Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Peter’s House, Capernaum
Proper Mass
Leonine Forum Pilgrimage
November 28, 2021
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
This was the outline of the homily:
- The point of Advent is going out to meet Christ as he comes, and the best way for us to meet Christ in history, mystery and majesty is through meeting him in the Holy Eucharist.
- Today we have the privilege to be in the place where Jesus preached his Bread of Life discourse, which gives us the opportunity to focus on not laboring for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life that Jesus gives us. The Eucharist is the true manna God gives us every day. Many in the crowds in Capernaum were there to get another free meal from Jesus, because “they ate their fill of the loaves.” Jesus was trying to change their motivation and their grounds of interaction, to get them to approach Jesus by his categories rather than theirs. When he taught that they — and we — need to eat his flesh and drink his blood, many rejected it, saying it was a hard teaching to endure. It is indeed a hard teaching. But Jesus said that the work of God is to believe in the one he sent and they just didn’t want to place faith in him, which is how they’d come to faith in what he was teaching. St. Peter shows us this at the end of the passage when he said in response to Jesus’ question as to whether the twelve too would abandon Jesus, “Lord to whom shall we go. You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus’ words would only make sense a year later when during the Last Supper, Jesus would take bread and wine during the Last Supper passover ritual, totally change it into his body and blood, and say, “Take and eat. … Take and drink.” But because he believed in Jesus, he believed in what he was saying, even if it was hard. Jesus calls us to the same faith.
- There is a crisis of faith today in the real presence. Up to 70 percent of US Catholics say they don’t believe in the teaching of the Real Presence. The US Bishops are trying to address it with a three-year Eucharistic Revitalization from 2022-24. But the most important part of this is what the 30 percent who believe in the teaching will communicate. It’s crucial to show what the Eucharist is by our choices, that we’re laboring above all for the food that endures to eternal life. If we believe that the Eucharist is Jesus and really love him, then it will show in our hunger to come to daily Mass, our thirst for Eucharistic adoration, and our simple desire to be in his presence as much as possible.
- The truth is that Jesus desires to give himself to us in Holy Communion more than the Blessed Virgin Mary desired to receive him within her anew from the hands of the apostle St. John, more than all the saints combined desired to receive him. We could never have dreamed of asking God to become incarnate, then be crucified, then to hide himself under the appearances of Bread and Wine to feed us, but what we would never have dared to ask, God in fact did. This is the food for which we’re called to labor. This is the Jesus who comes to meet us in the Advent of each day and whom we are invited to go out to embrace with love!
This is the Gospel on which today’s homily was based:
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. John
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. But I told you that although you have seen [me], you do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it [on] the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him [on] the last day.” The Jews murmured about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and they said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Stop murmuring among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.” As a result of this, many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you twelve? Yet is not one of you a devil?”
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