The Source of Strength to Suffer on Account of Jesus’ Name, Second Friday of Easter, May 2, 2014

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Crawford Skilled Nursing Home, Fall River, MA
Friday of the Second Week of Easter
Memorial of St. Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor
May 2, 2014
Acts 5:34-42, Ps 27, Jn 6:1-15

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted: 

• In today’s Gospel, we enter into the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, which focuses on how Jesus’ gift of himself in the Eucharist is not only prophesied by the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish but also prophesies the eternal wedding banquet. Jesus worked this miracle and gave us the words we’ll be hearing between now and Saturday of the third week of Easter knowing that we would be focusing on them in the Church after his Resurrection. He gave them to the Church so that we would know how to grow in the power of his resurrection, that, as we’ll hear in upcoming days, if we enter into communion with him through eating his flesh and drinking his blood, we will have eternal life and he will raise us on the last day.
• Today we ponder the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, which has various Eucharistic resonances. The first is Jesus’ compassion on the crowds. They were hungry and he was going to feed them. In the Eucharist, he feeds our souls with the only nourishment he considers worthy of them, himself. Then we see the collaboration of the apostles and the young boy. Jesus through whom all the plants, fish and animals in the world were made, could have easily created food out of nothing to feed the multitudes, but he wanted to involve his followers. All the apostles could find in a crowd of 5,000 was what a boy had carried, doubtless only for himself: five small buns and two sardines. But Jesus took them, gave thanks to God (the Greek work is eucaristein) and gave them to the crowds. Likewise in the Eucharist Jesus begins with what we give him — the bread and wine that are not only God’s gifts but the “work of human hands” — and multiplies those efforts in an even greater miracle. Finally we see the “leftovers.” Clearly Jesus could have worked the miracle without leftovers, but there were twelve wicker baskets left, one for each apostle, to remind each of them in a sense of what we’re supposed to do with the Eucharistic food we’ve received, to go and give our own bodies and blood, our own love to the extreme, our own compassion for others’ deepest hungers to those in need. There’s no need for us to “horde” the Eucharist, to keep our relationship to ourselves; rather Jesus fills our baskets to overflowing so that we may lavishly share his gifts with others.
• This gift of risen life through communion with the Risen Jesus is what makes us strong. Today we see that strength in the apostles Saints Peter and John. After the Rabbi Gamaliel talked the members of the Sanhedrin out of their desire to do to the apostles what they had conspired to do to Jesus — a totally different theology than that which Caiphas had enunciated weeks earlier; Caiphas said that it was better for one to die than the whole people; Gamaliel said that if we oppose the apostles we might be opposing God, thoughts that should have been expressed in the illegal trial of Jesus early on Good Friday!  — they had the disciples “flogged, ordered them to stop speaking in the name of Jesus, and dismissed them.” They had the disciples scourged, just as Jesus had been scourged. They responded to Gamaliel’s assertion by scourging men who could have been sent by God!  Peter’s and John’s reaction, however, was “rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.” That’s the power of their communion with the Risen Jesus. They rejoiced over being scourged, because they knew that it was allowing them to enter into an even greater participation in Jesus’ resurrection through sharing in his sufferings. They grasped that if Jesus was raised from the dead 40 hours after having been crucified, that there was nothing for them to be afraid of — not flaggelations, not crownings with thorns, not sham trials, not even crucifixions. God would have the final word. Their Easter joy could not be suppressed and so St. Luke tells us, “all day long, both at the temple and in their homes, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus.”
• We also see the courage that comes from communion with the Risen Jesus in the life of the great bishop and doctor of the Church we celebrate today, Saint Athanasius. He was a young deacon assisting the Patriarch of Alexandria (Egypt) at the Council of Nicaea in 325. This was the first Ecumenical Council, called 12 years after the legalization of Christianity, to deal with the teachings of an Egyptian priest Arius who was claiming that Jesus wasn’t God, just the holiest man who had ever lived. The brilliant deacon Athanasius led the charge against Arius teaching, which he persuaded the Council to condemn, and it was largely out of his work that we have the Nicene Creed we proclaim every Sunday. But even though the Arians lost, their false theological ideas were not extinguished. Over the course of time, Arians, those who didn’t believe Jesus was 100 percent God and 100 percent man, were gaining the upper hand. Various bishops and priests were Arians as were some emperors. For that reason, St. Athanasius was persecuted, multiply exiled, and had to suffer a great deal. But he did so with boldness, again, because he recognized that Jesus wasn’t just a man, but was God, was alive, and was giving him a share in that life every time he celebrated Mass and communicated.
• Reflecting on the courage of Saints Peter, John and Athanasius, we can examine ourselves as to the holy boldness with which we live our faith. Jesus comes to strengthen us by his Risen Life in this great miracle of the multiplication of his body and blood from the Last Supper, so that we may bear our own hardships on account of the faith, our own physical ailments, even our own death with joy and trust on account of the power of the Resurrection. The Lord whom we’re about to receive is our “light and salvation,” and so we respond with the words of Psalm 27: “Whom should I fear? The Lord is my life’s refuge; of whom should I be afraid? One thing I ask of the Lord this I seek: To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” Jesus gives us an anticipation of that eternal entrance into his temple by coming to dwell within our own house in Holy Communion. The more we receive our Light and Salvation within us, the more we recognize that we are indeed seeing “the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living” and the more we will recognize the grace we need from on high, like St. Athanasius and the Apostles  to “be stouthearted” and “wait for the Lord with courage!” in this world and rejoice forever with him in the next!

The readings for today’s Mass were: