Sunday, August 09, 2020

Socially Distant, Spiritually Close

 

(Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on August 9, 2020 at Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See 1 Kings 19:9-13 and Matthew 14:22-33)

Our readings for this weekend begin in a very dark and lonely place.  In 1 Kings we find Elijah the prophet on the top of Mount Horeb, in a cave, by himself.  He could not be any more isolated than that!  Elijah, of course, is there for a very good reason.  The previous chapters of 1 Kings describe the epic struggle he had been engaged in with King Ahab and his wife Jezebel.  The king, led astray by his wife, had forsaken the covenant with God and gone over to the worship of Baal.  Ahab had commissioned 450 prophets to spread that idolatry throughout Israel.  Elijah the prophet had stood before these false prophets and humiliated them.  He extinguished them from the land of Israel.  Jezebel did not take the defeat of her prophets lightly.  She threatened to take the life of Elijah, and so for good reason he fled.     


This morning he is in that cave, alone.  What must he have been thinking?  He had been faithful, seeking only to bring the people back into a right relationship with the living God.  Yet suddenly, in his loneliness and isolation, God comes to him.  That epiphany happens in a most peculiar way.  At first there is a strong driving wind, but we are told that God was not in the wind.  Next there was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake.  Finally, there is fire, but God is not in the fire.  


It is interesting to reflect on the fact that God is present, in a certain sense, in all three of these manifestations in the New Testament.  When Christ dies on the cross, accomplishing our salvation, St. Matthew writes that “the earth shook, and the rocks were split” (Matthew 27:51).  On the day of Pentecost, the disciples heard the sound of a strong driving wind, and saw tongues as of fire as the Holy Spirit descended upon them.  But not here.  


In the cave on Mount Horeb, Elijah hears only a tiny whispering sound.  A whisper is intimate, close.  We know well from Sacred Scripture that God is transcendent.  He is totally other, and we could never reach Him or approach Him as He is.  But in 1 Kings we are also reminded that God is imminent.  He is as close as a still, small voice.  St. Augustine, in his Confessions, reflects upon the God who is “intimior intimo meo,” more intimate to me than I am to myself.  God comes to Elijah this morning in the intimacy of a whisper, and in essence tells him, “Do not be afraid.  I am with you.  I love you.  You are not alone.


In the Gospel, we find Christ in perhaps one of the loneliest moments of His public ministry up to this point.  He has just learned of the death of His cousin, St. John the Baptist.  Having fed the people with the miracle of the loaves and the fish, we are told, “He went up on the mountain by himself to pray.  When it was evening he was there alone” (Matthew 14:23).  Very much like Elijah, He is there on that mountaintop by Himself.  But also like Elijah, we know well that He is very much not alone.  He is there with the Father.  He is in prayer and He is intimately near the Father and the Holy Spirit.  Because He is so close to God, He is also even closer to the disciples than if He were only physically in their presence.  Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in his second volume of Jesus of Nazareth, writes about how Jesus is able to see these disciples through the eyes of the Father while He is up on that mountain.  He sees them struggling against the wind and the waves and so He comes to them.  He was already spiritually close, but now He will draw physically close, because He loves them.


One of the great challenges of the current global pandemic is that we are often socially distant.  In fact, we are governed by laws that ensure that social distance, and for our own health and wellness we abide by those laws.  But even though we are socially distant, as a Church we can be, and should be, spiritually close.  As Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington has said, “we are socially distant but our goal is to be spiritually close in the Eucharist.”


There is a beautiful story about St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), a Jewish convert to Catholicism who died a martyr in Auschwitz in 1942.  When she was still a young convert, and before she entered the Carmelite monastery, Edith Stein was living with Dominican sisters in a convent near where she was a professor.  She was fond of a small niche not far from the tabernacle, where she could remain in prayer and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in relative isolation and privacy.  One Christmas Eve, when the Mass had concluded, she was in that little space and praying her thanksgiving to God for the gift of the Eucharist.  Unseen by those who were responsible for closing the Church down for the evening, they unintentionally locked her in!  Early the next morning, when one of the sisters came in to open the doors and turn on the lights, she saw Edith kneeling in adoration before the Christmas creche.  Thinking that perhaps her mistake of the night before had been a difficult experience and ruined a night of peaceful sleep for the young professor, the sister apologized.  Edith replied, “Who can sleep during the night that God became man!”  


St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross had been socially distant from that religious community all night, but because she was with our Eucharistic Lord, she was spiritually close.  She reminds us this morning that we are never closer to God and to each other than when we are united in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.  


In these days of adjustment and even sacrifice of many things while we continue to face the COVID-19 crisis, we remember that the Eucharist is the place where we experience the intimacy of God.  As Churches begin to open, and that Gift becomes more and more available, we do well to make the Eucharist the center, font and culmination of our entire lives, as the Church has always taught us.

Sunday, August 02, 2020

Hope, De Profundis

Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes 
(Unknown artist, Church of St. Appolinare in Ravenna, Italy)
 
(Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on August 2, 2020 at Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See Isaiah 55:1-3 and Matthew 14:13-21)

It can happen sometimes, in the darkest moment, when all hoped seems lost, that a ray of light can shine into our lives and change everything.  It can happen, that the voice of God can speak to us and suddenly bring new life . . . And it does happen, in our first reading this weekend.


We listen to that beautiful reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah.  It is a very positive and encouraging message, and yet the context Isaiah is addressing could not be any further from that reality.  He is speaking to the People of Israel, God’s chosen.  God had entered into a covenant relationship with Israel which the prophets describe as spousal.  He had espoused Himself to them, to be their faithful husband and that they would be His bride.  


At one of the highest points in that relationship we find the Davidic Covenant, God’s promises for the nation under David the King.  God had said to David, “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.  He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Samuel 7:12-13).  We understand this covenant as containing the promise of the Messiah, and the establishment of a kingdom that would never be destroyed (Daniel 2:44).  It was one of the highest points in the history of that nation.


And yet, as Isaiah speaks to them this morning, they are at the lowest point.  So far from being a strong and established nation, they are a nation enslaved.  So far from being that fruitful spouse of God, they have been carried off into exile in Babylon because of their infidelity.  Precisely at that moment, however, God speaks to Israel and gives them a message of hope.  He calls out to them, and invites them to share in a new beginning and the fullness of life:


All you who are thirsty, come to the water!  You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!

—Isaiah 55:1


He has so much to offer, and they will never want for anything if they will only heed, only receive Him!  He assures them that, in Him, they will have life.  And then God makes the most astounding promise:


I will renew with you the everlasting covenant, the benefits assured to David

—Isaiah 55:3


With that God has made it clear that He is not finished with them, and the covenant He made with David is far from over.  He will bring them back into the Promised Land and give them a King who will reign over the nations, and His kingdom will last forever.  In the darkest moment, when all hope seemed lost, God reignited hope and prepared the way for the Messiah.


It can happen.  It can happen precisely in the most vulnerable moments, when sorrow seems overwhelming, that God can provide for us and give us new life.  It happens in the Gospel of St. Matthew this morning.  The opening lines of that passage are significant:


“When Jesus heard about the death of John the Baptist, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.”

—Matthew 14:13


It had to be one of the lowest points in Jesus’ public ministry to that point, the death of his own cousin.  John the Baptist was the precursor of the Messiah, the faithful friend of the Bridegroom that had prepared the way for the coming of the kingdom.  But the way he had died!  Beheaded at the behest of a selfish king in the stale darkness of the palace prison.  Rightly does Christ withdraw, in that time of sorrow, intending to be alone.  What must He have been thinking, as His own death now seemed so much closer than it had a few moments before.


The crowds, however, hearing all this, followed Him and sought Him out. St. Matthew’s description of what happened next is remarkable.


When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them.

—Matthew 14:14


He was filled with pity and compassion, not for Himself but for them.  Even in the midst of His own sorrow, he had compassion on these people and He healed them; He fed them with the loaves and fish, performing a miracle of love.


The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, of course, foreshadows how Christ will feed us with His body and blood.  The very words He uses—He took the loaves, He blessed them, He broke them, He gave them to the disciples—are the very same words used to describe the institution of the Eucharist (see Matthew 26:26).  


We can reflect for a moment about how the total generosity of Christ in the Eucharist comes to us from the point of greatest vulnerability.  It is on the cross, where Christ is wounded and pierced, that He offers up His body for the salvation of the world, and pours out His blood for the forgiveness of sins.  It is at the Last Supper, immediately after He has announced that He will be betrayed, and with His own violent death looming before Him, that He says, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15).  As His own passion is beginning, He lovingly and generously gives us His own body and blood in the Eucharist.  


One of the earliest images for our Lord in Christian iconography is the pelican.  Back in the 2nd Century, the pelican was often depicted as a symbol for Jesus in the Eucharist.  Christians would observe that large-billed bird, and the peculiar way it fed its young.  It appeared to be piercing its own breast with its enormous beak, staining its feathers with blood, and then giving its own flesh to the hungry nestlings (ornithologists would later understand that, in fact, pelicans press small fish against their bodies in order to provide manageable portions for the young).  This image of the pelican is found all throughout the churches of Europe as a rich symbol for Christ, who allows Himself to be pierced and wounded so that He may feed us and give us new life.


We come here this morning, to this celebration of the Eucharist, all of us with our crosses and vulnerability.  Here, God meets us at the point of our greatest need and gives us new life.  But there are people in each of our lives right now, people that we encounter perhaps on a regular basis, who are almost without hope.  There are people in the midst of this global pandemic who cannot see what tomorrow will look like and have considered the very real possibility of giving up.  There are people in our world today that are very much in the dark . . . 


But it can happen, in the darkest moment, when all hope seems lost, that a ray of light can shine into their lives and change everything.  It can happen, that the voice of the Holy Spirit can speak to them a word that gives new life.  It can happen that you and I—coming here to feed on Christ in the Eucharist, to be strengthened by Christ in the word of God, and deepening our lives with Christ in daily prayer— can become instruments of God and communicate the message of hope in a world that desperately longs to see the face of Jesus Christ.