There are many
homilies that I remember. From when I
was discerning my vocation and participating at Saint Matthew’s Cathedral,
there are several from Cardinal Hickey, and a few from Father Brainerd. From my days in seminary, there are the good,
the bad, and the ugly from the faculty – all of them good for a chuckle from my
classmates. From my time as a priest
secretary in Rome, these two from Cardinal Ratzinger: his address to Pope Saint
John Paul II upon the twenty-fifth anniversary of his pontificate, and his
“dictatorship of relativism” talk from the Mass of the Holy Spirit before the
2005 Conclave that elected him to the Chair of Peter.
But from much before
that, I cannot point to very many homilies that have staying power, with one
exception. When I was a kid in
Birmingham, going to Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows, we occasionally had the
pleasure of a guest priest. He was the
abbot of the Benedictine monastery in Cullman, about forty minutes north of us. Though I really did not know what a
Benedictine monk was, I knew we called him Abbot Hilary, and I was always
pleased when he came. I liked his
preaching and his manner of celebrating Mass, both of which he did with
particular care and delight.
This weekend we
interrupt our year-long reading of the Gospel of Mark for a five-week detour
into the Gospel of John. We begin with
the feeding of the multitude, picking up neatly from where Mark left us last
week, but leading us where Mark did not choose to go: with Jesus to Capernaum,
and the square in front of the synagogue there.
The throng that has been fed once seeks to be fed again, and Jesus
responds by teaching them how, and what, He will feed them.
It requires five
Sundays to move through a single chapter, John Chapter Six, a Scriptural
citation that should come easily to every Catholic, and every Christian for
that matter. It is the Eucharistic
Discourse that John gives us in order to understand this mystery that is at the
heart of the relationship and life that Jesus offers us. The other Evangelists explain the Eucharist
in the presentation of the Last Supper, where John focuses on the mandatum, the washing of the feet. But there is no room to believe that he did
not emphasize the Eucharist, and this chapter makes that clear.
What Jesus proposed
in that square to that crowd was scandalous and repellent then, but to us has
become so familiar that it might lose its meaning. As Jesus directs the hungry crowd to hunger
instead for what he will give them, we have a chance to hear the same
invitation in our own circumstance. In
anger and disgust, many reject his offer and walk away, then and now. He concludes with the poignant question, Do you also want to leave? We hear Peter’s answer, but He stands
waiting for ours.
The homily I remember
from my youth is Abbot Hilary’s on the final portion of John Chapter Six, when
Jesus poses to his listeners, and to us, this choice of how to respond to His
offered Body and Blood. The response
that I chose led me to be in a position to propose the same choice to you. Over these five weeks, you may or may not
hear, much less ever recall, my preaching on this vital element in our
Faith. But do not let the words of the
Holy Gospel reach your ears in vain, for it is what Jesus says to the multitude
at Capernaum that should be one of the homilies that you remember.
Monsignor
Smith
