

Having grown up with a sense of the Real Presence at the heart of my faith, the language of eating flesh and drinking blood had never even hinted at cannibalism to me. But on hearing the question, I realized that, from the outsider's point of view, the question was an obvious one and deserved an answer. I came up with something like this: “We don't think of ourselves as consuming a dead body. The Eucharist is the way the risen Christ makes himself sacramentally available to us. Through this physical sign we encounter the risen Lord really present under the appearances of bread and wine.”

I still think that was a pretty good answer. But now, having studied John 6, especially the part that appears as this Sunday's Gospel, I realize that there is even more to the eating and drinking language in this passage. The context of the “eucharistic discourse” of John 6 entails an important Jewish tradition that still goes largely unnoticed in current teaching and preaching.

Anyone looking for the Eucharist in the Fourth Gospel soon discovers that there is no mention of Jesus' words linking the bread and cup with his Body and Blood in John’s rendition of the Last Supper. In that scene the evangelist has chosen to focus entirely on Jesus' washing of the disciples’ feet. John has chosen another place to elaborate the meaning of eucharistic eating and drinking—the discourse in the Capernaum synagogue just after the feeding of the five thousand and the walking on the water. With the miracle of bread in the wilderness and Jesus’ own discourse about himself being greater than manna setting the stage, the primary background here is the biblical tradition of Moses leading people to the God-given manna in the desert.

Such references evoke a Jewish tradition that, while little known to today's readers, must have been well known to the original audience of this Gospel. It is the tradition that understood manna as a symbol of God's gift of the Torah to his people.*

This Sunday's First Reading from Deuteronomy 8 takes us to the origin of that tradition:

[God] therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna … in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord. (Deut 8:3)

How was God’s word in the Torah like manna? The human spirit hungers for the wisdom of how to live according to the will of God, for knowing what to believe and how to act in ways that find peace with God. Torah, God's self-revelation of God's self and will, is therefore truly bread in the wilderness.

Given this traditional association of manna with the Word of God in the Torah, it is powerful, then, to say that Jesus is the true bread from heaven. Now it is Jesus—the eternal Word made flesh—who is the full revelation of divine communication to the world. To know Jesus, and to receive him as sent by the Father, is to receive the fullness of God's wisdom.

Which is first, then, within this discourse: its wisdom language about eating and drinking, or is it about Eucharist? The best answer seems to be that the discourse is mainly about Jesus being God's Word made flesh, true manna from heaven; and then this Sunday's Gospel joins such an understanding with the Church’s practice of Eucharist. It is in our celebration of the Eucharist especially that we encounter Jesus as God's wisdom made flesh for us. As we read further in the Fourth Gospel, we learn this: to accept Jesus as sent by the Father to serve us means that we are to wash one another's feet, to lay down our lives for one another.

Paul, writing to the Corinthians in our Second Reading, has his own way of speaking of the eucharistic body that points in the same direction. First he asserts that the community's sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ—sharing in the one loaf—makes us one body (1 Cor 10:17). A chapter later, (1 Cor 11:29), he says it is absolutely crucial that we “discern the body.” Here, the context makes it clear that he means “body” in two senses: (1) We need to discern that the bread and wine is the presence of the same Lord who died for us; (2) we need to discern that the community of those who share in this worship are themselves one body, requiring that we reverence one another as the body of Christ and attend to one another's needs.

Copyright © 2001, Dennis Hamm, SJ All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.

Where the solemnity of Most Holy Body and Blood is not observed as a holy day, it is assigned to the Sunday after Trinity Sunday.

Anglicans have certain reservations about this Sunday’s provisions. Many of them would use a set of propers provided for the Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion on the previous Thursday, but few would want its propers to replace those of this Sunday. They also express some reservation about doctrinal feasts (but see Trinity Sunday!) as opposed to the anamnesis of events in salvation history.

Nevertheless, the very genius of Scripture ensures that the readings set forth saving events rather than doctrines. And whatever may be the official status of An Agreed Statement on Eucharistic Doctrine, published in 1971 by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, one can at least go forward with the confidence that many of us talk what is very largely a common language about this subject.

Reading I: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a

This passage comes from a recital of the events of the exodus and of the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert. It recalls especially the trials to which the people were exposed—hunger, thirst, fiery serpents, and scorpions—and the provisions that Yhwh made to relieve them: the water from the rock and the manna.

Paul himself treated the water from the rock and the manna as types of the two great Christian sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion (1 Cor 10:1-4); and in the discourse of the bread from heaven in John 6, part of which will be read as the gospel of this day, the manna is likewise treated as a type of the eucharistic bread.

Responsorial Psalm: 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20

The same selection of verses from Psalm 147 is provided for the second Sunday after Christmas. It is appropriate for any festal occasion, but its particular relevance to Most Holy Body and Blood is found in the second line of the second stanza: “he fills you with the finest of wheat.”

Reading II: 1 Corinthians 10:16 to 17

One might have expected that the second reading for this solemnity would be 1 Cor 10:1-4, in which Paul interprets the manna of Deuteronomy 8 typologically of the Eucharist. Instead, we have a eucharistic passage from a later point in the same chapter.

It is becoming the commonly accepted view that in verse 16, Paul is quoting a traditional eucharistic formula. This is indicated by the quite Jewish expression “the cup of blessing.” The verb “we bless” is also Jewish (berakah) and contrasts with Paul’s usual preference for the Greek equivalent, eucharistein, “to give thanks.”

The idea of “participation” [koinonia] in the body/blood is probably also Pauline, though Hellenistic, and represents an exegesis of the words over the bread and the cup. Koinonia has not merely a symbolic but a strong realistic sense.

“Body and blood” refer not to things in themselves but to an event and a
person—to Christ giving himself in his redemptive death. In Holy Communion he offers real participation in himself as he gives himself to his sacrificial death.

This language draws out explicitly the meaning of his words and actions at the Last Supper.

People have often wondered why the usual order—bread/cup—is reversed here and have sometimes speculated that there were early communities that celebrated the Eucharist in this order. This is hardly likely, for Paul himself cites another traditional formula in chapter 11 with the normal order—bread/cup.

The reversal must be explained from the fact that Paul wishes to give further comment of his own upon the bread/body word and drops the cup/blood word out of the picture.

For verse 17 has to be seen as Pauline comment. And it involves a remarkable shift of sense. The word “body,” used christologically and sacramentally in the traditional formula, is now taken up in an ecclesiological sense.

“We,” the community that participates in Christ’s sacramental Body in the Supper. “Participation in Jesus and his (sacramental) body” becomes identical with incorporation into the church as the Body of Christ (Ernst Käsemann).

Doubtless Paul is led to this exegetical step because of the difficulties at Corinth, which he will elaborate upon in the next chapter. The Corinthians held an all too individualistic attitude toward the Eucharist. For them, it was a guarantee of personal salvation.

For Paul, however, it binds one not only to Christ but also to one’s neighbors, to the Christian community, with all the obligations that entails. The Eucharist has a horizontal as well as a vertical direction.

It was this passage that inspired St. Augustine to write his well-known words: “If you wish to understand the body of Christ, hear the Apostle speaking to the faithful: ‘Now you are the body and members of Christ.’ If you, then, are the body and members of Christ, your mystery is laid on the Table of the Lord, your mystery you receive” (Letter 272).

Gospel: John 6:51 to 58

The bread discourse from Jn 6 has been much discussed in recent years. The problems are: (1) Is the whole discourse eucharistic? (2) Is only Jn 6:51c-58 eucharistic? (3) Is Jn 6:51c-58 a later addition to the text?

It is clear that Jn 6:51c (“and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh”) represents a turning point in the discourse. The first part speaks throughout of the bread from heaven as typified by the manna. “Eating” is then a metaphor for faith.

The word “flesh,” introduced for the first time in Jn 6:51c, could also refer to the Incarnation rather than to the Eucharist, though the words “will give for the life of the world” extend the thought beyond the Incarnation itself to the atoning death.

But when we get to Jn 6:53, which speaks not only of eating the flesh but also of drinking the Blood of the Son of Man, the eucharistic reference is beyond all doubt. This led Bultmann to regard Jn 6:51c-58 as an interpolation by an ecclesiastical redactor.

In the view of the present writer, the discourse is to be viewed as an integrated whole, without resort to the interpolation hypothesis. The background of the whole chapter is the early church’s celebration of the Eucharist proper in the context of a meal.

The first part of the discourse, down through Jn 6:51b, which focuses on the bread from heaven, is, we would suggest, a meditation on the agape. 

The second half, Jn 6:51c-58, is a meditation on the Eucharist proper and is based on a Johannine tradition of the institution narrative.

Looked at from another perspective, the whole discourse outlines the events of salvation history, the coming of the Christ as the bread from heaven into the world in the Incarnation (Jn 6:26-51b), the surrender of himself in his atoning death (Jn 6:51c), the availability of his surrendered life as the nourishment of the faithful in Holy Communion (Jn 6:53-58).

John does not regard the sacrament as a thing in itself, detached from the total saving event of Christ, but as the means by which this saving event is constantly made available for present participation in the life of the church.

We note, too, how in Johannine idiom the double aspect of the Eucharist expressed in the earlier institution narratives (Paul and the Synoptists) is preserved.

The Eucharist makes the past present for participation (“flesh” and “blood” referring back to Christ’s death on Calvary), and it makes the future (“I will raise them up at the last day”; “will live because of me”; and “will live for ever”) equally present (“has eternal life”).

Note also that the eucharistic part of the discourse does not lose sight of the manna typology: “not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died.”

 

Copyright © 1984 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. Used by permission from The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321

In cycle A, the readings focus on the Body of Christ and upon bread. On Holy Thursday, the Church commemorated Christ's gift of himself at the Last Supper as one theme among several. As the Church enters back into the ordinary action of God, our attention is drawn to the central role that the Eucharist plays in our lives week by week. In gathering for the Eucharistic liturgy each Sunday, we reconnect with the source of our life and our mission to be the Body of Christ in this time and this place.

The Book of Deuteronomy recalls Moses' teaching at the end of the sojourn from Egypt to the promised land. During this time, the people were freed from slavery, guided through the desert land, and faced many hardships, including thirst and hunger. Throughout these times, God guided and provided them with water from the rock and manna to eat. The physical suffering was a sign of their inner struggle and hunger. From where would they get life?

Manna became a sign in the Jewish tradition of the wisdom of God. As people hunger for direction, purpose, and life, God's wisdom is the source of life and meaning. The Torah is the self-revelation of God (who God is) and God's will for humanity (commandments). Seeking life from other sources will lead to disappointment. Seeking to know God will provide life and all that one needs, even in the face of trials and hardships. People live “by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.”

A second aspect of Moses' speech is the importance of remembering all that God has done for us as a community and individually. Our contemporary culture is very future-oriented. What are your plans? What challenges need to be faced today? The scriptures envision the future growing out of what is already. God, who has been faithful in the past, will be faithful today and tomorrow. One can look forward confidently because God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. God's care, mercy, and love never change.

The context for the second reading is that it follows the admonition to avoid idolatry, particularly meat that has been sacrificed to idols. Paul challenges the Corinthians to live fully as Christians. The "participation" in the body and blood of Christ has two levels of meaning. First, it is a participation by consuming the body and blood of Christ in communion. In receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, one participates in the life of Christ. One takes the life of Christ into oneself. It is not only a reception of Christ but also a participation in the dying and rising of Christ. One joins the life of Christ in his self-gift of himself.

Secondly, it is also a participation in the Christian community as the Body of Christ. The one loaf and the one cup are symbols that each person shares in the common life of the Body of Christ. All who share in the loaf and cup share a common life together and are members of each other. In this context, participants are part of the living Body of Christ today and called to live as part of a body, a community.

The Gospel passage comes from the end of the Bread of Life discourse. The language of eating and drinking would have shocked the original audience. Jews maintained a strict practice of avoiding contact with blood. Jesus, though has the connection between the manna and the self-revelation of God (presented in the Deuteronomy passage) as the background for saying that he is the Living Bread come down from heaven. To be nourished by Jesus, each disciple is called to live like Jesus and act like Jesus. This includes loving God and neighbor, forgiving enemies, washing one another's feet, and laying down one's life for each other. Participation in the Eucharist is not simply consuming the Body and Blood of Jesus and being content with oneself. Being a Eucharistic people demands both a belief in God’s presence and a commitment to living like Jesus each day.

The reflection that Jesus offers summarizes the salvation mystery. Jesus came into the world as the Living Bread to reveal God. Jesus lovingly gave himself for others, even surrendering to death. Jesus is risen and present in the Eucharist, giving eternal life to all who believe.

Themes:

• Eucharist
• Body of Christ
• Church as Community
• Christian Unity

Reflection Questions:

• From which sources do you draw life?
• How has God been active in your life? For what are you grateful?
• How do disciples participate in the Body of Christ? What challenges are there for you in being part of the Body of Christ?
• How is Jesus a revelation of God in your life?
• What will participating in the Eucharist mean to you?

Prayer Suggestions:

• For the Church: that through our sharing in the Eucharist, we may be transformed more and more into the Body of Christ
• For deeper communion with Christ: that as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we may take on the mind and heart of Christ and continue the mission of Jesus
• For all who cannot receive the Eucharist, particularly those in isolation, in refugee centers, or imprisoned for their faith: that God will strengthen them and make God’s presence known to them through other
• For all who are suffering from famine or drought: that God will nurture them, sustain them on their journey, and supply the assistance they need
• For Christian unity: that Christ’s Body and Blood given for us may heal all the divisions within the Christian community and bind us together into one body in love and service

In the Gospel, Jesus encourages us as follows: “Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid.”

God pays attention to each of us. God knows us each in the tiniest detail!

A conclusion follows. See what you think of it:

Each of us is created to be a place where God’s love can dwell.
It follows that we will never be truly human unless the greatest value in each of our lives is to receive the love of God and to carry it to the people around us.

Our culture would never buy such a proposition. On television we see people seeking ease, beauty, convenience, pleasure and so on. Quite often on broadcast channels, cable channels, and now on subscription programs, one could conclude that the human person is made for one purpose only: sex. Without realizing it, commercials are built to encourage the seven Capital Sins (pride, gluttony, avarice, lust, sloth, envy and anger). Jot that list down, put it by your television and put a check behind each one when it is promoted.

Alright, we human beings do get attached to many things or fascinated by them. But if each of us is created to be a place where God’s love can dwell, then any of these fascinations might be left aside if it begins to take over God’s place. If I am attached to wealth, or my stamp collection, or my good looks, or drugs, or even my mate—in a way that makes God’s love take second (or third or fiftieth) place, then my life is disordered and I am headed for a fall.

How do you react to this proposal? Personally, I used to react to it with confusion and resistance. “You mean I am to love God only and not care about my friends, my family, music, sports, food, health, etc? Not care about anything except God?”

No.

Healthy love of all these things has its roots in love of God. Everything gets its own individual value from the indwelling of God within it. Each person, each blade of grass receives its full value of love because it proceeds from God’s gentle hand.

Whoever takes this proposition seriously will live a full human life. But I can hear the reader saying immediately that this is too difficult. So many things get in the way. Have a look through your life and see how often you forget God the source. “Leave me, I am a sinful man,” Peter once said to Jesus in the boat, remembering that he had actually deserted Jesus at least three times. How many times have you and I done likewise?

So, does the above proposition really apply just to those who never sin?

Not at all. “If you sin, I will not leave you, I will love you,” God has said throughout the ages. The cross of Jesus is the ultimate statement of that truth. God’s love remains constant and dear, in spite of the rampant sin in all of us and each of us. His love will help us get closer to the goal.

Let us rejoice, then. No matter how many hairs we have on our head, God’s love remains to be let in.

A Meta-Narrative of Consolation

Several years ago, I was at a symposium at which we were discussing the struggle that many young people have today with their faith. One of the participants, a young French Canadian Oblate, offered this perspective:

I work with university students as a chaplain. They have a zest for life and an energy and color that I can only envy. But inside of all this zest and energy, I notice that they lack hope because they don’t have a meta-narrative. They don’t have a big story, a big vision, that can give them perspective beyond the ups and downs of their everyday lives. When their health, relationships, and lives are going well, they feel happy and full of hope; but the reverse is also true. When things aren’t going well the bottom falls out of their world. They don’t have anything to give them a vision beyond the present moment.

In essence, what he is describing might be called “the peace that this world can give us.” In his farewell discourse, Jesus contrasts two kinds of peace: a peace that he leaves us and a peace that the world can give us. What is the difference?

The peace that the world can give to us is not a negative or a bad peace. It is real and it is good, but it is fragile and inadequate.

It is fragile because it can easily be taken away from us. Peace, as we experience it ordinarily in our lives, is generally predicated on feeling healthy, loved, and secure. But all of these are fragile. They can change radically with one visit to the doctor, with an unexpected dizzy spell, with sudden chest pains, with the loss of a job, with the rupture of a relationship, with the suicide of a loved one, or with multiple kinds of betrayal that can blindside us. We try mightily to take measures to guarantee health, security, and the trustworthiness of our relationships, but we live with a lot of anxiety, knowing these are always fragile. We live inside an anxious peace.

As well, the peace we experience in our ordinary lives never comes to us without a shadow. As Henri Nouwen puts it, there is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life so that even in our most happy moments there is something missing. In every satisfaction there is an awareness of limitation. In every success there is fear of jealousy. In every friendship there is distance. In every embrace there is loneliness. In this life there is not such a thing as a clear-cut, pure joy. Every bit of life is touched by a bit of death. The world can give us peace, except it never does this perfectly.

What Jesus offers is a peace that is not fragile, that is already beyond fear and anxiety, that does not depend upon feeling healthy, secure, and loved in this world. What is this peace?

At the last supper and as he was dying, Jesus offered us his gift of peace. And what is this? It is the absolute assurance the we are connected to the source of life in such a way that nothing, absolutely nothing, can ever sever—not bad health, not betrayal by someone, indeed, not even our own sin. We are unconditionally loved and held by the source of life itself and nothing can change that. Nothing can change God’s unconditional love for us.

That’s the meta-narrative we need in order to keep perspective during the ups and downs of our lives. We are like actors in a play. The ending of the story has already been written and it is a happy one. We know that we will triumph in the end, just as we know that we will have some rocky scenes before that ending. If we keep that in mind, we can more patiently bear the seeming death-dealing tragedies that befall us. We are being held unconditionally by the source of life itself, God.

If that is true, and it is, then we have an assurance of life, wholeness, and happiness beyond the loss of youth, the loss of health, the loss of reputation, the betrayal of friends, the suicide of a loved one, and even beyond our own sin and betrayals. In the end, as Julian of Norwich says, all will be well, and all will be well, and every manner of being will be well.

And we need this assurance. We live with constant anxiety because we sense that our health, security, and relationships are fragile, that our peace can easily disappear. We live too with regrets about our own sins and betrayals. And we live with more than a little uneasiness about broken relationships and loved ones broken by bitterness or suicide. Our peace is fragile and anxious.

We need to more deeply appropriate Jesus’ farewell gift to us: I leave you a peace that no one can take from you: Know that you are loved and held unconditionally.

One in Christ

“God is the strength of his people,” the guide and protector of your people, the one who keeps us secure from this world’s uncertainty (Ps 28:8). We should not be afraid of anything because “the Lord is with me, like a mighty champion” (Jer 20:11).

The poor and lowly are special objects of protection.“See, you lowly ones, and be glad … for the Lord hears the poor, for he has rescued the life of the poor” (Responsorial Psalm). The special care of the poor is a sign to all of us that God is our strength, for it means that God is not influenced by the judgments of the world.

The world might abuse and ignore the poor and lowly, but God hears their cry and rescues their lives. The riches of this world might be for a select few, the rich and powerful, but the gracious gift of Jesus Christ abounds for all.

So do not let men intimidate you. Our God is God of the poor and lowly, and in him, we his children live in safety.

In the Old Testament God reveals himself to us as the liberator of the oppressed and the defender of the poor, demanding from man faith in him and justice towards man’s neighbor. It is only in the observance of the duties of justice that God is truly recognized as the liberator of the oppressed.

Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World, 1971:30.

First Reading
Jeremiah 20:10-13

1. Suffering can lead to resentment, bitterness, and anger. Who do you think enabled Jeremiah to not only endure his suffering but also get beyond it and all the negative emotions that came with it?

2. How can trust help you handle a situation when you are surrounded by “terror on every side”? How can you build this trust? Should you wait for “terror” to arrive before you start trusting?

Second Reading
Romans 5:12-15

1. Paul tells us in this reading that “the gift is not like the transgression.” Does God’s mercy wipe out or destroy sin and go far beyond the forgiveness that we all need?

2. Discuss the fact that proclaiming the gospel brings some suffering with it. If you let your sufferings be absorbed into Christ’s do you think they acquire saving significance for the community or for those you love?

Gospel
Matthew 10:26-33

1. If Christ says to “speak in the light” that which he has said in darkness, is that speaking meant to dispel the darkness? Can you “proclaim” the Good News today “from the housetops”? What does that mean in terms of ending racial bias?

2. “And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” What does Pope Francis say about fear to the people in the middle of a war in South Sudan? Was Francis “speaking in the light”?

I gather here with you in the name of Jesus Christ, the God of love, the God who achieved peace through his cross; Jesus, the God crucified for us all; Jesus, crucified in those who suffer; Jesus, crucified in the lives of so many of you, in so many people in this country. … Jesus knows your anguish and the hope you bear in your hearts, the joys and struggles that mark your lives, the darkness that assails you and the faith that, like a song in the night, you raise to heaven. Jesus knows you and loves you. If we remain in him, we must never fear, because for us too, every cross will turn into a resurrection, every sadness into hope, and every lament into dancing.

Pope Francis homily at Mass in South Sudan
Feb. 5, 2023

1. For the Church: that we who have died with Christ in baptism, may recognize our dignity in being children of God, and sisters and brothers to one another

2. For wisdom: that we may embrace the paradox that our efforts to control life produces no results while surrendering to God will provide abundant life

3. For the grace of insight: that we may love our spouse and family as God loves them and support them in responding to all that God asks of them

4. For the grace of hospitality: that we may welcome all who enter our lives as we would welcome Christ with great love and generously sharing our time and talents with them

5. For the grace of perseverance: that God will give strength and hope to all who suffer because they practice the values and principles of the Gospel

6. For the grace to live the Gospel: that we may love God with our whole heart and strength and learn to love everyone in our lives as God loves them 

7. For a reordering of our pursuits: that God will free us from idolatrous struggles for power, fame, social status, and possessions and help us find fulfillment in loving service and life-giving relationships

8. For all who have recently been baptized: that they may continue to die to their old way of life and experience God’s new life drawing them into greater virtue and compassion 

9. For Pope Leo and all who will benefit from the Peter’s Pence collection: that God will strengthen and sustain him, and help him to be able to respond to all who request his assistance during times of famine, disease, or disaster 

10. For all who called to prophetic ministry; that they may bring forth words of truth from their prayer and speak those words effectively so that the powerful will be disquieted and the poor and suffering will find hope 

11. For all who are struggling with addictions: that God will free them, help them find the assistance they need, and restore them to their families 

12. For all who suffering, particularly from Ebola: that God will give them strength, speed the medical care they need, and guide all who are caring for them

13. For all youth: that God will guide them through the challenges and confusion of these days and help them grow to their fullest potential

14. For care for our common home: that we may recognize God’s gift of earth and its resources, and work to preserve them for the good of the human family 

15. For the gift of Peace: that God will preserve the ceasefire, bring an end to violence in Ukraine, open opportunities for dialogue and negotiation

Providence

Do not be afraid of them. (Matthew 10:26)
The objects of our fears usually have names: something, some event, some person. They are the things we worry or fret over: the precious possessions we might, like Job, be divested of; the health of body that, like Job’s, could disappear; the loved ones we might lose.

We know the threats we fear. We see them in nightmares, muster our forces against them, plan our defenses and counterattacks.

Yet in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus advises us not to fear the things or people who can harm the body. God attends to the needs of the sparrow, knowing every one that drops to the ground. As for us, every hair on our head is counted. We are not to worry.

The most fearless person I have known took these words of Jesus seriously. Physical discomfort, strife, censure, disappointment, foolishness in the eyes of the world, none of these could intimidate her. Even the sight of violence, whether in ugly war or mean streets, seemed not to daunt her.

She once saw a rape in progress. She did not try to hide, did not worry or fret. She simply pulled her old Volkswagen over to the sidewalk close to the sordid scene and looked at the man—his foot on the stomach of his victim. He was frozen by her light, by her sight. He insisted that she leave, escape, mind her own business. Yet she stayed with her terrible light, her fearless gaze.

After many minutes, the rapist ran. And she, with the victim, came to me and my secure community to seek help.

This woman had no fear of those who deprive the body of life. It was only later that she would fear the enemy that can destroy the soul.

After years of courageous service and stark poverty, after enduring dangers to health and safety, she came to face a deeper darkness. It was something within, a crisis of meaning, a questioning of love itself. She wrote in the journal of her last retreat:

I felt horribly maimed inside: resigned, reduced to a very twisted, minimal sort of living, going through the motions of kindness out of habit, without hope that any kindness of mine could any longer bear real fruit.

Trying to love, because there still seemed some truth in love but mostly failing in real love for all my trying.

And all around me the relentless pressure of everyone else’s pain, making my own seem so trivial. … I come to this time in life gasping for God as if for air, needing desperately some tangible sense of God’s presence with and in me.

My life only makes sense if God is alive at the center of me.

It was only a little “shoot of hope lifting up amid the rubble” that she could mount against this enemy not of the body, but of the soul. “Although I am still afraid to trust the fragile reality of this experience, I think that God’s love is being kindled again at the core of me. Oh, may it be so.”

The last words of her journal, inspired by Archbishop Oscar Romero, spoke her desire to give that tiny bud of hope, it being all she had, to God. She took as her own the prayer of Christ who died that others might live. “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” From there she began her final, most daring journey.

And she was accompanied on it.

Secrecy and Openness

For all practical purposes, there was no privacy in ancient village life. Everyone minded everybody else’s business. Crowds followed Jesus even when he sought out deserted places (Mt 14:13).

Village children were trained to spy out the secrets of other families while keeping the secrets of their own families intact.

The common suspicion in this society is that when one does not know what others are up to, they must be up to no good. They surely must be plotting something that would damage everyone in the village.

Jesus chided his disciples for trying to keep the children away from him (Mt 19:13-15) because he didn’t want to create the impression that he was trying to hide something.

Given the prevalence of secrecy and deception in this society, how could one ever know when to believe another person?

People resorted to various strategies to persuade others that they were indeed telling the truth. One strategy was to call God as witness.

Ruth seeks to assure her mother-in-law, Naomi, that she truly intends to remain with her rather than return to her family by saying: “May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you” (Ruth 1:17).

The fact that one of the commandments prohibits summoning God to witness a lie (“You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God …”; Ex 20:7) suggests that even oaths did not guarantee that truth was being told.

Today’s Gospel is good news indeed: God the patron will uncover everything that is covered and will reveal all secrets (Mt 10:26). To enjoy these benefits, one had best acknowledge publicly that Jesus is God’s favored broker (Mt 10:32).

God Given Honor

Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel (6:1-18), Jesus criticized the Pharisees who drew attention to their fasting, almsgiving, and praying in order to be seen by others and thereby to win honor from the crowds.

Although the Pharisees behaved in culturally acceptable fashion, Jesus urges his disciple to do these same good deeds “in secret” (Mt 6:1-18).

With this advice, Jesus redefines honor, his culture’s core value. Honor is a public claim to worth, and a public acknowledgment of that claim. The Pharisaic almsgiving, prayer, and fasting behavior is normal and expected.

Jesus teaches rather that honor bestowed by God is far superior to that which humans give. Good deeds to win honor from God are called for rather than from human beings!

Here is yet another example where Jesus’ teaching is counter-structural rather than counter-cultural. He doesn’t discard honor, which would be a counter-cultural move. Rather he retains honor but redefines it by showing that God determines what is truly honorable.

Americans cherish their privacy. They sue tabloid newspapers that invade it. They are shocked when they learn of the existence of storehouses of information gathered without their knowledge and consent about their spending habits, their financial situations, and the like.

How would Americans respond to Jesus’ good news that all secrets will someday be revealed?

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body. (Matthew 10:28)

Thanks be to that grain of wheat who freely chose to die and so be multiplied! Thanks be to God’s only Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for whom the enduring of our human death dwas not a thing to be scorned if it would make us worthy of his life!

Mark how alone he was before his passing: his is the voice of the psalmist who said, “I am all alone until I depart from this place”—a solitary grain that nevertheless contained an immense fruitfulness, a capacity to be multiplied beyond measure. (Gospel)

How many other grains of wheat imitating the Lord’s passion do we find to gladden our hearts when we celebrate the anniversaries of the martyrs!

Many members have that one grain, all united by bonds of peace and charity under their one head, our Savior himself, and, as you know from having heard it so often, all of them form one single body.

Their many voices can often be heard praying in the psalms through the voice of a single speaker calling on God as if all were calling together, because all are one in him.

Let us listen to their cry. In it we can hear the words of the martyrs who found themselves hard pressed, beset by danger from violent storms of hatred in this world, a danger not so much to their bodies which, after all, they would have to part with sometime, but rather to their faith.

If they were to give way, if they should succumb either to the harsh tortures of their persecutors or to love of this present life, they would forfeit the reward promised them by the God who had taken away all ground for fear. Not only had he said: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul.” He had also left them his own example.

The precept he had enjoined on them he personally carried out, without attempting to evade the hands of those who scourged him, the blows of those who struck him, or the spittle of those who spat on him. Neither the crown of thorns pressed into his head nor the cross to which the soldiers nailed him encountered any resistance from him.

None of these torments did he try to avoid.

Though he himself was under no obligation to suffer them, he endured them for those who were, making his own person a remedy for the sick. And so the martyrs suffered, but they would certainly have failed the test without the presence of him who said: “Know that I am with you always, until the end of time. ”

(Expositions of the Psalms 69, 1: CCL 39:930-931)

The Fear That Frees

Fear God? This Sunday's Gospel flies in the face of what many current preachers and teachers take for granted is their task: to help people get over their fear of God.

Jesus says just the opposite. On the one hand, after predicting a time in which his disciples will experience their state as being like “sheep in the midst of wolves” (Mt 10:16), undergoing scourgings, being handed over to death by family members, Jesus says not to be afraid of such people. They can only kill the body but cannot touch the soul. On the other hand, Jesus says, “Be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” In other words, fear God. But rather than leave us with that bald statement, Jesus hastens to add a thought “on the third hand”: God whose eye is on the sparrow, cares even more for you. Indeed, he even counts the hairs on your head. So do not be afraid. You are worth much more than a whole flock of sparrows.

Did the third hand take away what the second hand gave? Jesus is saying that the One who holds the ultimate power over you is the One who loves you the most. How, then, does exhortation to fear God apply? Jesus is here simply recalling a theme deep in the Hebrew tradition, the intimate connection between fear and love of God (see Deuteronomy 10:12; Psalms 33:18; 103:11,17; 118:4; Prov 16:6). What is meant by fear in these contexts is a complete awe and reverence for the Creator, such that one always acts out of profound respect for this Maker, Rescuer, Sustainer, and Judge of all.

If “fear” of God has such a positive meaning, why, then, does Scripture insist on negative words that are best translated “fear” in this case? Analogy may help. Every parent wants to instill in a toddler a healthy fear of fire, deep water, and automobile traffic. Not to respect the danger of such things is to be dangerously out of touch. This is not the craven fear that would keep the child from eventually learning to cook, to swim, and to drive a car. It is a healthy fear that instills a respect for the power of such things. Similarly, biblical fear of God is a deep sense of God's otherness and ultimacy, such that all of our actions are governed by our wonder and respect for this powerful Other.

Perhaps a more helpful analogy is the fear we have of offending those we love the most. Are we not deeply pained when we discover that a word or act of ours has hurt a parent, a child, or a good friend? And do we not fear offending them? That's the fear Jesus would have us feel toward the Father. When our love life is governed by this fear of God, we discover that we really have nothing to be afraid of. “Perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18).

Reading I: Jeremiah 20:10-13

This reading has clearly been chosen to match the Gospel, which speaks of the persecution that the apostles will encounter on their mission. Jeremiah was preeminently the prophet who suffered persecution because of his prophetic activity.

His fate influenced the development of the later Jewish view that rejection, persecution, and martyrdom were inseparable from the prophetic vocation, a view echoed in a number of dominical sayings (Lk 11:51; Lk 13:33-34; Mk 12:1-9).

To be a bearer of the word of God means to suffer, because that word inevitably encounters hostility and rejection.

It is illuminating that apparently, according to the sayings of the Lord referred to above, Jesus regarded his own fate as the culmination of the rejection of the prophets and their message.

But it was Paul, more than any other New Testament figure, who regarded Jeremiah as a model for his own apostleship.

Certainly Paul regarded suffering as the supreme manifestation of the cross in his own apostolic ministry (see especially the catalogues of his sufferings in Second Corinthians [2 Cor 4:7-12; 2 Cor 6:3-10; 2 Cor 11:22-33]).

 
Responsorial Psalm: 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35

Psalm 69 is one of the great passion psalms of the Old Testament, second only to Psalm 22 in its influence upon the passion narratives of the Gospels. The final couplet of the first stanza of this responsorial psalm is cited by the Fourth Gospel (John 2:17) in connection with the cleansing of the temple. If the Church applied it to the Lord’s passion, it is equally applicable to the fate of Jeremiah in today’s liturgy.

 
Reading II: Romans 5:12-15

In Romans 5-8, Paul is expounding the liberating effect of Christ’s redemptive deed—it brings freedom from wrath, from sin, from the law as a means of salvation, and from death.

Here the Apostle enunciates our liberation from sin and death by a comparison of Christ and Adam. Each wrought a deed with momentous consequences.

Adam

• Disobedience (equals trespass) 
• Sin 
• Death 

Christ

• Obedience (death on the cross)
• Free gift, grace
• Life

Although there is an antithetical correspondence (Adam is called the “type” of Christ), the correspondence is transcended in a “much more.”

The caption at the head of the reading is unfortunately ambiguous: “God’s gift to us is nothing like our sin against him.” This could suggest that our sin is much greater than God’s grace.

But Paul means it the other way around: God’s grace is much greater than our sin.

It was easy enough to introduce sin and death upon the tabula rasa of human life, but much more difficult to eradicate them after they had been introduced.

We have to guard against reading later theological ideas into Paul’s statement about the fall. He does not say that Adam introduced into human life a hereditary trait that is henceforth transmitted biologically.

Death, we are told, spread to all members of the human race, not because Adam sinned or because they sinned “in Adam,” but because all sinned like Adam.

Adam, as it were, opened the door to sin and death; ever since, sin and death have been prowling around, and all persons have fallen under their clutches because they have succumbed to sin. Adam created the environment in which all would sin and would therefore come under the dominion of death.

Nor must we interpret the passage so as to mean that physical death is, in a crude and mechanical sort of way, a punishment for sin, even for actual sin. (If it is punishment for “original sin,” such a view is even more deterministic, and ultimately Gnostic.)

Rather, “death” is to be understood theologically as the theological consequence of sin. Death means separation from God, and separation is the consequence of sin. Physical death is not a punishment but a biological inevitability.

For human beings, however, it is existentially the final revelation of their utter aloneness in a world in which they have cut themselves off from God by sin.

 
Gospel: Matthew 10:26-33

This is a continuation of the Matthean missionary charge to the Twelve, the beginning of which we read last week. As already indicated, this is a challenge to fearless proclamation in the face of persecution and an assurance of God’s care for his witnesses and of their ultimate vindication.

The first saying (“nothing is covered”) occurs in various contexts in the Synoptists. Here it is applied to the apostolic preaching. Its original application (see Mark) was probably eschatological: the kingdom of God, which is operative in a hidden way in Jesus’ ministry, will at the end be made visible to all who see.

Matthew is rather fond of the body/soul contrast, which is not typical of Scripture. It represents popular Hellenistic language, not a systematically thought-out anthropology.

Who is the one who can cast into Gehenna (RSV: “hell”)? The Father? Christ? Satan? All three interpretations have found their advocates.

The context, however, suggests that Matthew refers it to the Father, for it is the Father who is able to let the sparrows fall to the ground. The protection of the witnesses is contingent upon their faithful testimony. 

“You are of more value” is not a general statement about the value of human personality; it is an assurance for the messengers. While they are on duty delivering their message, they will be guarded, but even this does not exclude martyrdom. One way or another, the message will be delivered. That is what is important.

In other synoptic versions of the final saying (v. 33), a distinction is drawn between Jesus and the Son of man, though the relation between the two figures is one of functional identity.

For the earlier tradition, Jesus was a figure on earth, and the Son of man was a transcendent figure in heaven. The resurrection revealed their identity, and Matthew carries this to its logical conclusion by substituting “I” for the Son of man on the transcendent side.

The apostle’s testimony on earth, whether given or shirked, will determine his fate at the end.

The whole section is an exhortation to faithful and courageous testimony even in the face of suffering and persecution, presumably a very relevant message for Matthew’s Church.

The first reading from the Second Book of Kings and the Gospel both draw attention to the prophetic ministry and the virtue of hospitality. Elisha is a central figure in the Second Book of Kings. He is the successor to Elijah, whom he saw depart in the fiery chariot (II Kings 2: 9ff) Jesus also has aspects of the prophetic ministry displayed in his life.

The ministry of prophets is often confused with various preconceptions. Some envision prophets as foretelling the future. Others present them as mystical figures with powerful manifestations. Finally, some emphasize the unique lifestyles that they live. All of these miss the central role of the prophet.

Prophecy is not about foretelling the future as with a crystal ball. The prophets speak the truth, and the truth has consequences. If you continue this path, pain, and suffering will result, but if you change, blessings and joy will fill your life. The prophets have two vantage points from which they speak. On one side is destruction: your actions, greed, and rejection of God will bring great suffering. Suffering, though, is not the end. The prophets also offer a new vision that flows from the prophetic imagination.

The prophet in the scriptures is one who bears God’s word. “The woman said to Elijah, "Now indeed, I know that you are a man of God, and it is truly the word of the LORD that you speak." (I Kings 17: 24) The call to prophet ministry is a call to intimacy with God and opening yourself to allow God's word to dwell in you. As Ezekiel begins his ministry, he is given a scroll to eat and then was charged to speak to the people. (Ezekiel 3, 1-4) The other manifestations that are evident in the life of the prophets flow from their intimacy with God.

Prophets offered a vision, an expanded awareness, and a God-vision that challenged the accepted mindset. The dominant mindset in ancient Israel was a monarchial system. Keeping the monarchy and ensuring everything was safe and comfortable for those at the top was the accepted vision of society. Prophets came to announce a different vision for society: trust in God, care for the poor rather than the prominent of society, and true worship, offering one's mind and heart to God, rather than the right animal sacrifice at the temple.

Jesus reaffirms this vision by challenging the prevailing focus on the minutia of the Law (tithing mint leaves) with calls for forgiveness, care for others, and being children of God. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 – 7) shows Jesus challenging a legal understanding of the Law and offering a broader vision. (You have heard, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you." Matt 5: 43-44) Thus, we are challenged to always seek God’s vision in our lives and through all the changes that we face. No practice, no law, no way of doing things is absolute. God is the only absolute. This will often result in disrupted relationships, being rejected, and sometimes suffering or death. Thus, Jesus warns that a disciple cannot place individuals and their demands ahead of the relationship with God, not even family. When the family works to grow closer to God, then the family is a support rather than a hindrance. 

The readings also address hospitality. Hospitality is rooted in generosity. It offers attention and assistance to those who come into our lives without expectation of something in return. The woman from Shunem offered Elisha food and a place to stay because he was a man of God. She did not try to get something from him but only wanted to honor him. We, too, are called to be hospitable people. To share our time, resources, and talents with others is hospitality. This can be a one-on-one interaction or by coaching, teaching, mentoring, or advocating for others. Central to this is recognizing that the gifts one has will enrich others, and this is done out of gratitude to God, who has given them to us. Whenever we are looking to advance our agenda, gain an advantage, or make someone indebted to us, we are not being hospitable, but rather we are self-centered.

Paul's letter to Romans offers a clear and profound understanding of baptism. People are transformed in baptism. They are freed from the old life of selfishness, controlling everything, and the allurement of power, pride, and possessions. Baptism marks the beginning of a new way of life with new meaning, purpose, and vision. It is a life guided by the Spirit who guided Jesus in his ministry. Our life is now living in tandem with Jesus as we live, work, and love. It initiates us into a journey that lasts our whole life of becoming more like Christ as the Holy Spirit empowers us. Christian Initiation is not the goal but the new beginning. 

Themes

• Hospitality
• Baptism
• Dying and Rising in Christ
• Sacrifice

Reflection Questions

• Have you experienced having your vision opened to a new perception of a situation?
• Who has been a bearer of God’s Word to you?
• Think of a time in which you experienced real hospitality. What did someone do for you?
• For those who have been baptized, what does your baptism mean to you?
• For those who are not baptized, why do you desire baptism, and what will it mean for you?

Prayer suggestions

• For the Church: that we who have died with Christ in baptism may recognize our dignity in being children of God and sisters and brothers to one another
• For wisdom: that we may embrace the paradox that our effort to control life produces no results while surrendering to God will provide abundant life
• For a spirit of hospitality: that we may welcome all who enter our lives as we would welcome Christ with great love and generously share our time and talents with them
• For greater perseverance: that God will give strength and hope to all who suffer because they practice the values and principles of the Gospel and help them never to give up
• For a reordering of our pursuits: that God will free us from idolatrous struggles for power, fame, social status, and possessions and help us find fulfillment in loving service and life-giving relationships

He Said What?

Had you ever noticed the number of flat-out contradictions in scripture? For example,

• the last shall be first;
• lose your life to find it;
• take the lowest seat if you want to have the highest;
• the Son of Man came to serve, not to be served;
• a virgin will conceive;
• an old woman with an old husband will give birth to a child;
and so on.

We might have said that if we want to be first, we would have to get into the front of the line, not the end. And, if we want to be alive, we must make some moves not to lose our lives. And so on. These are common sense, aren’t they?

Instead, this Sunday’s readings are introducing us, gently and partially, to ways in which such common sense opinions do not go deep enough. Try this on:

We have to be like lifeless, empty earthen vessels, so that God can pour life and love into us.

In the First Reading a distinguished lady in the little village of Schunem shows great hospitality to the prophet Elisha, even to the point of building and furnishing a little room on the second floor of her house, with a bed, table, chair, and lamp for him for whenever he visits. Another contradiction: she is childless, yet Elisha promises that in one year she will be fondling her own baby son. She is shocked. But the promise comes true.

Then, when the boy becomes a young man, he suddenly dies (2 Kings 4:18-37). Elisha comes from twenty miles away and brings him back to life.

Life is given twice where there was no hope of life: death triumphing but life restored. It is contradictory, but is this the way of the Lord?

Then in the Second Reading, St. Paul writes to the Church in Rome that they are baptized into Christ’s death and are buried with him!

A grim statement. But then Paul says, if we die with Christ, we shall also live with him, shall live a life in God (Second Reading).

Die in order to live?

In the Gospel Jesus makes a most enigmatic, not to say contradictory, statement: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

No matter how we try to explain away that statement and neuter its content, it still means what it says. Losing your life is the only way to possess it. Letting go is the only way to hold on. How can such contrary claims simultaneously be true?

I want to suggest a metaphor. A glass has to start out empty in order to succeed as a glass. If it is sealed up, or if it is solid, or if it is already full, nothing can be poured in.

Does this sound like one more contradiction? No. A container has to be empty if it is to be filled.

The same goes for us. We have to be like empty earthen vessels, so that God can pour life and love into us. This is the source of all the “contradictions” in the Gospels and certainly in the readings this Sunday.

We have to empty out if we are to be filled up with God’s gifts.

We’re a people losing heart. There’s a loss of heart for almost everything:

• for fidelity in relationships, as less and less people find within themselves the resiliency needed to live out the tensions that long-term commitment inevitably brings;

• for church, as more and more people quietly or angrily leave their ecclesial communities rather than deal with their own and their church’s humanity;

• and for politics and the effort needed to build neighborhood, city, and country because fewer and fewer people find the time, energy, and heart to work for others.
We’re losing ground most everywhere: There’s a loss of heart for children, for simple freshness, for romance, for innocence, for proper aesthetics, and even for manners. We have too little heart for actually dealing with the tensions that arise from our differences.

Thoreau once suggested that we live lives of “quiet desperation.” That may have been more true of his generation, but it’s less true today. Our struggle is more with internal bleeding, though Thoreau’s right about its quietness. This hemorrhaging is mostly quiet and unrecognized, perceptible mainly in its effects. In itself, it looks only like tiredness, battle-fatigue.

But it’s more.

Permit me a little thesis here: Two major proclivities have characterized the past couple of generations, at least in the Western world.

First, an unbridled itch for sophistication has driven us out in such a way that, for good and for bad, we’ve ended up shattering most of our former naiveté, debunking most of our former heroes and heroines, and wreaking havoc with most of our childhood faith and values.

Second, an ever-increasing sensitivity has progressively polarized and politicized life around marriage, church, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, culture, hierarchy, and values.

While much of this was needed and in many instances is a clear intellectual and moral progress, we’ve been slow to admit something else. It is also slowly tiring us, gradually wounding the heart and draining away much of its strength and resiliency. To be innocent, etymologically, means to be “unwounded.” The loss of our innocence has, precisely, left us wounded in the heart. A wounded heart seeks to protect itself, to find respite from what wounded it in the first place.

Hence, more and more, we have less heart to put up with the strains and tensions of family, church, neighborhood, community, and country. Instead we protect ourselves by surrounding ourselves with like-minded people, safe circles, and we have too little heart for actually dealing with the tensions that arise from our differences.

We’re well-intentioned, but tired, too tired to be robust enough to deal with tension. Like the woman in the gospels suffering from internal bleeding, we too are finding that constant internal hemorrhaging is making it impossible for us to become pregnant with new life. Like her, we need healing. How?

First, by recognizing and naming this loss of heart. Our marriages, families, homes, churches, communities, friendships, and even civic communities are too much breaking apart because we haven’t the heart to deal with their tensions. If this is true, and it is, then we need to ask ourselves: What’s being asked of us today? What do we need to do to regain some resiliency of heart?

Things looked different in the past. When I was young, society and the church both suffered from an unhealthy naiveté and an unhealthy rigidity. The great social movements of that past 40 years, along with new attitudes and sweeping reforms inside the churches, have exorcized most of that naiveté and rigidity. A more liberal view of things has taken hold inside virtually all circles, government, legal, ecclesial, academic, the arts, popular culture.

We live with the results: endless deconstruction of the old and an uncompromising emphasis on freedom, individual rights, social justice, gender equality, ethnic equality, multi-culturalism, wider tolerance, the ending of old privilege, and on the shortcomings of being naive. Part of this too, in terms of faith and the church, has been a strong, relentless, challenge to grow beyond an infantile belief, to face the dark corners of doubt, to not hide behind false securities.

Much of this, I believe, was good, needed, even prophetic; but as well I believe now that it’s time for a different response, at least for a while. Another shift is needed, though not one which tries to roll back the last fifty years. What’s required is not a conservative or fundamentalistic turn, though clearly that seems to be the temptation for many. We can’t unlearn, nor do we want to, or need to, what we’ve learned through these years of deconstruction.

We’re not called to turn back the clock, to become arch-conservative or fundamentalistic. We’re called instead, I believe, to become post-liberal, post-critical, post-modern, post-sophisticated, post-deconstructionist, post-ideological, post-hypersensitive, and post- politically-correct.

What exactly does that mean? How do we do these things by rolling the clock forwards rather than backwards? How is this different from the vision of the conservative or the fundamentalist? Answering those questions, beyond the agenda of both the conservatives and the liberals, is precisely the task.

Making Life Count

The prophet Elisha is welcomed warmly by the couple in Shunem, and he promises them a reward for their hospitality. Jesus tells his followers that he who welcomes you welcomes me, and “he who welcomes me welcomes him who sent me” (Matthew 10:40).

How good are we as a society at welcoming people into our company? An asylum underground operated during the 1980s to give protection to Salvadorans and Guatemalans whom we did not want to welcome. The Haitians have not been so lucky in the 1990s. The homeless are often not welcome anywhere, locked outside by a society that does not want to adequately fund public housing and pursued by the enforcers of laws that make it illegal to be homeless. Stories continue to surface of high-class institutions refusing to welcome African Americans or Jews or women.

Those of us who are baptized “must consider ourselves dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). We should walk in the light of Christ. We should be different from those who exclude others and drive them out. We should bring God’s love to the world:

Basic justice demands the establishment of minimum levels of participation in the life of the human community for all persons ... The ultimate injustice is for a person or group to be treated actively or abandoned passively as if they were nonmembers of the human race. To treat people this way is effectively to say that they simply do not count as human beings.

U.S. Bishops, Economic Justice for All, 1986: 77

First Reading
2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a

1. What are today’s prophets talking about? Ending gun violence? Clean air and water for third world countries? Justice for all races? If prophets speak to transform society, is there some corner of your world you can change for the better? If you feel inadequate about transforming society as a whole, is there anything in the readings that tells you it is all right to start small?

2. Discuss how Elisha and the woman in the story each receive something from the other’s graciousness. In the light of this story and our present problems, evaluate your community’s racial hospitality?

Second Reading
Romans 6:3-4, 8-11

1. If we are living in the “newness of life” in the risen Jesus, are we “living for God”?

2. Think of ways God might use you if your attitude is Christ’s and you put yourself at the disposal of God’s saving work in the world.

Gospel
Matthew 10:37-42

1. Could this quote from today’s Gospel “And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink … ” relate to the problem of safe drinking water that Pope Francis speaks of in his encyclical, Laudato Si? Is there anything you can do to give someone in a poor country a cup of cold, safe, water?

…Access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights. Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water, because they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity. This debt can be paid partly by an increase in funding to provide clean water and sanitary services among the poor.

Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home, Section 30

2. Who is blessed, the one who gives the help or the one who receives it? Are you always the giver or do you need to receive at times?

Focusing the Gospel

Key words and phrases: loves … more than me, loses … life … will find it, little ones

To the point: At the center of this Gospel is Jesus' startling statement that the only way we have life is to lose it. We lose our life by choosing to love Jesus even above family and by serving others, even “little ones.”

Connecting the Gospel …

… to the First Reading: The Shunemite woman served the prophet Elisha and provided for his needs; by so serving she received in turn the gift of life.
… to experience: We all experience the impulse to express our love concretely, for example, by sending cards, flowers, inviting the beloved to dinner, etc. We concretely express our love for Jesus by serving others.

The Bonds of Family

Family (kinship) is the central social institution in the ancient Mediterranean world, just as economics are in our world. Jesus' requirement that his followers should love him more than they love mother, father, son, or daughter shocks his first-century listeners. Here is some background to help a modern American appreciate the shock.

The ancient Middle Eastern family was very large and quite extended. It consisted of a father and all his children, including his married sons with their entire families, living in one place. The ideal marriage partner was a first cousin (one's father's brother's daughter), which bound this close-knit family together with even tighter bonds. The resultant mentality was “our family” against “everyone else.”

To marry anyone other than a family member was unthinkable. To sever all family ties as did the “prodigal son” (Luke 15:11-32) was not only stupid but equivalent to suicide. Outside the family, no one can be trusted, no one will help you, as that renegade son quickly learned when his funds ran out.

The real consequences of leaving one's family are dire indeed. One not only gives up the basic claim to honor and status but also loses all of the family's economic, religious, educational, and social connections as well. Perhaps most disastrous of all consequences is loss of a connection to the land. These are all serious and life-threatening losses. They are what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of “taking up one's cross” and “losing one's life for my sake.”

The Christian's Consolations

These exhortations are important because they offer at least two consolations. One consolation is for the consequences of leaving one's family of origin and transferring allegiance to the surrogate family now composed of nonrelated believers in Jesus. The other consolation is for the hardships encountered by followers of Jesus from Jewish competitors in their missionary work.

Americans may find these ideas just a little strange. American youngsters are socialized from an early age toward leaving the family of origin and setting up their own family, sometimes in a different city or state. The troubles that a Mediterranean person experienced in leaving the family of origin have little resonance with modern believers.

Further, hospitality among Americans is reserved for family and other special people. A study of parishes in the United States discovered that generally speaking they were not very hospitable to newcomers and visitors.

Today’s Gospel challenges modern Western believers to reflect on two key ideas. What is the “real cost” of maintaining one's faith in Jesus? And how do Western believers relate to other believers, particularly those who appear unexpectedly in their midst, or those who are in special need?

Commentary by Hilary of Poitiers

Whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me. (Mt 10:38)

Christ commanded the apostles to leave everything in the world that they held most dear, adding: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:38). For those who belong to Christ have crucified their lower nature with its sinful passions and desires.

No one is worthy of him who refuses to take up his cross, that is to say, to share the Lord’s passion, death, burial, and resurrection, and to follow him by living out the mystery of faith in the newly received grace of the Spirit.

  “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10:39). This means that thanks to the power of the word and the renunciation of past sins, temporal gains are death to the soul, and temporal losses salvation.

Apostles must therefore take death into their new life and nail their sins to the Lord’s cross. They must confront their persecutors with contempt for things present, holding fast to their freedom by a glorious confession of faith, and shunning any gain that would harm their souls. They should know that no power over their souls has been given to anyone, and that by suffering loss in this short life they will achieve immortality.

“Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” (Mt 10:40). Christ gives us all a love for his teaching and a disposition to treat our teachers with courtesy.

Earlier he had shown the danger facing those who refused to receive the apostles by requiring these to shake the dust off their feet as a testimony against them; now he commends those who do receive the apostles, assuring them of a greater recompense than they might have expected for their hospitality, and he teaches that since he still acts as mediator, when we receive him God enters us through him because he comes from God.

Thus whoever receives the apostles receives Christ, and whoever receives Christ receives God the Father, since what is received in the apostles is nothing else than what is received in Christ; nor is there anything in Christ but what is in God. Through this disposition of graces to receive the apostles is to receive God, because Christ is in them and God is in Christ.

Commentary on Saint Matthew's Gospel
10, 25-27; SC 254, 246-251.

Hilary (315-367) was elected bishop of Poitiers in 353. Because of his struggles with the Arians and his treatise on the Trinity, for which he was exiled, he has been called “the Athanasius of the West.” He also wrote a commentary on Saint Matthew's gospel and another on a selection of the psalms. His style is difficult and obscure and he makes much use of allegory.

Getting a Life

When a pharmaceutical company says, “Live well!” we know their blessing envisions a judicious use of their products to enhance our remaining years on this earth. When the beer people remind us that we “only go round once,” we know that they want us to include an enjoyment of their product as we try to squeeze the most pleasure out of this short life.

And when the cotton people show us touching video clips of joyful family moments while a soulful voice sings about “the fabric of our lives,” we know whose fabric they want us to be wearing during these special times. In each case, the language of life points to the biological life that ends, sooner than we expect, in death.

Christian mission and hospitality are nothing less than living out a relationship with God.

How remarkably different is the language of life that we find in Scripture! While the Bible acknowledges the goodness and shortness of biological life, it also makes bold to stretch the words we use for life and death and apply them in a fresh way to the death-defying covenant-life we share with God. And it does so in a way that must sound to the uninitiated like double talk—as, for example, in the saying of Jesus quoted at the head of this reflection, “whoever finds his life will lose it.” This is worth a closer look.

When we hear Jesus, in his mission charge to the Twelve, say, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it,” we know that we are hearing paradox. And paradox forces us to make sense of the language by taking it beyond the obvious sense. If we wonder in what sense “finding life” constitutes loss, we get help from Matthew 16:25-26: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”

In that context, the false “finding” of life is the result of misguided life-saving efforts such as gaining more and more possessions, whereas the life that one gains by losing it for the sake of Jesus is the everlasting life of the kingdom of God—which does indeed begin in this biological life but perdures beyond biological death.

When Paul writes to the Romans about his understanding of the change that occurs in baptism, he indulges in the same paradoxical language that Jesus used. It helps to recall that Paul is reflecting on a ritual that involved, in his day, the total immersion in water of the baptized person. That complete immersion symbolized, first of all, not cleansing but dying. The baptized person dies to sinful solidarity with Adam, and then surfacing to breathe air once again, rises to share in the new life of the risen Christ, the life of the Christian community.

Paul shares with the Fourth Gospel a way of understanding Christian life as a new level of existence, such that he, like John, can say that the Christian has already passed through death and now shares in an eternal life that biological death is unable to interrupt.

This Sunday’s readings invite us to reflect on another dimension of that life, hospitality. When the woman from Shunem extends to the prophet Elisha the generous hospitality of having a special guest room especially for him, she is rewarded with an unexpected gift of life: her sterility is healed and she conceives and bears a son. And even when that son dies an early death, she receives the surprising gift of his resuscitation.

And Jesus’ mission discourse concludes with words elaborating that theme of hospitality and its rewards. Jesus assures his disciples that mission in his name will involve them in an adventure of hospitality that will bless abundantly those that receive them. As in the case of the Shunammite woman and Elisha, Jesus promises, “whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet, receives a prophet's reward.” An even larger context is revealed in the words “whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” (Gospel).

In other words, Christian mission and hospitality are nothing less than living out a relationship with God.

Life becomes larger than it seems. The Gospel vision denies none of the goodness of beer, cotton, and good medicine in this short biological life, but it asserts a broad network of relationships that exceeds the limitations of biological life and requires us to stretch the normal meanings of our human language about life and death.

The invitation of Jesus rinses the sarcasm out of the contemporary taunt, “get a life.”

Reading I: 2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a

The provision of hospitality by the Shunammite woman for the prophet Elisha is one of the more engaging episodes of the Old Testament. The caption to the reading fails to indicate the evident reason for its selection this Sunday. Clearly it was chosen because it illustrates the dominical saying in the gospel: “He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward.”

What the historian of the Book of Kings means when he speaks of a “holy man of God” is shown by the other woman's reaction to Elisha's predecessor, Elijah, after he had restored her son to life: “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth” (1 Kgs 17:24).

In other words, to be a holy man of God in the Old Testament does not signalize mystical achievement but means to be the bearer of God's word—a word that is “truth,” that is, not that it passes the test of doctrinal orthodoxy, but that it effects what it says on the plane of history. Similarly, Elisha is a holy man of God, not because of the achievements of his piety, but because he, like his predecessor, was entrusted to proclaim to his generation the effective word of YHWH.

Responsorial Psalm: 89:2-3, 16-17, 18-19

These verses come from one of the great messianic psalms of the Old Testament that portray the coming of the ideal Davidic king. Understandably, it is a psalm that Christian tradition has associated with the Christmas season. It provided the offertory for the third Mass of Christmas in the Roman Missal, and it has always been the proper psalm at one of the offices of Christmas Day in the Book of Common Prayer.

The last stanza alludes to the messianic king. But this aspect is not stressed today. It is simply a hymn of praise for the steadfast love and faithfulness (chesed w'neth, very important Hebrew words characterizing Yhwh’s being and actions). No doubt the Shunammite woman regarded the visits of Elisha to her home as signs of Yhwh’s steadfast love and faithfulness.

Reading II: Romans 6:3-4, 8-11

This passage is used in full at the Easter Vigil. While the references to the Christian's dying with Christ are all in the past tense, the references to resurrection are future and conditional. The new life in Christ is something that has to be constantly implemented. The Christian life means more than aspiring after an elusive ideal does. What happened to us in baptism cannot be made to “unhappen,” however often we stumble and fall. The reality of baptism is always there. Luther, when he was tempted to despair of his faith, used to repeat “Baptizatus sum.” That is something we, too, can always draw upon. So the Christian life is fitting oneself into that which we have already been made by baptism: “Werde das, was du bist” (Become what you are!).

Gospel: Matthew 10:37-42

This is the last installment of the Matthean missionary charge to the Twelve. It embraces three complexes of material: the warning that discipleship may involve the breaking of family ties; the saying about taking up the cross; a group of three sayings about the reception given to messengers.

The first two clearly go together. Both concern the cost of discipleship. They appear in various contexts in the gospel tradition, and only in this passage as part of a missionary charge. The first saying in the third group is found in both Matthew and Luke (in a different context in Luke); the second is peculiar to Matthew; the third is found also in Mark. 

The fact that the second saying (about receiving a prophet, Mt 10:41) governs the choice of the first reading suggests that this is the saying to which we should pay particular attention today. It is a challenge to those who hear the message of the envoys to receive them properly, not for the sake of their persons, but because they are the bearers of the divine message.

What this passage has in mind may be illustrated from the words that Paul used when speaking of his reception by the Thessalonians: “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thess 2:13).