The stone the builders rejected

During this past week, the gospel readings have all been from the sixth chapter of John’s gospel in which Jesus clearly and unequivocally describes Himself as the Bread of Life. This entire lengthy chapter is devoted to the idea of Jesus feeding His disciples. It begins with His feeding 5000 men with a few loaves and fishes. Then, when the crowd followed Him to the other side of the lake (which He had walked across), Jesus gave them what is described as “The discourse on the Bread of Life.” He said, “You are not looking for me because you have seen signs, but because you have eaten your fill of the loaves. You should not be working for perishable food, but for the food that remains unto eternal life, food which the Son of Man will give you.” When the people ask for a sign like the one that occurred in Moses time, when manna came down from heaven, He replied:
“I solemnly assure you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from the heavens; it is my Father who gives you the real heavenly bread. God’s bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. I myself am the bread of life. No one who comes to me shall ever by hungry.” This alarmed many in the crowd and they questioned whether Jesus Himself had come down from heaven. His response was direct and to the point: “Let me firmly assure you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestor ate manna in the desert, but they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven for a man to eat and never die. I myself am the living bread come down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”
This reply startled the people and they asked, “How can He give us his flesh to eat?” Listen carefully to Jesus response:
“Let me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. He who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood real drink. The man who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. This is the bread that came down from heaven.” This really shook up the assembly and many turned away from Him. When they began to walk away from Him, He could have revised His statement or clarified it to be a metaphor, or parable, but He did not. Rather than retract anything at all, He acknowledged that, “The words I spoke to you are spirit and life. Yet among you there are some who do not believe.“ In John 6:66 we read, “From this time on, many of his disciples broke away and would not remain in His company any longer.” (Note that the chapter and verse are 6:66).

Reading and rereading this chapter several times, it is notable that Jesus is quite emphatic about what He is saying, using the words, “I assure you” and “I solemnly assure you,” several time over and repeating Himself in the face of the people’s disbelief.

Psalm 118 will be sung this Sunday and verse 22 will be repeated several times, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” It was not only the Jews who rejected Jesus in His time. Many today continue to ignore or reject Him. As Catholics, we take Jesus at His word. We accept the gospel as the truth, and especially the words spoken by Jesus Himself. Three times in John’s gospel He repeats, “I solemnly assure you” followed by, “I am the Bread of life, come down from heaven” and, “the bread I give you is my flesh, for the life of the world” and, “If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal.” Does this sound like He was talking about a symbol?

Over the centuries many who believe in Jesus have refused to accept these words of Jesus in which He directs us to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. At the last supper, He again made it abundantly clear, when breaking the bread and distributing the wine, “This is my Body… This is my Blood” and He gave it to His disciples to eat and drink. In this act of giving us His Body and His Blood to eat and drink, He established the “new and eternal covenant” by which He remains present to us even now, 2000 years after His crucifixion and resurrection. This is the belief of the Catholic Church. This is why the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith. It is not enough to read or listen to scripture, it is not nearly enough to hear a human person declaring their faith in God and in Jesus. The Real Presence of Jesus is at the heart of the New Covenant. He continues to offer us His Body and His Blood, so that we may be one with Him and have eternal life. This is a hard truth to believe. Many Christian reject it, even many Catholics have come to regard the Eucharist as merely symbolic. If it were meant to be symbolic, Jesus would have said so, He would have clarified Himself to the people who rejected Him when He proclaimed that His Flesh is real food and His blood, real drink. He would not have said, “I solemnly assure you, the bread I give you is my flesh…”

Our world is becoming increasingly secular. Church attendance is dropping all over the world, and as it does, society becomes more crude, more self-centered and more oblivious to the consequences of letting morality slide. The grip of sin on the world is tightening and as it does, people seem to be blinded to the truth and results of their choices, rationalizing all sorts of aberrant behavior while ignoring the consequences. Jesus offers us Himself as the antidote to sin. He does more than speak to us across the ages through scripture and through the inspired words of His followers. He offers us His very Body and Blood to strengthen us, to enable us to enter into a deep personal and physical relationship with Him so that we may become the Body of Christ on earth. Do not reject Him and His selfless sacrifice. He is the cornerstone of all life and He offers to be with us in body, soul and spirit. He wants to feed us with the Bread of Life come down from heaven. If we believe in the inerrancy of scripture, how can we ignore Jesus own words in John’s gospel, “If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.“ How can we possibly reject Him and expect to build a life of faith, hope and love on our own?  Let Jesus be the cornerstone of your life.  Don't be like those described in John 6:66.  Take Jesus at His word.  Receive Him, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist so that you may have Life within you. 

Easter Season and Divine Mercy

The Good News of Jesus’ resurrection overcomes the despair of His passion and death. Over the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost the daily reading from the Acts of the Apostles and all four gospels cite numerous historical accounts of people who encountered the risen Christ.
In the first days and weeks after Jesus’ resurrection, His disciples were confused and could not comprehend what had happened, or why it happened. Jesus Himself explained how the Old Testament scriptures foretold his suffering and death when He walked the road to Emmaus with several of His disciples who were getting out of town after the crucifixion. Over the course of the next several weeks scripture will recount other instructions Jesus gave to the Apostles leading up to their reception of the Holy Spirit. For example, on the second Sunday of the Easter Season, designated as Divine Mercy Sunday, we heard this account:
“On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, "Peace be with you."
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
"Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained." (John 20:19-22)
Jesus’ opening remark was to offer them peace which He repeated again when He declared that He was sending them, just as the Father had sent Him. What was He sending them to do? His very next words were, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” He instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In offering this Sacrament, the Church is abiding by the direction given directly from Christ Himself. In His Divine Mercy, God loves us despite our sinfulness and He not only forgives us, but has given us a means by which to express our sorrow and hear the words of forgiveness spoken to us by a priest who is following the direct command of the resurrected Jesus. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is more important than ever, despite declining participation rates in a world fraught with stress and anxiety. People will spend a small fortune to have their subconscious probed and prodded by a psychologist, but they are unwilling to perform a sincere examination of their conscience.

In his wonderful book, Peace of Soul, Archbishop Fulton Sheen devotes a chapter to the comparison of psychoanalysis to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This is no simplistic contrast because Sheen was highly educated, and held several Ph Ds, including one in Philosophy from the prestigious Louvain University in Belgium where he studied psychology in depth and graduated with a “super-doctorate” and the highest distinction for his academic accomplishments. He was very well versed in the psychology of Freud, Adler, Jung and many others, including those who advocated the notion that the repression of our appetites were the cause of mental illness and believed the solution was to be found in abolishing moral restraint on man’s freedom to act on his instincts. Bishop Sheen on the other hand, believed that our destructive instincts should be suppressed but knowledge of our faults should not. He wrote, “Individuals who have reversed this healthy rule have invariably wound up many times more neurotic than before; indeed, the suppression of the ethical self to permit untrammeled indulgence of the animal self is one of the principal causes of mental disorders in modern man.”
Jesus of course knew that repressing our sins is unhealthy. If we cover them up they cause an irritation with eternal consequences, so He instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation by directing His apostles and their successors to travel about the world hearing confessions and forgiving sins in His name. Bishop Sheen points out that guilt is moral, not physiological. No animal experiences guilt and therefore it cannot be known objectively or scientifically. He pointed out that some psychoanalysts presume that the individual is blameless and can be cured by discovering repressed memories of childhood, and by liberating themselves from unhealthy moral constraints. Sheen on the other hand believed that:
“Human beings need to be put together more than they need to be taken apart. Sin divides us against ourselves; absolution restores our unity. Most people today have a load on their minds because they have a load on their consciences; the Divine Psychologist know how miserable we would be if we could not unload that burden. Regular confession prevents our sins, our worries and our fears, and our anxieties from seeping into the unconscious and degenerating into melancholy, psychosis and neuroses. The Divine Master knew what is in man, so He instituted this Sacrament, not for His needs, but for ours. It was His way of giving man a happy heart.”Bishop Sheen was not the first Catholic to recognize the importance of confession to healthy mental states. Seven hundred years ago, Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Any idea that is hurtful to the mind does harm in the proportion that it is repressed. The reason is this: the mind is more intent on a repressed idea than if it were brought to the surface and allowed to escape.” Long before Aquinas, the Church knew how important Confession was to the relief of hidden anxieties, thus serving the purpose of preventing it from “seeping into our subconscious” and to make us aware of the need to amend our sinful ways and restore ourselves on the path of healthy living.

Today, our society and many in the field of psychology advocate freedom of expression, even when it is contrary to nature and nature’s laws. Rather than acknowledge the laws of nature as created by God, we are encouraged to tolerate those who demand complete freedom, even those actions that are contrary to nature and have obvious consequences that damage the individual, families and society. Such an attitude breeds anxiety and discontent because of the abandonment of self to our biological and animal instincts. Ironically, freedom is destroyed when the person becomes enslaved in destructive habits, whether they be brought about by gluttony, lust, avarice or selfishness. A person mired in such sinful habits falls into sorrow and despair because there is never enough to satisfy their appetites. The reason for these insatiable desires is that we have been created to desire infinite goodness and love and earthly pleasures will never fully satisfy that desire.

Our Church has never taught that man is comprised of only two levels of consciousness, but rather that there are three levels imbedded in our nature: body (conscious), soul (subconscious) and spirit (the desire for God). Bishop Sheen pointed out that happiness consists in overcoming the bias to evil by realizing our divine vocation and by overcoming the urges of nature. He explained that there is nothing inherently wrong with our instincts or appetites, but only with the abuse of them.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a great gift, given to us directly by Jesus Himself. He affords us the opportunity to reflect on the morality of our actions, and if we are truly repentant, gives us not only His forgiveness, but the grace to amend our lives and practice the self-discipline that will lead to health of body, soul and spirit. This is the path to peace of soul, not because of any action on our part alone, but because of the Divine Mercy of God.

Holy Week 2012 - Why it's important

This week Christian churches and Jewish synagogues all over the world will engage in ancient traditions dating back 3500 years. Even non-practicing Jews and Christians will observe Easter, if only with matzo crackers, chocolate bunnies, and Easter eggs. Even the world of finance observes Good Friday by closing down stock markets and suspending all trading activity. For some, it is merely a quaint observance of the coming of Spring, but for devout Christians and Jews it is much, much more.
When God came to the aid of the Jews living in slavery under Egyptian rule, He sent the Angel of Death to strike down every first born child and animal, but “passed over” those who had put the blood of a sacrificial lamb over lintel of their doorways. Shortly thereafter, in the Sinai desert, God established a covenant with the Jewish people, a covenant which the people were unable to keep because of their sinfulness. Never the less, the Jewish people continue to celebrate the Passover and the establishment of that covenant 1500 years before the arrival of Christ.
On the night before His arrest, Jesus was celebrating the Passover meal when He established a “new and eternal covenant” by instituting the Eucharist. On behalf of humanity, Jesus entered into this New Covenant with God, offering Himself as the Paschal Lamb, so that we who follow Him might “pass over” death. Unlike the Sinai Covenant, this New Covenant is ongoing, eternal, and unbreakable because Jesus Himself has established it with God the Father, on our behalf. Moreover, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are immanently present to us because of Jesus actions and because He is physically and spiritually present in the Eucharist, making Himself accessible not only in Spirit but in Flesh and Blood.
Of course, the Jews do not belief this, nor do many Christians who have fallen away from belief in the Eucharist, viewing it as merely symbolic, notwithstanding Jesus explicit command that we are to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood in chapter 6 of John’s gospel. Holy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist which was preceded by Jesus washing the feet of His apostles, and act meant to make it clear that His love is one of self-giving service to others. Just hours later Jesus would make the ultimate sacrifice and give His life so that the immense love of God could be demonstrated and the New Covenant sealed in the Blood of the Lamb. He died so that we might live and have new life as children of God.
The mystery of Jesus sacrificial death and resurrection is beyond our comprehension. It requires and act of faith, a conscious decision to believe the unbelievable: that God loves us so much that He would die for us, despite our sinfulness. This is the amazing “good news” of the gospel. We have done nothing to earn such gratuitous love and sacrifice, yet we are the beneficiaries of this perfect love. Coming to this realization should elicit a response of gratefulness and a desire to love in the manner of God’s love.
Belief in the Paschal mysteries should instill in us a desire to thank God and strive to increase our capacity to love, so that the love we have received from God can be shared with others in authentic human love. Our ability to genuinely love one another is enhanced by our acceptance of God’s love, and by His example of self-giving. Knowing that God loves us, and sacrificed Himself for us, despite our sinfulness and unworthiness, should inspire us to love others in the manner He loves us. Because God is merciful and forgiving, so too should we forgive others. Because God sacrificed Himself for us, we should be willing to make a gift of ourselves to those we love, even when we feel they may not “deserve” our love. Because God’s love is unconditional, so too should ours be. Others need not earn our love, or fear that we will stop loving them if they should fail to meet our expectations. This is especially important to children as they are growing up. They need the security of a loving home in which they are loved unconditionally, even as they test the limits of our patience and make the inevitable mistakes necessary for them to learn about life in all it’s complexity. Marriage is the union of two imperfect human beings. Both spouses will make mistakes and need forgiveness repeatedly, challenging the human love and patience of one another. The love and example of God in marriage, helps couples through those difficult moments in their relationship when unconditional love is needed.
All of this points to the importance of our faith. Without the Paschal Mysteries and the loving sacrifice, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we would not have our faith. We would not know or begin to comprehend the true meaning of love. If not for our faith and understanding of God’s love and sacrifice, what example would we look to for our marriage and family life? Perhaps we ourselves were raised in a loving family with parents and grandparents who served as examples, but where did they draw the strength and conviction that guided their lives? Where will we draw our strength and conviction?
The United States is still largely a Christian nation, and it is our faith and morality that has guided our country and its leaders through 236 years of democratic rule. It was the incorporation of our faith into our nation’s politics that ended slavery, that railed against Communism and the Nazis. It is faith in God that makes marriage and families strong in the face of rising divorce statistics and the attacks against the sacred institution of marriage. Europe is in decline precisely because they are losing their faith, becoming a secular society and denying their heritage as Christian nations. Not surprisingly, marriage rates have declined as have birthrates, while the rates of crime, depression and assisted suicide have dramatically increased. The U.K. has even resorted to allowing a ban on the wearing of a simple cross in the workplace. One British court referred to wearing religious jewelry as “theologically ignorant.” In its effort to eliminate faith from its culture, Europe is unwittingly damaging marriages, families and the very future of their cultural heritage. Like the Mayan civilization that mysteriously disappeared, anthropologists of the future are likely to question what led to the demise of the European culture, long after it is gone.
This week we celebrate God’s eternal covenant with humanity, as established by Jesus Christ on our behalf. He has given us the wonderful gifts of life, love, and liberty. Let’s not squander them by failing to recognize that the source of all life and all love is God Himself. He not only loves us unconditionally, but shows us how we too can live and love as He does, and in doing so, strengthen our marriages, our families and our country.