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20th Sunday
in Ordinary Time Jn 6/51-58 |
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| Background:
One must not take this passage as a description of an actual dialogue between Jesus
and some of those who followed him. Rather it doubtless refers to a difficulty in St.
John’s community over the Eucharist and the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, a
difficulty which has plagued the Church through it’s history, mostly because have
tried to reduce mystery to prose, to explain the inexplicable. The Eucharist demands faith
at every time and place, but less faith in the how then in the fact of the presence of
Jesus. As the first reading suggests faith opens up the fonts of wisdom and feeds us with
it. |
read the padre |
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Story: A young college student went to the
Newman chaplain and said, I believe in God and in life after death and in resurrection and
in the church, but I cannot accept that Jesus is really present, body and blood, soul and
divinity in the Eucharist. I’m sorry, but I just cant. The priest thought this was
like swallowing the grizzly bear and straining at the gnat. Resurrection, he said, is a
humungous miracle. Real Presence is kind of ordinary in comparison. I don’t believe I
really eat Jesus, the young man said. It’s just bread that’s all. You don’t
eat Jesus, the priest replied, knowing that he had one of those kids who somehow or the
other had run into an old fashioned teacher, one that still thought it was a sacrilege for
anyone but a priest to touch the sacred host. The poor kid was really worried about how
the doctrine of the real presence exposed Jesus to desecration if even a tiny piece was
somehow lost. The priest went through a lot of theological explanations which did not
satisfy the young man. I just have to understand how he works it out, the lad pleaded.
Have you figured out how God created the universe from nothing in the snap of a finger,
the priest said. Of course not the young man replied. Then his voice faded off. Oh, I get
it, he said softly. I’m not supposed to understand everything.
August Homilies: 6th | 13th | 20th | 27th |
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