-
One of my favorite periods of English History was a time called the Oxford Movement. The Oxford Movement spanned the mid 1800s in Oxford, England and was marked by a re-birth of Catholic identity in a country rich in Catholic history that had become almost entirely Protestant. And since we’ve all been watching the Olympics and taking in English culture I thought it’d be nice for this week’s homily to bring some English Catholicism into our lives.
The theologians of the Oxford Movement…most of whom were converts to Roman Catholicism…are well known for their sharp minds and quite original ways of looking at life. G.K. Chesterton…you all know he is one of my favorites…he’s one of the giants of the Oxford movement. And in classic Oxford Movement literary style…he once quipped…Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out. Another great from the Oxford Movement is now Blessed John Henry Newman…an Anglican priest who converted to Roman Catholicism and was even made a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. Once he very wisely explained…You shouldn’t fear that life comes to an end…but rather you should fear that life never has a beginning. Now that could be a slogan for our pro-life movement for sure.
Well this week I was reading a much lesser known priest of the Oxford Movement…also a convert to Roman Catholicism. His name was Fr. Ronald Knox. And I came across some words of his that I think speak so clearly to what we’ve just heard from both our first reading…the story of the manna in the desert…and our gospel…part of the famous Bread of Life discourse from the Gospel of John. Listen to what Fr. Knox wrote…
Throughout our 2000 years of Christianity we have been able to ignore many of Jesus’ key commandments. We’ve either been too weak or too quick to rationalization. And so…to a large extent…we’ve exempted ourselves from the command to love our enemies…to turn the other cheek when attacked…to forgive 70 times 7…we’ve excused ourselves from reconciling with each other before approaching the altar…to see mercy as equal in importance to dogma…to not lie…to not talk behind each other’s backs…to not covet each other’s possessions. We Christians…Fr. Knox explains…in virtually every commandment have a sad history of failure. But interestingly we have…Fr. Knox concludes...remained faithful throughout all the centuries to at least one of Jesus’ commands…the celebration of the Eucharist…to meet together in every age to share the word…and to share the body and the blood of Christ. Despite our obvious spiritual deficiencies…for 2000 years we’ve never stopped celebrating the Eucharist.
Fr. Knox is right…the Eucharist…Holy Communion…Manna from heaven is the one constant that no matter how messed up we’ve become…no matter how many mistakes we make…no matter if we can grasp the weight of the mystery or not…the one thing that we keep doing is gathering here together to celebrate Eucharist. And that is really important.
It’s the greatest single act of faith that we could ever express. To come back…Sunday after Sunday…when we’re excited about it…and when we don’t feel like it…when we’re interested and when we’re bored…when we believe with total surety and when it’s just plain old difficult to believe. To come back home Sunday after Sunday after Sunday is the truest mark of not only faith but also our identity.
I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this…most of you I suspect probably have…it’s one of the most interesting things about Catholicism…it’s the same on every continent…in every language…with rich people and poor people…white people…black people…brown people…yellow people…men…women…children…old people…middle aged people…in Belton…in Boston...Belgium and Brazil…in English…Spanish…Latin…Polish…Japanese…Arabic. The Eucharist is the one constant that is changeless and at the same time completely interchangeable. I’ve heard some of you when coming home from foreign countries comment on how powerful it was to go to mass in another language feel totally connected without even understanding a word. It’s why Eucharist is called the Bread of Life.
I’ve heard it said that The Eucharist contains and carries the deepest of realities (deeper than even language)…besides being God’s physical embrace of us…maybe the most important reality of Eucharist is that it is God’s continued incarnation into our lives. In other words the Eucharist…the bread of life…the Word…continues to speak to us through our very lives. Jesus in our gospel today says it…I am the bread of Life. This is not a onetime deal. It’s not I was or I will be…he says I AM. He didn’t just become the Body and Blood at the Last Supper and never again. He was the Body and Blood before time even began…He was the Body and the Blood that day in the desert when the Israelites were lost and filled with anxiety…He was the Body and Blood that afternoon when he told the crowd come to me and you’ll want for nothing…and He is the Body and Blood of Christ today…here in this church in Belton, Texas with you and me. This is why we continue to come back to Eucharist over and over again…in spite of ourselves and in spite of the fact that at the end of the day we’ll never totally understand the mystery of the Eucharist and we won’t always measure to what the Eucharist asks of us. We come back here so that we can live…and that’s it. The Bread of Life…that’s the point of such a title. Maybe a better way of saying the Bread of Life might be the Bread that makes it so that we can live.
As I was rifling through my Oxford Movement thinkers I came across another GK Chesterton gem specifically about this Bread of Life we’re reflecting on at this mass. And I’ll leave you with his thoughts…If I were to answer the question, ‘How would Christ solve modern problems if He were on earth today’, I would answer it plainly; and for those of my faith there is only one answer. Christ is on earth today; alive on thousands of altars; and He does solve people’s problems exactly as He did when He was on earth in the more ordinary sense. That is, He solves the problems of those people who choose of their own free will to listen to Him.”