holy cross sermon for pentecost 13 / proper 17 / year b / august 30 2009

Saint Moses the Black. Read about him.

Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’” (Mark 7.6). Once again in today’s Gospel reading Jesus brings us to the centrality of our heart in the economy of salvation.

The message about hypocrisy in today’s Gospel reading is fairly straightforward and requires little exposition. The “Pharisees… with some of the Scribes” – Jesus’ quotidian antagonists – come to him self-righteous accusations, masquerading as a question: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with hands defiled?”

And Jesus turns rebukes them with the words of the prophet Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”

Over the past several weeks, as we have been marinating in the great “bread of heaven” discourse from Saint John’s Gospel. In it we saw the remedy to the problem Jesus elucidates in today’s reading from Mark. Remember that the way to heaven is through coming to Jesus in faith, love, and humility, feeding on his flesh and drinking his blood, and so becoming inebriated, as Theophylact says, with divinity.

Today’s reading zeros in on the necessity of humility and self-emptying in this process. Remember that we must come to the Lord in faith – BELIEVING in him, trusting him. And remember that, as St. Augustine says, this kind of belief is a belief that works by LOVE: An inner trust that seeks the Lord’s will, and so to honor him, and to obey him. And remember that this works by humility and self-surrender, by being willing to let go of everything in order to seek the Lord’s pleasure. This is what St. Paul means when he says: “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13.3).

And this attainment of the Lord, of course, is a process that takes place in the heart, in the center of our being, the location of our memory and desire. Jesus said to them: “This people honors me with their lips, but the HEART is far from me.”

Deep in our heart is the place where we keep those things that inform our desires. And Jesus is hear highlighting the necessity of purifying that place, and so making it a fit habitation for God to dwell in. In order to be saved, we must be given entirely to the dynamism that is at work in Christ – the Holy Spirit, who (as the Fathers bear witness) is the love that obtains between the Father and Son. It must be the Holy Spirit who sheds his light on the recesses of our hearts’ depth, who drives out every injury, every wound, every uncleanness, every power of evil, and who displaces all of those things, and begins to speak to the desires within us, enabling us to bear divine fruit in the realm of action, manifesting in our lives: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Galatians 5.22f).

So what is the problem with the Pharisees and Scribes? In what does their hypocrisy consist? It consists in thinking that action by itself can please, or displease, God. You may remember the story of the prophet Samuel being commanded by the Lord to go and anoint a king to replace Saul. Samuel was looking for David, though he didn’t know it at the time. Samuel looked at the sons of Jesse, and his eyes lighted on the most impressive of them, named Eliab; “and [Samuel] thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is before him.’ But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature… for the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but THE LORD LOOKS ON THE HEART” (1 Sam. 16.6f). And indeed, Samuel had been told by the Lord that the “Lord has sought out a man AFTER HIS OWN HEART” to be king over his people (1 Sam. 13.14).

Purity of heart must therefore be our purpose, if we desire to attain the Kingdom of God. The Lord never withholds himself from us. He says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him” (Rev. 3.20). And in another place he says, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14.23). The Lord constantly seeks entry into our heart. Our task is to make a place for him there, by cleansing our hearts of “evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness,” and every evil thing that comes from within, and defiles us (Mark 7.21ff). And once we have cleansed our hearts, through tears, self-denial, confession, penance, acts of selflessness, alms, and the other means given to us by God to attain purity, then we must seek the Lord in prayer, and especially in the Blessed Sacrament, the wellspring and pinnacle of all prayer. To eat the bread of angels means to attain to the open contemplation of the Lord, from which vision the heavenly powers draw all their power and vitality (Denis the Carthusian).

But what does this mean? And how does it work? It begins, as St. Paul tells us in today’s epistle reading from Ephesians, with our having “girded [our] loins with truth” (6.14). The preeminent truth with which we gird ourselves is the truth of God himself: that he made us, that he loves us, and that he sent his Son to live and die for the sake of that love. These are the central facts of our faith, with which we must continually confront our minds, through prayer and meditation on Scripture. The truth of God thus becomes a springboard to the contemplation of the Lord in every circumstance. St. Moses the Black, one of the great desert fathers of 4^th century Egypt, said:

God is… to be known [in this life] from the grandeur and beauty of His creatures, from His providence which governs the world day by day, from his righteousness and from the wonders which He shows to His saints in each generation. When we reflect on the measurelessness of His power and His unsleeping eye which looks upon the hidden things of the heart and which nothing can escape, we are filled with the deepest awe, marveling at Him and adoring Him. When we consider that he numbers the raindrops, the sand of the sea and the stars of heaven, we are amazed at the grandeur of His nature and His wisdom. When we think of His ineffable and inexplicable wisdom, His love for mankind, and His limitless long-suffering at man’s innumerable sins, we glorify Him. When we consider His great love for us, in that though we had done nothing good He, being God, deigned to become man in order to save us from delusion, we are roused to longing for Him. When we reflect that He Himself has vanquished in us our adversary, the devil, and that He has given us eternal life if only we would choose and turn towards His goodness, then we venerate Him. There are many similar ways of seeing and apprehending God, which grow in us according to OUR LABOR and to THE DEGREE OF OUR PURIFICATION. (from Vol. 1 of the Kallistos Ware Philokalia, pp. 96-97)

So let us not be hypocritical Pharisees, who outwardly do and say the right things, but inwardly nurse uncleanness. Still less should we avoid hypocrisy by allowing our outward actions to be conformed to the evil within. Rather let us put on the whole armor of God, and incline our hearts to the Lord, knowing that as we were once slaves of sin, we may now renew our obedience from the heart to the standard of teaching to which we have been committed, and having been set free from sin, become slaves of righteousness and sanctification (cf. Romans 6.17ff).

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

rené girard: "ratzinger is right" etc.

Read it all here.

NPQ: Is Christianity superior to other religions?

Girard: Yes. All of my work has been an effort to show that Christianity is superior and not just another mythology. In mythology, a furious mob mobilizes against scapegoats held responsible for some huge crisis. The sacrifice of the guilty victim through collective violence ends the crisis and founds a new order ordained by the divine. Violence and scapegoating are always present in the mythological definition of the divine itself.

It is true that the structure of the Gospels is similar to that of mythology in which a crisis is resolved through a single victim who unites everybody against him, thus reconciling the community. As the Greeks thought, the shock of death of the victim brings about a catharsis that reconciles. It extinguishes the appetite for violence. For the Greeks, the tragic death of the hero enabled ordinary people to go back to their peaceful lives.

However, in this case, the victim is innocent and the victimizers are guilty. Collective violence against the scapegoat as a sacred, founding act is revealed as a lie. Christ redeems the victimizers through enduring his suffering, imploring God to "forgive them for they know not what they do." He refuses to plead to God to avenge his victimhood with reciprocal violence. Rather, he turns the other cheek.

The victory of the Cross is a victory of love against the scapegoating cycle of violence. It punctures the idea that hatred is a sacred duty.

The Gospels do everything that the (Old Testament) Bible had done before, rehabilitating a victimized prophet, a wrongly accused victim. But they also universalize this rehabilitation. They show that, since the foundation of the world, the victims of all Passion-like murders have been victims of the same mob contagion as Jesus. The Gospels make this revelation complete because they give to the biblical denunciation of idolatry a concrete demonstration of how false gods and their violent cultural systems are generated.

This is the truth missing from mythology, the truth that subverts the violent system of this world. This revelation of collective violence as a lie is the earmark of Christianity. This is what is unique about Christianity. And this uniqueness is true.

holy cross sermon for pentecost 12 / proper 16 / year b / august 23 2009

John 6.60-69

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we conclude our several-week lectionary excursus on the great Bread of Heaven discourse in St. John’s Gospel. We have seen that in order to have eternal life, we must come to Christ in faith, love, and humility, and that we must feed on him. And we have seen the continuity of the spiritual dimension of this teaching with the bodily dimension, a continuity expressed and located, in the economy of the Church, in the consecrated elements of the Holy Eucharist. For it is the flesh of Jesus Christ – his physical body – which is entirely animated and empowered by the Holy Spirit, and which in consequence, carries out the will of the Father, and brings the Kingdom of God to earth, so that it might truly be said that the Kingdom of God has come near (Luke 10.11), that it has come upon us (Luke 11.20), that it is in the midst of us, that, if we feed on Christ’s flesh, it is within us (Luke 17.21).

Today’s Gospel reading begins with the scandal with which many of the Lord’s own disciples heard his teaching about the necessity of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Let us remind ourselves of what precisely Jesus had said that caused such consternation even among those who were otherwise well-disposed toward him. In the verses immediately preceding today’s Gospel, verses we encountered last week, the Lord says:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.” This he said in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. (John 6.53ff).

And then we have the beginning of today’s reading: “Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” And it is indeed a hard saying. But where does the difficulty lie? A strictly literal understanding of the Lord’s words would lead to charges of cannibalism. And indeed in the early Church, in the days of persecution, cannibalism was indeed one of the standard charges trotted out against Christians by unbelievers – and even today many, especially in the Protestant traditions, misunderstand the Catholic Church’s teaching about eating the Lord’s flesh and drinking his blood, in this way. But as St. Paul says, “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3.6).

Jesus does not try to make it any easier for his disciples to understand. We are not cannibals. But the truth – the Word of God, which Jesus speaks – which Jesus IS – is perhaps even more difficult to receive. Theophylact said: the Body of Christ which we receive “is not simply the flesh of man, but [the flesh] of God: and it makes man divine, by inebriating him… with divinity.” Jesus does not soften the lesson to accommodate our incredulity. He makes it even MORE incomprehensible. He says, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you that do not believe.” Faith precedes and seeks understanding, as the Latin phrase has it: fides quaerens intellectum. Faith seeking understanding. And the inability of many of Jesus’ disciples to receive his teaching, has its genesis in their failure to BEGIN with faith in Jesus’ PERSON. St. Anselm of Canterbury said: “…the right order requires that we should BELIEVE the deep things of the Christian faith BEFORE we undertake to discuss them by reason” (Cur Deus Homo). “…The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you that do not believe.”

Saint Augustine says: “Christ became the Son of man, of the Virgin Mary here upon earth, and took flesh upon him: he says then, what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before? [He says this in order] to let us know that Christ, God and man, is one person, not two; and [that he is] the object of one faith… He was the Son of man in heaven, as he was Son of God upon earth; the Son of God upon earth by assumption of the flesh, the Son of man in heaven, by the unity of the person.”

The real scandal – the real stumbling block – is the person of Jesus himself. He – his person – is the object of our faith, or the object of our incredulity: the stone, rejected by the builders, on which anyone who falls is broken in pieces (cf. Luke 20.18-19). “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before?” Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God – begotten of God from before all worlds – the One by whom, and through whom, and for whom, the universe was brought into being out of nothing. Jesus says, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail,” and this is the proof of the divine identity of this person: that the Spirit of God has given him life; and that after eons of human flesh, of itself, availing nothing, but ending in every instance in death, it was not so for Jesus, who rose from death on the third day, in the power of the Spirit, never to die again, over whom death no longer has dominion (cf. Romans 6.9).

St. Paul says, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you” (Romans 8.11). And again, St. Augustine says, “For the flesh does not cleanse of itself, but the Word who assumed it: which Word, being the principle of life in all things, having taken up soul and body, cleanses the souls and bodies of those that believe.” And we return to the centrality of the person of Jesus, who is the eternal Word of God, whose very flesh was given life by the Holy Spirit. What ultimately is the object of our faith? It is not doctrines or systems of ethics; nor even the Bible; and least of all is it works of the flesh, however good they may be. The object of our faith is rather the person of Jesus Christ, on whose flesh and blood we are invited to feast, in faith: faith working by love, and love working by humility.

Only by consuming him, and so being consumed BY him, and incorporated into his Body, does the Spirit come to dwell in us. How do we know that the Holy Spirit dwells in us? We look for its fruit, which, as St. Paul says, is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5.22-23). We do not attain the life-giving Spirit of God by striving for these things, rather we receive the Spirit by feeding on the divine flesh to which the Spirit has given life: by eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ.

It all begins with faith in the person of Jesus Christ, in believing that, in the flesh, he has come to us from God, and that he has returned, in the flesh, to God. And it is this faith to which St. Peter bears simple and eloquent witness at the end of today’s Gospel. Many of Jesus’s disciples had left him over the scandal of his teaching, and “Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have BELIEVED, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God,’” (John 6.67ff).

Jesus is – in himself – eternal life; and in his flesh and blood, he gives to us what he himself is.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

holy cross sermon for pentecost 11 / proper 15 / year b / august 16 2009

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s Gospel continues the Lord’s teaching from Saint John’s Gospel, which we have encountered over the past several weeks, about the Bread of Heaven, the food which endures to eternal life, which Jesus says is his flesh. The words of Jesus which we hear in today’s Gospel, he speaks in response to a question put by “the Jews” in the verse just before the beginning of today’s reading. They ask: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6.52).

The great Biblical commentator Theophylact says that the Body of Christ which we receive, “is not simply the flesh of man, but [the flesh] of God: and it makes man divine, by inebriating him, as it were, with divinity.” This is what we are after: being inebriated with divinity, and thereby being made divine. That is the whole purpose of the Incarnation of the eternal Word. As Saint Athanasius famously put it, the Word “was made man so that we might be made God” (De Incarn. 54.3).

We have seen that the effectual approach to receiving the Bread of Heaven, which is the body of Christ, is the approach of FAITH – of believing that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he has done what he said he would do. And we have seen that, as Saint Augustine puts it, faith works by love. “To believe in [Jesus means] believing to love [him], believing to honour Him, believing to go to Him, and to be made members incorporate of His Body. The faith which God requires of us, is that which works by LOVE.”

We may also see that a prerequisite of the faith that “works by love” – is humility. This should come as no surprise, as our approach to Christ – our LOVE of him – is elicited by his having first come to us in great humility, his having first LOVED us. Saint John says it explicitly: “We love, because [God] first loved us” (1 John 4.19).

The token of God’s love for us is the Incarnation of his only Son. How do we know that God loves us? Because Jesus Christ came into the world, “leaving” (so to speak) the transcendent domain of his Father, and taking to himself a bride – our nature, becoming frail flesh. This is an act of supreme humility, and it was undertaken out of nothing but love: because God looked with compassion on the human condition, the brokenness and confusion and futility of life in the world. God determined to fix it, and so he sent his Son, to live and die as one of us – yet the only one of us who offered himself in every instant of his life, in perfect and loving devotion, to God.

Christ came to live and die as one of us, and to live and die in such a way that his life and death might become not only an exemplar or paradigm of virtue or righteousness – a pattern for us to imitate – but so that his life might become for us the dynamism that animates us. Christ came not only to show us how to live, but to live for us, within us, to give his life not only FOR US, but TO US, as something for us to take to ourselves, to internalize, such that it wells up within us, displacing everything broken, confused, and futile, and transforming us by degrees into his own likeness. This is why the Apostle Paul says: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2.20). Faith, working by love, leads to divine life. “This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever” (John 6.58).

I would like to draw our attention to two important things with respect to receiving and feeding on the Body of Christ in faith and in love. And both are aspects of the humility that is required of us – the subsumption of our own will into the will of God in Christ.

As we have seen in the previous several weeks, we must give our lives to Christ in order for the gift of his life to be effectual within us. This means that we must allow ourselves – we must allow the pattern of our life – to be transformed, and to become divine. Saint Augustine says: “There are some who promise men deliverance from eternal punishment if they are washed in Baptism and partake of Christ’s Body, whatever lives they live. The Apostle [Paul] however contradicts them, where he says: ‘Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.’”

In order to receive the gift of divine life, to become subsumed into the very life of God, and so attain to peace and joy, we must GIVE OURSELVES to Christ. And this means leaving behind the life of the world – it means leaving behind every pattern of action that is informed by what is telluric, what belongs essentially to the earth. Why? Because the earth is temporal, and it, and every pattern of action that belongs to it, will perish. Saint Peter says, “the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up” (2 Peter 3.10). What will remain is that which belongs to heaven, and those who have been transformed by allowing their lives – the pattern of their actions – to be nourished, informed, and empowered by that which belongs essentially to heaven – “the Bread which came down from heaven.” And “He who eats this bread will live for ever.”

To be members of the Body of Christ must mean that the power at work in us – the dynamism which drives our action, which governs our lives and the very movement of our bodies – is the same power at work in Christ, namely the Holy Spirit of God. It is for this reason that what were once called “sins of the flesh” – the sins which we commit with our bodies – are particularly difficult impediments to the inheritance of the kingdom of God. Speaking of sins of the flesh, again, St. Paul says: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two shall become one flesh.’ But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun sexual immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the sexually immoral man sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6.15ff).

So what we do with our bodies must be informed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, the same dynamism informing the action of Christ in the flesh.

The second important element in receiving the Body of Christ, to which I would like to draw your attention, is what we might call the “ecumenical” element. Saint Augustine says, “Whereas men desire meat and drink to satisfy hunger and thirst, this effect is only really produced by that meat and drink, which makes the receivers of it immortal and incorruptible; i.e. [which makes them into] the society of Saints, where there is peace and unity, full and perfect. On which account our Lord has chosen for the types of His body and blood, things which become one out of many. Bread is a quantity of grains united into one mass, wine a quantity of grapes squeezed together.”

As we come to Christ and receive the flesh of the Son of Man, and as we thereby give ourselves to being transformed by God into the image of his Son, we find ourselves in close proximity to all those who likewise have come to Christ and who are being transformed into the form of his life. In short, when we become children of God – by being members of his Son – Christ himself becomes “the firstborn of many brethren” (Romans 8.29). In the Body of Christ, we become for the first time, brothers and sisters of one another.

This is part of the reason that the Lord chose the elements of bread and wine to perpetuate his presence among us, and to effect our reconciliation with God. In the case of bread, many grains of wheat are gathered out of the fields, and separated from the chaff – the useless husks. The grain is ground down, mixed with water, and put into a fire, until it becomes a single loaf. The spiritual symbolism of this should be manifest. And it is summed up in the words of a very ancient prayer which I pray at every mass, under my breath, immediately after the Eucharistic host is consecrated and broken: “As grain, once scattered on the hillsides was in this broken bread made one, so from all lands may your Church be gathered into your Kingdom by your Son, for yours is the glory and the power, through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.”

To receive the Bread of Heaven without reference to the unity of the one Body of Christ, which is the Catholic Church – is a serious problem. This is the sacrament of unity, and I sincerely tremble at the presumption with which we receive it, in the midst of the reality of our separation from the overwhelming majority of Christians throughout the world.

This “is not simply the flesh of man, but [the flesh] of God: and it makes man divine, by inebriating him, as it were, with divinity.” Let us come to the Lord, but let us come in faith, remembering that faith works by love, and that love works by humility. Let us come resolute in putting off the works of the flesh, and every dissension, and renewed by the power of the Spirit. Let us come earnestly seeking the peace and unity of the one Body of Christ, the Una Sancta, for whom alone the Lord poured out his life (Ephesians 5.29-30).

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

holy cross sermon for pentecost 10 / proper 14 / year b / august 9 2009

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus further develops the teaching which we heard last week: that we must not labor for food that perishes – that is to say, we must not seek after things in this world which will make us temporarily happy – but we must labor for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man alone can – and does – give to us. That is to say, we are to seek Jesus himself, and when we attain him, we will find a lasting joy and a lasting peace, which cannot be taken away from us by any means.

We also saw last week that we approach Jesus in FAITH – by believing in him – believing that he is who says he is, and that he has done for us what he said he would do for us.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me…” We learn from this saying that the remedy to our predicament is humility: in allowing our own will to be subsumed into the will of God: saying to him with conviction, “Lord, I do not know what is best for me, but you do; may your will be done in my life. Lord, I trust you with my life, and I place myself in your hands, for in your hands all is safe, and I am safe.”

Saint Augustine said: our soul “departed from God because it was proud. Pride casts us out, [but] humility restores us. When a physician in the treatment of a disease, cures certain outward symptoms, but not the cause which produces those symptoms, his cure is only temporary. So long as the cause remains, the disease may return. That the cause then of all diseases, i.e. pride, might be eradicated, the Son of God humbled himself. O man, why are you proud? The Son of God humbled Himself for you. It might shame you, perhaps, to imitate a humble man; but imitate at least a humble God. And this is the proof of His humility: ‘I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me…’ Pride does its own will; humility [does] the will of God.”

We are eaten up with pride. We always think we know best. Trusting in another is difficult – and it can be particularly difficult for people who have been injured by others. We train ourselves to stand on our own, to be self-sufficient, to go through life strong, self-reliant, and autonomous. But that is the road to death and hell. The road to peace and joy – the road to the presence of God – lies in self-abandonment, in giving up our own notions about what we need and even what we want, and instead trusting God: believing in Jesus, who said, “whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it” (Luke 9.24).

This process is difficult precisely because it requires trust. But if we attain to faith, we come to know that God does, in fact, provide WHAT we need, WHEN we need it. This is the experience described in the Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy, a passage that begins with the prerequisite – again – of HUMILITY: “you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might HUMBLE you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. And he HUMBLED you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out upon you, and your foot did not swell, these forty years.”

Coming to understand with our hearts that “man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord” – this can be painful, because it entails allowing ourselves to be purged, to have a lifetime of false-selves scraped away. In order to find the satisfaction of our hunger, we must first know what it means to hunger. Spiritually, this means giving up our pretensions, and giving up something that has been instilled in us as a very high end indeed: the American Dream itself: the pursuit of happiness. Lasting happiness eludes us as long as we seek it. But we make progress as we learn rather to seek Jesus – who is the SOURCE (and the only source) of true and lasting joy and peace. As he himself says in today’s Gospel: “this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

Jesus makes mention of the mystery of the resurrection three times in today’s Gospel, and each time with reference to it being the Father’s will that we should come to Jesus and be raised by him at the last day. In the Lord’s third mention of this, about halfway through the reading, Jesus says: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.” And to this, Jesus connects a prophecy of the Old Testament: “It is written in the prophets, `And they shall all be taught by God.' Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”

Here we have a deep mystery of the divine life. It is God who calls to himself within us. As the Psalm says: “Deep calls to deep in the noise of your cataracts.” Our task to allow that process to unfold within us, to give in to it, and to pray for it continually. Saint Augustine says, “This is the doctrine of grace: none comes [to Christ], unless he is drawn. But whom the Father draws, and whom not, and why He draws one, and not another, presume not to decide, if you would avoid falling into error. Take the doctrine as it is given to you: and if you are not drawn, pray that you may be.” For only thus will your deepest longings find fulfillment and consummation.

The Gospel passages over these few weeks are about the Lord’s teaching about the Bread of Life. Last week I said how difficult it is to read these words and not see in them a reference to the Blessed Sacrament. That is no accident. Because in the Eucharist the eyes of faith see this spiritual drama unfold. The Eucharist fans the flame of the yearning for God within our hearts. The Eucharist is the principle location of the Lord’s summons within the economy of the life of faith within this world. It is where the Father draws us to the Son.

I would like to conclude, as I did last week, by saying a word about the Lord’s invitation to the Eucharistic feast. Firstly, we return to the centrality of humility. For we accept the Lord’s summons by means of humble faith. Saint Augustine reminds us that: “the Sacrament is one thing, the virtue of the Sacrament another. There are many who receive from the Altar, and then perish in [the very act of] receiving; eating and drinking their own condemnation, as the Apostle says. Therefore to eat the heavenly bread spiritually, is to bring to the Altar an INNOCENT MIND. Sins, though they be daily, are not deadly. Before you go to the Altar, pay attention to the prayer you pray: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. If you forgive, you are forgiven: approach confidently; it is bread, not poison. None then that eat of this bread shall die.”

Lastly Saint Augustine says, “The faithful know and receive the Body of Christ, if they labor to be the body of Christ. And they become the body of Christ, if they labor to live by the Spirit of Christ: for that which lives by the Spirit of Christ, is the body of Christ. It is this bread of which the Apostle speaks, where he says, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.. O sacrament of mercy, O sign of unity, O bond of love! Whoever wishes to live, let him draw near, let him believe, let him be incorporated, that he may be made alive.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

holy cross sermon for pentecost 9 / proper 13 / year b / august 2 2009

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.”

In today’s Gospel, the Lord exhorts us to seek him for his own sake, rather than for the temporal benefits that we think we might get from him. Jesus had just fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish, and when the crowds come seeking him, he says to them: “You seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.”

Saint Augustine said, “How many there are who seek Jesus, only to gain some temporary benefit… Jesus is scarcely sought for Jesus’ sake.”

Jesus says, “Do not labor for the food which perishes…” In other words, do not set your heart unequivocally on, nor commit your action unequivocally to, anything or anyone in all of creation. The key word being “unequivocally.” As the Lord says in the Gospel of Matthew: seek FIRST the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and by seeking the kingdom, you will become a co-heir, with Christ, of everything else.

Jesus says, “Labor… for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give you.” And he says explicitly what this food is: it is Jesus himself. “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

We are therefore to labor to attain Christ himself. But what does this mean? How does it work? Well it begins with FAITH. With believing in God. And the Lord himself introduces the centrality of faith in today’s reading where he says “He who COMES TO ME shall not hunger, and he who BELIEVES IN ME shall never thirst.” And this is the proper sequence: first we must COME TO Christ, and once we have encountered him, the encounter becomes an invitation – and the material condition for the growth of our faith.

In the lives of individuals, this “coming to Christ” means listening for his voice. It begins, perhaps, with the stirring of a person’s conscience, or with their heart being engaged by what they know, intuitively or intellectually, to be true or good or beautiful. It continues when one begins to be engaged by the truth of the Gospel, as for example in the catechumenate. Major milestones are reached with acts of the will – with decisions along the way – to continue to conform one’s life to the commandments of Christ. And each such act of the will is likewise an act of FAITH, of believing that what Christ says is true, and that therefore we should live accordingly.

One also thereby continues to make progress in one’s journey to God – along the path that is straight but difficult, and through the gate that is open but narrow. The biggest milestone on this journey is the regeneration of Baptism and one’s admission to the sacraments of the new law. Likewise here one is faced with a decision: to conform one’s life to the discipline of communion, not only by showing up to mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, which the Church and the Lord himself expect of us – but also to conform one’s life to the moral demands of the Gospel. Life in Christ should change everything for us, because in him we are “born anew” in the Spirit of God (Jn. 3.3). And because we have a new life, we have a new way of relating to others. Relationships of every stripe should be transformed by our conformity to the pattern of Christ: family relationships, economic relationships, sexual relationships, our relationship with the government, with friends, and even with enemies – all must be transformed by the Spirit of God and the discipline of communion: all must become HOLY. This is what St. Peter means when he says, “Gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct…” (1 Pet. 1.13ff).

Furthermore, we make progress in our journey to Christ – we “come to” him – as we begin to pray and as our prayer deepens. How often are our prayers about getting something from the Lord? How often do they have the character, “Lord, please do _______ for me,” or “Lord if you will just do ______, I will do ______,”? If our prayer remains in this order, we expose ourselves to the danger not only of treating God as a means to an end, – whereas in reality, he is the only end worthy of being desired in and for himself, toward whom everything in creation is oriented, and for whom everything is a means – not only do we set up something above God in the order of our desire, and so approach the sin of idolatry, but by thinking and praying this way, we risk cheating ourselves of the fullness of joy and peace.

I don’t mean that we should not ask God for things. We should. And we are told to do so in Scripture – St. Peter says, “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God,” (Phil. 4.6), and the example of the apostles and saints confirms that this kind of prayer is licit and can be good. But it is not the best kind of prayer, and in order for it to acquire its proportional goodness, it must be informed by what is higher and better.

And here we return to the linchpin of FAITH. In today’s Gospel reading, the people ask Jesus what it means to do “the works of God”. Jesus answers: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” The work of God is BELIEVING in Jesus. But what does that mean? It means much more than simply believing that he lived – or even believing that he still lives. As St. James says of this kind of belief: “Even the demons believe -- and shudder” (Jas. 2.19). Rather, to believe in Jesus is to believe in the witness the Father bears him, chiefly by raising Jesus from the dead. And the truth to which the Father thus bears witness, is that Jesus is who he says he is: the Christ, the Son of the living God. To believe in Jesus means (1) to believe THIS, and then (2) to rely on his promises, and (3) to rely on what he has accomplished on our behalf – by dying on the cross. Saint Augustine says: “To believe in [Jesus means] believing to love [him], believing to honour Him, believing to go to Him, and to be made members incorporate of His Body. The faith which God requires of us, is that which works by LOVE.”

Life in Christ therefore means: to labor “for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.” And we make progress in this labor as our faith deepens. And our faith deepens as we progress – as our vision of Christ becomes clarified by love, and the obedience that comes from love (John 14.15). This is the archetype of what the Psalmist refers to in today’s Psalm where he says, “so mortals ate the bread of angels.” Because Jesus is “the bread of God… that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.” He is called the “bread of angels” because “the heavenly powers derive their life and vigor from contemplating him in open vision” (Denis the Carthusian). And this too is our destiny. As we are drawn more and more into the contemplation of the Lord in open vision, the more we find ourselves subsisting on the food which endures to eternal life, and the less anything else matters. We discover peace and joy in every circumstance, even suffering. We discover, with Saint Paul, “the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want” (Phil. 4.12). And it all begins, as Saint Augustine said, with seeking Jesus for Jesus’ sake.

So far I have been talking about the spiritual life. But there is another, more obvious, and related, significance to the Lord’s words in today’s Gospel, namely that concerning the Mass, wherein we receive the Bread of Heaven, the Body and Blood of the Lord. Here too faith is the linchpin, not because the efficacy of the sacrament depends on our faith, but because the benefits we draw from our reception of it stand in proportion to the faith in which we approach it. Saint Paul said that we may even harm ourselves by partaking of the sacrament unworthily (1 Cor. 11.27ff). I will leave you with a word of advice from Alcuin of York about receiving the Bread of Heaven in faith: “When, through the hand of the priest, you receive the Body of Christ, think not of the priest which you see, but [think] of the Priest you do not see. The priest is the dispenser of this food, not the author. The Son of man gives Himself to us, that we may abide in Him, and He in us. Do not conceive that Son of man to be the same as other sons of men: He stands alone in abundance of grace, separate and distinct from all the rest: for that Son of man is the Son of God.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.