Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil

August 7, 2021

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.7.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which we enter into the third week of Jesus’ five-week course on the mystery of his body and blood in the Eucharist, which Jesus taught for the first time in the Synagogue of Capernaum and renews for us live every third Summer.

* Two weeks ago we had the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, which was a foreshadowing of the multiplication of the meal of the Last Supper throughout every land and time in order to feed the spiritually famished human race. Last Sunday Jesus told us not to work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life that he will give us and, in response to the crowds’ asking him to one-up Moses in the desert who gave them manna from heaven every day for 40 years, he told them that it wasn’t Moses who gave them Manna but God the Father who gives them the true manna.

* This Sunday Jesus continues the consequential conversation, which gets into the heart of his teaching on the Eucharist, the faith we need to believe in his Eucharistic presence, and the opposition his teaching on the Eucharist has received from the beginning. Let’s take each part in turn.

* First, Jesus emphasizes more deeply how he is the true manna, the nourishment God the Father provides for us in the desert of life until we reach the eternal Promised Land. “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” he tells us, and then adds, “I am the bread of life.” It’s a basic truth that we become what we eat and Jesus is foretelling that when we consume him, we become one with his life; since he is eternal, to consume him is to receive everlasting life. He tells us, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert but they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.” Then he specified even more: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

* These are extraordinary words, which we shouldn’t water down and or pass over. First, they sound cannibalistic, as if Jesus is saying that we need to eat him the way we consume animals or animals consume carcasses. And once we let those works sink in, we get to Jesus’ mind-blowing promise: that when we eat him, we will not die but live forever. He goes on to connect this eating and this promise in the following verses, which we would have considered next Sunday if we didn’t have the Solemnity of the Assumption, but nevertheless they indicate the path for us one day ourselves to be assumed. Jesus swears and oath and says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” and tells us why: because “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” He tries to explain this mystery by analogy to his own relationship to God the Father: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” The upshot of this mystery is that by receiving Holy Communion, by eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood, his life becomes the principle of our life, and since his life is eternal,