Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, August 24, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, B, Vigil
August 24, 2024

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the finale of the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus has been having with us over the course of the last month with regard to what is the most important reality in the entire world, his own presence in the Holy Eucharist, and what our reaction is to that reality. Insofar as the whole Church in the United States has been having this conversation right after the close of the incredible National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis last month as we have been launching the missionary phase of the National Eucharistic Revival, what Jesus has been saying, and our response to it, are even more important than what we said and did three, six, nine, twelve and more years ago, when Jesus attempts to give us this triennial Eucharistic upgrade. So let’s listen to the dramatic conclusion of his words as if we are hearing them for the first time and ask his help to respond like the saints would and have.
• Jesus, after having described that his flesh is real food and his blood is real drink, after having encouraged us to work not for perishable food but for this food that endures to eternal life, after having indicated that this divine gift is far greater and more important for our survival than the manna God used to rain down each day for the Israelites in the desert, brings us this Sunday to the climax of his Bread of Life Discourse. It’s just as personal for us as it was for his first listeners. The climax is the choice he wants us to make, the commitment he wants us to give, in response to this great divine gift, which is not just to believe his words that he is the true manna, that his body is real food and his blood real drink and that whoever gnaws on his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life and will be raised on the last day, but to structure our life in accordance with that belief. He’s asking us to live a truly Eucharistic life, drawing our life from him in this supreme gift. He’s asking us to make him the source and the summit, root and center of our existence. He’s asking us to choose him who has chosen us, to commit to him who made the ultimate commitment to us, to be as faithful to him as he is faithful to us in the new and eternal Covenant sealed in his body and blood.
• But that’s not easy. It’s certainly not a given.
• In the Gospel we read that many of the disciples who heard Jesus’ words said, “This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?” These were not strangers to Jesus. These were people who had been amazed and astonished by his teaching over the previous two years, who had heard him preach like no one ever before. These were people who had witnessed him make blind men see, deaf men hear, cripples walk, lepers restored to the skin of babies, and possessed people exorcised and liberated. These were people who the previous day had just seen Jesus feed a crowd of 5,000 men, 5,000 women and probably 15,000 kids on five buns and two sardines. They were now saying that was Jesus was asking was too hard for them to stomach.
• We have to admit that they were right about Jesus’ teachings being hard. At first glance, they’re disgusting. To eat someone’s flesh and drink his blood smacks of cannibalism. Moreover, for a Jew, they couldn’t even touch blood without becoming ritually impure; now Jesus is saying that they needed to drink blood, something that seems straight out of a sick vampire novel. Even 2000 years after the Last Supper when Jesus would show how he would fulfill these words by totally changing bread and wine into his body, blood, soul and divinity, the teaching is still hard. It’s hard to believe that the Creator of the whole World, the Savior of the human race, the miraculous carpenter from Nazareth, is actually hidden under the appearances of simple human food on the altar; that the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God; that the Eucharist is not bread or wine, but God.
• Jesus’ teaching is But does that surprise us? Jesus never pretended that his teachings were easy. When he talked about forgiving 70×7 times, when he spoke about cutting off hands or plucking out eyes if they lead us to sin, when he discussed turning the other cheek, denying ourselves, picking up our cross and following him, when he described losing our lives in order to save them, when he conversed about loving him more than we loved father and mother, brother and sister, child, work, property, when he remarked about loving others just as he loved us by sacrificing our lives for them — all of this was hard.
• But with regard to the disciples’ question, “Who can accept it?,” the answer is, “One with faith in Jesus.” That’s what we see in Peter’s response when, after Jesus watched most of his disciples abandon him because they didn’t want to accept his teaching and then turned to the Twelve apostles and asked, poignantly, “Do you also want to leave?,” Peter replied, “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.” The teaching wasn’t any easier for Peter than for the thousands of disciples who had just abandoned Jesus. It would only become fathomable a year later during the next Passover when Jesus would take bread and wine into his hands, and totally change them into himself as he said, “This is my body: take and eat,” and “This is the chalice of my blood: take and drink.”  But Peter knew that Jesus had the words of eternal life and so, because of his faith in Jesus, he put his faith in Jesus’ words. Likewise, we need to have faith in Jesus’ words. In the great Eucharistic Hymn, Adoro Te Devote, written by St. Thomas Aquinas, we sing, “I believe whatever the Son of God has said. Nothing is truer than the word of truth!” We believe in Jesus’ difficult teaching on the Eucharist precisely because we believe in him, and believing in him means basing our entire existence on what he reveals.
• And so the choice comes to us this Sunday, a choice we cannot duck, because to try to duck the choice is to deny the Lord. Over the course of the last month, Jesus has been preparing us for this moment. He multiplied the loaves and fish not only to show his compassion and his power but to foretell what he was planning to do with the multiplication of the Eucharist. He told us to labor for this food more than the hardest working parents strive to put food on the table. He told us that he was the true manna that the Father wants to give us to sustain us in the desert of human life, the answer to the prayer he put on our lips, “Give us today our super-substantial bread,” and “Sir, give us this Bread always.” Jesus answers that prayer for us every day, but now we have to respond to his personal response, his daily gift of himself. Jesus wants us to draw our life from him, to live a Eucharistic life, to experience a spousal union with him consummated in the one-flesh loving communion that happens on the marriage bed of the altar when we as the Bride of Christ take within us the Body of the Bridegroom, become one flesh with him and are capacitated to bear fruit, to make love, with him in all our actions.
• Are we ready to make that commitment? It’s easy to say “Yes!,” but do we really mean it? In response to Jesus’ query, “Do you also want to leave me?,” many in our age like the disciples in Capernaum have wandered physically or spiritually away from Jesus in the Eucharist. We can think of so many of our beloved Protestant brothers and sisters who, despite believing that Sacred Scripture is the authoritative word of God and who interpret Sacred Scripture literally, try to pretend, consciously or unconsciously, that Jesus is just speaking symbolically about needing to eat his flesh and drink his blood. We can think of so many of our Catholic brothers and sisters — five of six Catholics in the United States — who have wandered away from the practice of Sunday Mass, serving some other god than the Lord on Sunday, whether it be work, or sports, or sleep, or entertainment. We can think even of those who come to Mass but who do not receive the Lord Jesus with faith, love and reverence, who basically behave as if they’re only receiving consecrated bread rather than the very God who died for them on the Cross or who seem to be impatient to leave Jesus’ presence and go somewhere else as soon as possible. We can also think of those who show up with hearts and lives divided, who instead of making a total choice for God, live in some situation incompatible with God, and who nevertheless come up to receive him without converting and going to receive Jesus’ forgiveness in the Sacrament of Confession first. There’s a poignant reality, which St. John pointed out, that it was only at the conclusion of Jesus’ talk in Capernaum, that Jesus “knew the one who would betray him.” Jesus first glimpsed Judas’ betrayal by Judas’ reaction to the Eucharist. And it’s somehow tragically fitting that Judas betrayed Jesus by leaving the first Mass a year later — when Jesus gave us his Body and Blood for the first time in the fulfillment of this Sunday’s Gospel — before it was done. Sadly some come to Mass to receive him, only to leave and continue to betray Jesus in their moral decisions.
• At the end of this five-week course, Jesus asks each of us, “Do you also want to leave?” He asks whether we want to live united to Him in the Holy Eucharist or live in some other way. He queries whether we will make him in the Eucharist the source and the summit of our life or whether we’ll just try to keep him in the Eucharist “part” of our life and a “small part” at that, something we do out of duty for an hour or so on Sunday. The response he’s hoping for is for us to echo St. Peter. “Lord, 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.” Peter, James, John, Andrew and the other apostles except Judas had truly left everything to live with Jesus. They spent every day with Jesus, who taught them, who nourished them, who helped them to pray, and who prepared them to take not just his Gospel but his very presence in the Eucharist to the ends of the earth. Unlike them, we don’t have to leave our fishing boats, tax tables, homes and families in order to be with Jesus. He comes to our parish Church every day. The question for us is whether we want really to be with him or whether we want to leave him alone. And if we do want to be with him, that will change not only the way we look at Sunday Mass, but also the way we look at the awesome privilege of daily Mass and the way we approach Eucharistic adoration. If the Eucharist really is Jesus, and we believe this truth and love Jesus, then we will soon recognize that there’s nothing more we want to do than to come to receive him as well as we can as often as we can. If the Eucharist really is Jesus, and we believe this truth and love Jesus, then we will soon reprioritize everything so that we can come to spend more and more time with him and bring our family members and friends to experience this same treasure. That’s what the Eucharistic Revival is all about! And that’s what Jesus has been trying to do in you and me over the course of these last five weeks. God bless you!

The Gospel reading on which the homily was based was:

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