Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Words of Eternal Life: 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time (Cycle B)

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    As I was reflecting on today’s Gospel it occurred to me that  there is a lot of truth on that old saying “The more things change the more they stay the same”....  For the last 4 weeks we have followed the Lord as he presented to his disciples the teaching, we all know today as “The Real Presence”. The belief that when we receive the Eucharist we are been fed with the true resurrected body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. During this time, I’m sure, you have heard either Deacon Cliff, Fr. Mike, Fr. Kurt or myself preaching about this great mystery of our faith. So today I decided to do something different, I decided not to focus as much on what Jesus said but on the reaction His teachings had on the people who were listening.
   The reading says that: “Many of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”  and that “as a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him”
   To me these passages are of great importance, because they show that from the beginnings the teachings of The Church have been found challenging and difficult to accept. Like I said at the beginning things have not changed much. Even after 2000  years of reflection and divine inspiration from the Holy Spirit I would venture to say that the majority of Catholics  still find some of the teachings of our church hard.
   Now I want to make something clear: I'm not talking about things like “Why do I have to confess my sins to a priest?” or “Why do I have to hold fast at least one hour before receiving communion?”...these are the easy ones!
    Where I want to focus today is in the teachings which are as challenging to us as the words “Eat my flesh and drink my blood blood” were to the people listening to the Lord. If you think about it this is the nature of all religious truth. Religious truth should challenge us and force us into a decision of what kind of person, what kind of disciple we are going to be.
     For some, the teaching that life is sacred and that unborn children should be protected even in the most difficult and heart wrenching cases, is a hard teaching! For others, the teaching that Marriage is an institution not defined or created by the state but by God and that it belongs to the order of nature which is one man and one woman is a hard teaching. For some others ,the teaching that illegal immigrants in our communities should be allowed access to basic social help and that we are called to treat them as if they were our own brothers and sisters is also a hard teaching. Even others, find that the teaching that in our country there is no social justification for the death penalty and that we should work towards eradication this law from all 50 states is a hard teaching! I can go on but I think you might be getting the picture by now. These teachings are not republican, or democrat, they are not conservative or liberal, they are the truth, and it is up to us to surrender our conscience and will to them or to abandon the truth of the Gospel.
    For some people been a Christian might seem easy, all you have to do is love God, love your neighbor like yourself. But this is not what Christianity is all about! Been a true believer requires an act of the will, and a complete surrender to a truth which does not come from any civil state or any sociological study or laboratory but out of the Word Made Flesh, and the Church He gave His authority to teach and guide His disciples.
   There is another part of today’s gospel I would like to share with you. Let me read it: “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.”
  Here we see an example to follow: complete religious surrender when confronted with the Truth. Notice that Peter doesn’t say “Master don’t worry because we agree and understand everything you are saying” but “ Master, we are convinced you are the Holy One from God, Your words are words of eternal life”. We might not agree or even understand why you are saying what you are saying, but we believe that when it comes to decide between what you are saying and what my mind is telling me...you have the words of eternal life”.  I would like to finish today with a piece of advice I give all my CCD and RCIA students: it is OK to struggle with some of the teachings of the Church, this is a sign of a healthy faith, but when it comes to make a decision, when it comes to making a stand and surrendering our will to what is true, we should always side with Jesus and his Church or we might run the danger of ending up like the other disciples in today’s gospel, the ones who abandoned the company of the Lord and returned to their old way of life. God bless you all my brothers and sisters.

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Sunday, August 9, 2015

Bread of Life - 15th Sunday Ordinary time (Cycle B)

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    In today’s mass readings once again we find ourselves, in the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John; And I say once again because for the next few week the gospel reading is taken from this  important chapter of the Bible; important because it contains what is also known as the “Bread of Life Discourse”.  The one place in the bible in which Jesus explains in his own words the mystery of the Eucharist. In other words today there is going to be a lot of talk about eating bread, so, If you are following a low carb. diet, I apologize.
    As I was reflecting on this chapter of the bible, I found myself wondering about something I have asked myself many times: Who was the first person ever to figure that if you take a grain like wheat and grind it into a fine powder, and then add some milk and some yeast (of all things!), and then let it rise, and then you punch it and stretch it, and then you let it sit again and rise again, and then you punch it and stretch it again, and then you place it in a mold and let it rise again, and then you put it in an oven and bake it...You would actually get a loaf of bread.
    What I’m trying to say is that a making bread is not easy. This is quite a process to just figure out by accident. And yet if you think about it… every society in the world from the most advanced to the most primitive, have figured out a way of making their own version of bread. The steps and ingredients might be different but the results are almost always the same. It is as if making bread is a human universal.
  I would venture to say that this interesting fact about bread is not an accident. It explains why God, who as a pure spirit became a man, when it was time to return to his heavenly glory, and desiring to remain in a physical form here on earth, chose the one form of life giving food which is universal: bread. Not only this but, he made sure that his presence would remain throughout all of time, by giving priests the power to transform a regular piece of bread into his body, blood, soul and divinity for us the feed at every mass.
  In fact if you think about it a little more and you look at the steps you follow to make bread. They in themselves are a lesson, signs of the mystery which is the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of our Lord. The wheat which has to be transformed from beautiful wheat stalks into a fine powder, reminds us of how God in all his glory and beauty took our lowly human nature, which literally comes from the dust of the earth. The yeast which needs to be added to this flour in order to make it rise points to the divinity of the Lord who by assuming our lowly state, made our own human nature capable of rising to a point in which we can touching divinity. All the punching and knotting are the grim reminders of what he had to suffer on the Cross so that we could be saved from the brokenness of sin. And the final result, that loaf of steaming, golden fresh bread reminds us of community, of love, of one family sharing life giving nourishment.
   In today’s Gospel our Lord declares that he is the Bread of Life and that whoever eats of this bread will never hunger. With these words he takes advantage of the universality of bread, so that every  men, woman and child who ever lived, including you and me could know precisely what he is talking about.
   My brothers and sisters If today I could place an image in your mind it would be this: Jesus looking into our eyes and telling us, he is the only one that can satisfy all the hungers of your heart... this is the message of today’s Gospel, the message of the Eucharist, the message we will hear about again and again in the next few weeks as we continue reading from this chapter of the Book of John. So  As we revisit this most important teaching of our faith,  it is my prayer that we all have a renewed encounter with the bread of life who came down from heaven to feed us so that we would never ever hunger for anything else again. Blessed be Jesus, in the most holy sacrament of The Eucharist. Amen.
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