Truly a Miracle

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Last Sunday concluded the National Eucharistic Congress, a great gathering from Catholics from all across the United States, some 50,000 people who assembled to witness to their faith in our Eucharistic Lord, and be strengthened by confession, Mass, and talks by world-renown speakers.  How fortuitous and providential it is that, coming off the this great witness of the Church in the United States of our belief that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, we now, this weekend, begin a few weeks away from our usual Marcan Gospel accounts, and look towards John and His Eucharistic writings in the sixth chapter of his Gospel account.

From the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves

    It’s funny (perhaps funny is not the right word) that a drop in faith in the Eucharist has happened as priests wrongly interpreted this passage of the multiplication of the loaves and fish as a story about the “miracle” of sharing.  Perhaps you have heard it preached that the boy gives what little amount he has to Jesus, but then the people feel bad because they, too, have food, and so there is enough food because Jesus gets everybody to share.  It’s an interesting hypothesis, but one that is totally implausible if you actually read the Gospel passage.  You basically have to start with the premise that miracles don’t happen, and then read that thesis into this Gospel to create the rather unintelligent explanation that what we heard today was the miracle of sharing.
    How can I say this?  Well, Jesus clearly prays over the bread and the fish, which were not enough for everybody, but then John says that they distributed as much as they wanted, enough for 5,000 men, not counting women and children.  Secondly, after this, the response of the crowd is twofold: they think He is the Prophet (with a capital P), and they want to make Him king.
    The term “The Prophet” refers back to Deuteronomy, chapter 18, where Moses says, “A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kindred; that is the one to whom you shall listen.”  What did Moses do that a prophet like him would do?  Moses asked God for miraculous bread, and God gave them manna, a bread that they did not anticipate, and which they could only collect the amount they needed; any extra would waste away.  So the people recognize that Jesus is giving them miraculous bread (and we’ll hear more about this in the coming weeks), but not just enough for what they needed; there was some left over.  Jesus went beyond what Moses could do.  
    In seeking to make him king, they recognized some greatness in Him.  Sharing, while we might think it is tough at times, and something which people do not do of their own accord, is not something which would make people want to make Jesus a king.  If anything, it simply shows that they have the power.  They wanted to make Jesus king because they realized that if He could multiple bread and fish, He could be the Messiah, the Davidic ruler of Israel.  So they knew this was not mere sharing.  

    So, too, more Catholics, though not at this parish as much, have started to think of the Eucharist as simply a reminder of Jesus’ presence, or a sign of His presence.  They have abandoned the faith of the Apostles, the Church Fathers (those who came immediately after the Apostles), and the unbroken faith throughout the two millennia of the Church, that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ.  St. Ignatius of Antioch, who died around the year AD 112 talks about the Eucharist truly being the flesh of Christ.  St. Justin Martyr, who died around the year AD 165 said that while it looks like bread and wine, it “is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”  Indeed, the first Christians were accused of cannibalism because of these rumors that they were eating the flesh of Jesus.
    There were arguments around the year 1000 about the Eucharist, but it was around how we could understand that we truly received the flesh of Jesus.  In the year 1215, during the Fourth Ecumenical Lateran Council, Pope Innocent decreed that, “[Jesus Christ’s] body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread and wine having been changed in substance [transsubstantiatis], by God’s power, into his body and blood.”  This word, transubstantiation, is adopted by the Church and echoes throughout the rest of the centuries as our understanding of how what looks like bread and wine actually are, in substance, the Body and Blood of Christ.
    This is no less a miracle than the multiplication of the loaves and fish.  If God can make something out of nothing, whether at the beginning of creation or when Jesus creates bread and fish from fives loaves and two fish, He can certainly change bread into the flesh of Jesus and wine into His blood.  We see this miracle take place each time we come to Mass.
    So how do we respond?  Do we, like the people, acknowledge Jesus as someone special because we encounter this miracle?  Do we want to make Him king of our hearts and lives because He gives us His flesh?  There are more and more stories coming out of the National Eucharistic Congress of the way that the encounter with the Eucharistic Lord changes lives, whether of devout Catholics, lukewarm Catholics, Catholics who had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of priests, or even non-Catholics who met people alive in their faith and wanted to know how to have that joy in their life.  But even though we’re not 50,000 strong here at St. Matthew, it’s the same Lord who makes Himself present on the altar that made Himself present in Indianapolis last weekend, and that multiplied loaves and fish some 2,000 years ago.
    Allow this weekly miracle to change your lives, as God wants it to.  We don’t have to wait for a Eucharistic Congress to know that God is real, and He gives Himself for us in the Sacrament of the Altar.  Have faith in the miracle of the multiplication; have faith in the miracle of transubstantiation.  And let that faith open you up to the graces that God wants to send to change your life!