Amen,
amen I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man you do not have
life within you.
A decade ago I found myself at the
funeral of my friend’s 13 year old brother who had died a tragic death. I walked up to view the body in the
casket. He laid there looking so young
and innocent. I touched his hand. The cold, damp and lifeless skin was a
painful reminder of the reality of his death; a reminder of death in general.
I walked outside of the funeral home to
get some fresh air. Here I encountered
another friend who came to express his sympathy. I had not seen this guy in a few years and heard
that he had come on tough times: alcohol, drugs, wondering and
floundering. He didn’t look well. I reached out to give him a hug. When my arms embraced him I experienced
something more frightening than the body of a lifeless 13 year old lying in a
casket. My friend’s body, though still
clearly alive, was lifeless, cold, empty and seemingly without spirit. This exchange
reminded me that day of something significant: there is more than one way the
human person can die.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks words to
those gathered around him at the time that should arouse our attention to say
the least. He says: I am the living
bread come down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the
bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. His audience sensed the extreme measure of
his statement. They tried to find wiggle
room to avoid his words, and he responded quite clearly: if you don’t eat my
flesh, you won’t have life. In other words: if you do not chew on my flesh and
blood, which is true food and true drink, you will be dead. And it was certainly not a physical death in
which the heart stops working and the brain shuts down to which Jesus was
referring. He was referring to a
spiritual death; a death like I experienced in my friend the day I saw him at
the funeral.
Now, perhaps this statement for us here
who are Catholics is not that frightening.
For most of us have received the Eucharist, and are at least struggling
to believe in its effects and vitality. But for the countless millions of
people throughout the world who have never even heard of the Eucharist, let
alone consumed it, we should be at least moderately concerned. What
can we say of the status of the spiritual life of these people, or that of the
many Catholics who don’t believe in the real presence, or have even left the
Church and no longer receive Jesus’ body and blood?
It was my senior year of college. I was doing my student teaching in a public
high school. In my class there was a
young girl named Kayla. All through my lecture Kayla wasn’t paying
attention. Of course, I got used to
students not paying attention to me. But
she was different. She kept writing in
what looked to be a journal. After class
I asked her to stay behind. I mentioned
to her that I noticed she had been writing in a notebook the entire class. She opened it up and showed me the
contents: page after page of poetry
indicating how sad she was, how lonely she felt, how awful her family life was,
and that she didn’t see any reason to live.
As a public school teacher, sadly, there was not much I could do for
her. I set up an appointment for her
with the counselor. I notified the right people. But I knew deep inside what it was that Kayla was experiencing: it was
a spiritual death. And I knew the only
thing that could be her cure.
Perhaps it is not our place to judge the
spiritual status of those people who are not receiving the Eucharist. But it is safe to say that we are
experiencing a spiritual death in our present age. I don’t think anyone would deny this. From the disintegration of the family,
to the loss of innocence in our young people, to the attacks on life
and religious freedom, to the hateful rhetoric that fills the political
debate, we are experiencing the opposite of the life which Jesus promises us in
the Eucharist.
But there still is hope. There always is hope. For the spiritual death we experience is not
like a disease to which there is no cure.
God gave us a cure. He chose to
come down from Heaven to be with us. To
walk with us. To live for us. To die for us. And ultimately to give himself to us
vulnerably and exposed in his body and blood.
To be the cure. And the cure is
right here with us. But we have the
responsibility to share that cure with the world:
To invite people to learn
about the bread of life
To teach our children of
the truth found at this altar
To talk to our family
members about the hope we have in his healing presence
To share with others the
faith we have found from this sacrifice
To risk the ridicule of
speaking to a world about the only solution that exists to heal its ills: a
loving God who shares himself with us in the most intimate way so as to touch
every part of our being and transform the very world to which we speak.
We have the remedy for the death that
infiltrates our world: we simply have to have the courage to share it.
I belong to a religious missionary
community called the Glenmary Home Missioners.
Back in the 1930s, our founder looked upon the state of the Catholic
Church throughout the world. He saw that
countless missionaries were being sent to places like China, Japan, and the
continent of Africa. Yet he looked upon
our own country and saw that vast areas here in the United States were
experiencing a spiritual death. In
places in the South, the Southeast and in Appalachia, hundreds of thousands of
people were without the gifts of the Catholic Church. People in countless
counties had no access to the sacraments, to the Mass, and the Eucharist.
Today, as then, hundreds of counties existed in which the Catholic population
was less than ½ of 1 percent. Imagine;
99.5 percent of all the people living in these areas had never consumed and
probably never even heard of the Eucharist.
Therefore, it has been the work of Glenmary for the past 75 years to
bring the gifts of the Catholic Church to these neglected, forgotten,
impoverished and struggling areas. To
bring them the bread that came down from heaven.
Some people claim that the missionary
spirit of the Church has left her. Well
I will be one to stand in front of you all today and disagree with them. In just two weeks I am going to start my
first assignment in Eastern Tennessee.
This is Glenmary’s newest mission area.
And imagine, in just 8 short months, this mission area has gone from a
Glenmary priest celebrating mass with a handful of Catholic in one of their
homes, because they do not have a church, to hundreds of Catholics receiving
the bread of life, the Eucharist, every single weekend as this growing Catholic
population gathers in a store front. There
is now talk that soon this once small community will have to build a
church. And hopefully one day Glenmary
will be able to hand this community over to the care of the diocese, and move
on to yet another area where the people are longing for the Bread of Life.
We are all privileged and blessed to
have heard of and even to have received the gift of Jesus in the
Eucharist. For this we have received
life: fullness of the life here on Earth and the chance to be with Christ for
eternity. So I humbly ask you to please
help support the mission of Glenmary to bring the Bread of Life to the mission
areas here in the United States. Please
pray for us. Consider a vocation to
serve in the home missions. And if you
are able, please consider helping us financially.
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