Fr. JC Maximilian

Reading Sacred Scripture can be very awe-inspiring, and in the Word of God the most profound mysteries of God, Creation, the Human Person, and God’s love for us are presented for our contemplation. However, taken out of their full context, there are some very amusing lines in Scripture. This week, as we were trying to decide what to put on the marquee sign in front of Our Lady of Sorrows, we amusingly considered these lines from this weekend’s readings, “Let whoever is simple turn in here….” (Proverbs 9:4), or “Forsake foolishness that you may live” (Proverbs 9:6), or “Do not continue in ignorance….” (Ephesians 5:17). Could you imagine what some people would think as there drove past a sign saying something like that?

Yet there is a reason for language such as this in the Sacred Scriptures. Largely that is because we can all be quite foolish at times, for the wisdom of God is often quite beyond our understanding. And when we do not understand something, we tend to think the other person is foolish.

Jesus is facing just such a situation in today’s Gospel reading. For the past few weeks we have been hearing from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, commonly called the “Bread of Life Discourse.” It is a long speech of Jesus in which He explains just how much God loves us, with the summit being Jesus declaring that He is the living bread from Heaven, and we must eat His flesh and drink His blood if we want to live forever in Heaven.

The Jewish people were very familiar with the image of God taking care of them, and providing for their needs. In today’s first reading, from the Book of Proverbs, we hear God calling to the people to eat the food and drink the wine that He would prepare for them. The devout Jew of the time of Jesus knew, but looking at their history and reading Scripture, that when the people did not let God provide for them that things went badly for them. Not doing the will of God was the height of foolishness. However, they still often did not have the “Big Picture” in mind, and only looked at the here-and-now. In that they were still acting in ignorance and foolishness.

They thought that God would provide for them in a purely temporal and material manner. They did not see that what was truly important was the eternal and spiritual. Therefore, when Jesus spoke about His flesh being true food, and his blood true drink which they would need to eat and drink, many of them thought that He was crazy. Scholars tell us that there was no way they could understand Jesus’ words as being just symbolic because the word they used, which we have translated as “eat,” was more like “munched” or “gnawed.” There was no doubt that Jesus was talking about a real, physical eating and drinking of His Body and Blood. Next week we will hear that many of His disciples followed Him no longer. How foolish.

Yet, we too, often continue in this foolishness. Some surveys suggest that nearly 60% of American Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Sixty percent! How sad; the central Mystery of our Faith, discounted by too many as just a “sign” or “symbol” of fellowship, or a memory tool for remembering what Jesus did for us. Just so we are clear: the Eucharist is REALLY the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus. Jesus has given Himself to us in a real, lasting and personal way in giving us the Eucharist. Why did Jesus give us the Eucharist?

The Eucharist is the sacrament of hope. Jesus knows that we can become very short-sighted. Too often we can get totally wrapped up in the here-and-now and the material that we forget about the eternal and spiritual. This is NOT our true home. God created us to love and serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him in the next. Our real home, our ultimate destiny is Heaven.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the Holy Spirit” (CCC #1817). God want us to be happy. Unfortunately too often we think that we will find true happiness in this life. Too often we think that things – whether it is a new car, house, fancy clothes, a boat, or reputation, or power – will bring us lasting happiness. To that God says, “Do not continue in ignorance,” and “Forsake foolishness that you may live.” For “In God alone will my soul be at rest, from whom comes my hope” (Ps 62:6).

St. Cyril of Jerusalem said, “he who receives the Lord’s flesh and blood is so united with him that Christ dwells in him and he in Christ.” For this to happen we must “change our hearts.” A true conversion of heart is not merely a turning away from sin, but involves turning towards Christ with all our heart.

St. Teresa of Avila warns that if we receive Jesus in the Eucharist in a distracted way, with our hearts and minds “in other business and occupations and worldly hindrances…” then we forfeit our union with Christ. She continues by saying that a tepid Eucharistic life “makes all possible haste to prevent the Lord from taking possession of the house which is his own” (Way of Perfection, 34).

“If we honestly want to posses Christ and be possessed by him in the next life, we have to work for it in this life. This means living in such a way that our desire for Christ directs our heart and mind toward him, regardless of our obligations and activities. It means keeping God present during the day, visiting and receiving Christ in the Eucharist frequently, and living under the influence of the Eucharist” (Ermatinger, Sacerdos Homilies: Cycle B, August-September, p. 16).

In case you are wondering what we finally decided to put on the marquee in front of the church, I think we settled on (if we had enough letters), “whoever eats this bread will live forever.” How true it is.

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I think I have mentioned that the parish to which I am currently assigned has a lot of permanent deacons. One of deacons has recently moved, so the deacons’ schedule had to be revised, and with seven of them, it can be a bit confusing. This morning I had the 7:30 a.m. Mass, and there was no deacon present. While praying Mass without a deacon is not a problem for me, it was one of our “Deacon Preach” weekends, so I did not have a homily prepared. These are the situations where you say, “OK Lord, its gonna have to be all You, for I’m not prepared.” Of course God is Good.

In fact that was one of the main points of my homily: God is Good. Too often people think of God as just being off at a great distance, and not really in our midst. I think that is what so many of the people were murmuring about in today’s Gospel. They could accept Jesus has a religious teacher, even a prophet sent from God. As such they expected Him to say “holy things,” some of which would be challenging to accept, but almost expected. Things like “love your enemy as yourself,” must have been hard to hear, especially when Jesus was talking about loving the Romans, but deep down people expect “holy” people to say stuff like that. Its like when I recently challenged some people I know who were saying some rather uncharitable things about the situation in the Middle East. I have no doubt about the dangerousness of the various Muslim terrorists (or any terrorists), but “wiping those people off the face of the earth” really is not a Christian attitude. All people are made in the image and likeness of God, even those whom we call “enemy.” Of course when I said this, the people I was talking with basically rolled their eyes and I could almost see what they were thinking, “Oh, he has to say stuff like that, because he is a priest,” and then just dismiss it.

However, the murmuring we hear about in today’s Gospel was something much more, for Jesus’ teaching was much more shocking for the people. Jesus was not just telling them how they should behave, rather He dared to say to them that He was the Bread of Life, that He was divine, and that God so loves us that He gets intimately involved in our lives.

We see this in today’s first reading. Elijah is worn out — physically, mentally, and spiritually. He has proclaimed God’s message and has been rejected. He goes out into the desert to die, but God feeds him. God provides the nourishment that he needed so that he could complete the journey God had set him on.

God has also set each of us on a journey. In our baptism and Confirmation we have all been given a share in the mission of the Church, to proclaim the Good News to the end of the earth, and to make disciples of all the nations. Each of us face difficulties and challenges in living out our mission in the particular situations and vocation that God has called us to. Yet God provides the nourishment we need. In the Eucharist we are given the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. We are given the Divine Life to eat, so that we will have the strength for the journey.

However, like the people who first heard Jesus speak, we do a lot of murmuring. Recent polls suggest that 60% of American Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Rather they see it as a sign or symbol, but not the Real Jesus. Is it any wonder that the world is not Christian when so many do not accept the Food come down from Heaven?

Just as Jesus called those who He spoke to in today’s Gospel to believe in Him for such belief would lead to eternal life, so Jesus continues to call us to believe in Him. While most of the Mass has been translated into nearly every language in the world, one small Hebrew word is never translated; “Amen.” It means “I believe,” but we do not translate it because by saying “Amen” when the minister says “The Body of Christ” and/or “The Blood of Christ” we are joining in oneness, in communion, with all those who expressed, and lived, their faith in Jesus; God among us.

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I would like to ask everyone who checks this blog to pray for my mother. She is part of a group who left today for Medjugorje. While I don’t think we are allowed to have official pilgrimmages there, she is traveling with a group of spiritual people. My concern is not with Medjugorje, but with all the craziness that has gone on in England with the terrorists. Mom called me early this morning, rather nervous about her trip. Ask our Lady to pray for them all.

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Today we celebrate the great Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mt. Tabor. Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter “On the Most Holy Rosary” in which he gave the Church five new, beautiful mysteries of the Rosary on which to meditate, called the Transfiguration “the mystery of light par excellence.” The Transfiguration is a glimpse of the Glory of God. This event in the life of our Lord occurred shortly before Jesus went to Jerusalem to be crucified. Pope John Paul II said that Jesus allowed Peter, James and John to experience His Transfiguration so “to prepare to experience with him the agony of the passion, so as to come with him to the joy of the resurrection and a life transfigured by the Holy Spirit” (John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, Daughters of St. Paul, 2002, pp. 29-30).

In addition to seeing Moses and Elijah, and the Glory of God shining throw the face of Jesus, something else of great importance occurred on Mt. Tabor that day. The three Apostles heard the voice of God the Father say, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

Listen to him. It seems like such an easy, straight-forward command, yet it seems so very difficult for so many of us much of the time. Listening seems like one of the easiest things for us to do. After all, God gave most of us two good ears, so as my father used to point out, we should listen twice as much as we speak since we only have one mouth. However, truth be told, many of us are not very good listeners; and not because we are hard of hearing or deaf. Before becoming a priest I studied for 6 years to become a psychologist, and much of that training was so that I could become an “effective listener,” and any therapist will tell you that listening effectively can be a lot of hard work.

Why are many of us not good listeners? One reason might be because we are too busy doing all the talking. When I was in the seminary I once visited a woman just flooded me with talking from the moment I walked in. She did not allow me to get a word in, and was so unaware of my real presence that she did not pick up on the fact that I was having some serious problems breathing because of all her cats. Despite my many comments of wanting to give her Holy Communion, and saying that I was allergic to cats, she just continued on. I was breaking out in hives and really wheezing, but on she went. Finally her husband just screamed, “Shut up! He is going to die from the cats if you don’t.”

While she was a pretty extreme case, often in our prayer life we are like that woman. We just talk and talk to God, or maybe at God, without letting God get a word in. God is not the ultimate “customer service department” whom we call whenever we are in need. God is the Creator of all, and our loving Father. He wants a relationship with us. He knows what is for our best, even when it looks not so good to us. We need to listen to Him, for doing so will lead to both psychological and spiritual growth, which will allow us to become more aware of reality and to deal with it more effectively. “Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings” (Benedict Groeschel, Listening at Prayer, Paulist Press, 1984, p. 3).

Listening, however, is more than just the perception of sound with our ears. Have you seen the commercial in which a woman comes into the kitchen where her husband is reading the paper. She asks him, “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?” and without even looking at her he says, “Absolutely!” He heard his wife talking to him, but he failed to listen to her, and from the look on her face, he was in big trouble for that failure.

There are so many sounds in our world that while we may perceive them, we do not listen to all of them. Most we simply ignore. True listening requires a response. This does not mean we need to say something. Rather it means attending to what was said, recognizing its meaning, and making it part of our inner, conscious experience.

The same applies to the listening that does not come to us via our ears. God speaks to us in so many ways. One person may barely notice a patch of blue sky, whereas the person of prayer, who listens to God, sees in it the dome of heaven. Or how often do we come to Mass and are more aware of the person coughing, the kid banging their toy on the pew in front of us, and just wishing it would be over soon. The person of prayer, however, is aware of all these same things, and is not only attending to what is happening in the liturgy, but is also aware of something much more important. They are aware of participating in the Divine Liturgy celebrated in the Kingdom of Heaven with all the saints. For one, they are surrounded by distractions, while for the other they are surrounded by saints and angels.

St. John of the Cross once pointed out that many of the people who think they are listening to God are actually only listening to themselves. There is so much that could be said about listening, especially in prayer, so let’s keep it simple. I am borrowing these ideas from a wonderful little book by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, called Listening at Prayer.

First, we need to learn to listen to what life is saying in the present moment before trying to shape our prayer. Too often we make the world just a projection of our own desires and fears. We can get so wrapped up in deciding what advice to give God about how to run the world, especially to meet our “needs,” that we are unable to listen to any of life’s real messages. To grow in the Christian life we must have an openness to the true and living God. We need to divest ourselves of preconceived expectations of life, and take life as it comes.

Second, when life gives us its message, we should make the understanding of that message the first object of our prayer. At the foundation of the prayer of life is the virtue of hope, and “hope is the grace to believe that whatever events occur, they will contain the necessary ingredients of our salvation” (Benedict Groeschel, Listening at Prayer, Paulist Press, 1984, p. 18). This is often the really difficult part in listening at prayer, because often the most important lessons in life come from listening to God speaking to us in the tragic circumstances of our lives. God does not want evil in the world; it is the result of sin, of our refusing to let God’s love into certain parts of our lives. It is because of the disobedience of our first parents that a strain of disorder has infected, like a virus, all of creation. Yet God offers us the grace to see His order of love even in the disorder. Fr. Groeschel, in his books, tells of meeting a man terribly afflicted with leprosy which had destroyed his hands and most of his face, yet the man was grateful to have contracted the disease because prior to his illness he lived a wild, godless life. His disease allowed him to see the real emptiness of his life without God, so now he was at peace because he was seeking God. Jesus tells us in the Gospel that it is better to enter the Kingdom of God maimed or lame than to have all our limbs and be cast into the fires of Hell.

Third, once we have received the message of life we must attempt to integrate it with our efforts to live by the Gospel. The Gospel must be the focal point of our lives, and not just something relegated to an hour a week at Mass. It is often rather shocking for people as they become more effective listeners at prayer to discover that many of our values and desires are quite pagan in light of the Gospel. “The prayer of listening will help us confront precisely those areas needing conversion if we do not allow discouragement and worldly values to take over” (Benedict Groeschel, Listening at Prayer, Paulist Press, 1984, p. 21). As our prayer life improves so will how we live life.

Finally we need to pray that we may pray. God has no need of our prayer, in fact the very desire to pray is a gift from God. St. Paul noted in one of his epistles that often we do not know how to pray as we should, thus it is important to ask the Holy Spirit for the grace of prayer.

All of this requires effort on our part. We need to make time and space for prayer. Fr. Groeschel suggests that we start by first offering to the Lord some prayer that we know by heart – say the Our Father or Hail Mary – and include a petition, either for ourself or a loved one. But then we should just relax and ponder what we have just done. We, a finite being, have just spoken to the infinite and living God. Wow!

The Adoration Chapel that we have in our parish, located in the old convent chapel at Our Lady of Sorrows, is a valuable gift that we have. It is a quiet place where we can go and just listen to God speaking in our lives. It is a place where we can pray without words. Where we, finite creatures that we are, can marvel at the infinite love that God has for us, “for God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). And Jesus loves us so much that He not only suffered and died for us, but He further humbled Himself to remain with us, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in the appearance of bread and wine. How awesome is that! We can sit in the presence of the Lord pretty much whenever we want.

LISTEN TO HIM! Really listen to God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – speaking to us in the Scriptures and the sacraments, and in the ordinary moments of our lives. Listen to Him, and God will help us “surrender our preconceived notions and fantasies, to go beyond our defenses and shallow expectations, to be lifted on the eagle wings of grace” (Benedict Groeschel, Listening at Prayer, Paulist Press, 1984, p. 24). Jesus promises that “the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matt. 7:8), and for the disciple who makes the effort to listen, the Kingdom of God will be revealed. Listen to Him!

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