Episode 198: To Whom Shall We Go?

This is the homily for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 25th, 2024.

Let's begin with the prayer.

Heavenly Father, send forth the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life,

to open our hearts to a deeper understanding and love for the gift of the Eucharist in our lives.

We ask this with confidence through Christ our Lord. Amen.

So I still haven't located my recording device, so I'm sitting in the rectory recording this homily.

But it's a privilege to break open the Word of God, and as we finish our journey through the Bread of Life discourse,

it kind of comes to a beautiful ending in the sense of Peter affirming their faith in the Lord,

but also a very sad reality that many of his followers found this teaching to be hard, and they left.

And from the very beginning, this has been a...

hard teaching, and a source of great division within Christianity.

So I'd like to examine some of the things that are happening in the scripture readings, but most importantly,

with the intent of deepening our love for Holy Communion, to really enter into the experience,

and to be transformed by it, so we can transform the world around us.

So one thing we recognize is that Jesus had many hard sayings.

You know, he shocked people a lot,

and kind of upset the

apple cart, and that's not a bad thing. So what we really need is faith and patience.

There's no room in the kingdom of God for know-it-alls.

You know, people who have no ability to humble themselves and realize that I don't know everything. There's new things to discover,

new ways to grow in our understanding, and so often in our world today,

we kind of have a knee-jerk reaction to things that we don't like, and we refuse to go deeper to

try to see things in a different way.

It's

especially

prevalent in an election year. I just can't believe some of the things I see posted on Facebook from

fellow believers, who I think are very distracted and making an idol out of politics and politicians.

So we have to have that faith and patience, and this is what Peter was saying

when he said, we don't understand what you're talking about, but where will we go?

We've come to believe in you as the Messiah, and we're in this, and we're not going to just leave because we don't get this teaching.

You will lead us into an understanding of what you're talking about, as we experience it in our lives.

And of course, we have the beautiful story in Luke's Gospel of the road to Emmaus,

where they recognized him in the Scriptures and the breaking of the bread.

That's the Mass, and we still recognize him in the Scriptures and the breaking of the bread. Their eyes were opened.

So let's pray for the ability to be

patient, and that this is something that can only be accessed

through faith. That's why we say the mystery of faith. How is it possible

for Jesus to give himself to us?

Body, blood, soul, and divinity, and to enter our lives and transform us. It's a mystery of faith.

That's why that's stated right there after the consecration.

And you know, for my Protestant brothers and sisters,

it's the same thing. How can you believe Jesus is truly the Son of God, true God and true man? We say it in our Creed.

If you just look at his

life, he was born like we are, he had to eat food like we do, he slept like we did, and

he died a death like we did. So it's only through faith that you believe

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

But if you just look on a horizontal plane, he looks like an ordinary human being with some wonderful teachings. And

many people, that's what they think he is. But no, we're believers. We call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We believe in his death and resurrection.

We believe he is the way, the truth, and the life.

No other name is given under heaven or earth by which we are saved, according to Saint Peter.

So we've crossed that threshold of faith.

But now we need to deepen our faith and go much deeper and not be shallow, and let the Word of God sink into our

hearts and take root. And I remember for me a very

graced experience once. My first

pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or to the Holy Land, was in 2007.

And I was preparing to celebrate Mass in the upper room.

I thought, what a privilege to celebrate Mass in the upper room.

And as I was preparing, the Lord kind of broke in and just

shared with me that I hadn't even begun to touch the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the beautiful

gift of the Eucharist, and that he was going to start teaching me things,

more things about it, and then also open up opportunities to teach.

So we celebrated Mass, we ended the pilgrimage, and within a few months,

I started getting invitations to do talks on the Eucharist. It was amazing.

And as I prepared those talks, I learned more and began to love more the Mass,

my role as a priest, my role as a recipient of Holy Communion. It was just an incredibly graced year.

And this year, too, is a Eucharistic revival year,

where we're trying not to receive the grace of God in vain, like Saint Paul says, and take for granted.

This beautiful gift that God has given us that has power to change us and to change the world.

And let me just end with, well what is Communion? Well, Communion is the first reading.

As for me and my house,

we will serve the Lord. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

So when we come forward for Holy Communion, we're making a public statement that I'm in.

I believe Jesus Christ is here for me, and I'm here for Him.

And I want to come forward and receive Holy Communion.

to receive him so that I can go out and be his hands and feet in the world today, which is so

broken. I just had a funeral last Friday, another fentanyl drug overdose. This is so common in our

society today because people are depressed. They don't know where to go. We need to say, Peter,

we do know where to go. We go to Jesus Christ, our healer, our divine physician.

So one of the things, too, is the Mass is not meant to be a fast food event. My nephew recently

married a beautiful young woman from Milan, Italy, and he went over there a year and a half ago to

begin to meet her family and to experience Italian culture. And he said, I love the way they don't

rush like we do as Americans. They don't have fast food joints where you just rush in, eat your food

and rush out. They'll sit around for two or three hours at dinner on a patio,

and talk and enjoy each other's company. And sometimes we come to Mass and it's a fast food

event. I just come in, do my duty. People even leave Mass early. My Mass at St. Aloysius is 50

minutes usually, and people still leave early. It's like, what are you doing? Are you paying

attention? So we want to make sure we're allowing the Holy Spirit to help us enter into this

experience of encountering intimately Jesus Christ through word and sacrament.

And a few years ago, a very good friend of mine gave me a book called Insinu Iesu,

At the Heart of Jesus. It's a Latin phrase that references John, the beloved disciple,

leaning or inclining at the heart or the breast of Jesus. And this is a priest who has a very

special vocation to pray for priests, maybe whose hearts have grown cold or not on the right track.

He feels that the Lord has given him a special intercessory ministry, and so he'll go,

before the blessed sacrament. But the Lord talks to him. So he has this book that somebody has

published. He's anonymous, but it's Insinu Iesu, When the Heart Speaks to Heart, The Journal of a

Priest at Prayer. And there's some beautiful passages in here. And this is March 13th, 2009.

And I'm just going to condense it and share the first paragraph and the last paragraph. But this

is an invitation to really understand the need for silence.

And time with Jesus after communion says the following.

Many, receiving me has become a routine action, devoid of faith, and with no manifestation of

adoration and of love. How has my church come to this? It is in these few precious moments after

Holy Communion that my heart seeks to hold conversation with my friends. But so many

turn away from me to busy themselves about many things.

Of you, my friends, I am a man of faith. I am a man of faith. I am a man of faith. I am a man of

faith. I am a man of faith. My friend, I ask something more. Remain with me for these few

moments. Listen for the sound of my voice in your heart. Know that my desire is to speak to you

and to listen to all that you have to tell me. It is in these moments that I am most disposed

to grant the requests made of me in faith. What a beautiful reflection inviting us to go deeper.

May the Holy Spirit bless you in this week.

And may we never take this grace for granted. Thank you for listening. Bye.