Should I stay or should I go? Choose to stay with Jesus! - Homily 21st Sunday, Cycle B

Darling, you got to let me know

Should I stay, or should I go?

If you say that you are mine

I'll be here till the end of time

So you got to let me know

Should I stay, or should I go?

These are the lyrics from The Clash’s 1981 hit, “Should I stay, or should I go?”, that came to me after reflecting on today’s Gospel. There’s a bit of the truth that resonates in this catchy tune of what that Jesus disciples were wrestling with: Should I stay, or should I go.

The last three weeks we have heard Jesus telling the Jews and his disciples in Capernaum, that he was the bread of life that came down from heaven, and if they ate his flesh and drank his blood, they would have eternal life. For the Jews this was unacceptable, as eating anything that contained blood was forbidden in their tradition.  So many of the Jews probably had moved on, and in today’s reading we hear Jesus is speaking to his disciples.  

The disciples had been following Jesus witnessing the miracles he had performed.  They experienced the feeding of the multitudes, 5000 people, with 5 loaves and two fish. Many of them had witnessed other miracles, turning the water into wine at Cana, giving sight of the blind, and restoring the lame to walk. They were following Jesus because these miracles were signs indicating that he was someone special, possibly the long-awaited Messiah.  But now, even his disciples were having a hard time accepting what he was telling them. Instead of backing down, Jesus doubles down, asking if they are shocked by his teaching that he came from God, asking them, what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? This was too much for them, so they returned to their former way of life. 

I think we all know people today, who are just like the disciples who left Jesus, who have a hard time accepting many of the teachings of the Catholic Church, especially Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist.  The purpose of the National Eucharistic Revival held over the past three years, was to help Catholic’s belief in the Jesus real presence’ in the Eucharist and His desire to be in an intimate relationship with us. There’s still a large percentage of Catholics who struggle with this belief and many attend Mass infrequently or have stopped attending Mass altogether.  Sadly, many people are missing the intimate relationship of a God who loves us so much that he became food to spiritually nourish us with His Body and Blood in the Eucharist. 

With many of the disciples leaving, Jesus asks the twelve apostles, “Do you also want to leave?”  Peter answers with hopeful faith on behalf of all the apostles, with one of the most important answers of all time, “Master, to whom shall we go?”   Peter realizes that while he

may not totally understand what Jesus means by eating his body and drinking this blood, that he has faith in him, and chooses to stay with him.  He affirms this faith in Jesus by proclaiming, “You have the words of eternal life, and we have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.”  Without the faith of Peter, we would not have the Church nor the Sacraments to sustain and feed us. 

Jesus wants to be in an intimate personal relationship with each of us, so we can be with him forever. He does this through the Church and the Sacraments, most profoundly in the Eucharist.  We just need to have faith like Peter and trust that the words that Jesus proclaims are true.  Jesus says that the word he speaks are Spirit and life.  The Spirit is the divine power that creates. If Jesus is God who created the world, he surely has the power through the Holy Spirit to change ordinary bread and wine, into his Body and Blood, through the priests of his Church.  It’s amazing that the God of the universe chose to become one of us in human form, so we can intimately know him, and even more amazing that he continues to be with us in the Eucharist, so we can be spiritually nourished and become one with him.

Jesus wants all of us to choose to stay with him, just like Peter did.  Peter and the apostles were in a close relationship with Jesus, because they were with him daily, spending a lot of time with him.   The more time you spend with someone, the more you know them and grow in love with them.  

Someone who spent a lot of time with Jesus and developed a great love for him in our modern age, was Blessed Carlos Acutis.   Carlos was born in Italy in 1991 and grew up in a family that was not very religious, but after receiving his first communion, he desired to receive the Eucharist every day. Carlos said that the Eucharist is my freeway to heaven.  Carlos became very interested in Eucharistic miracles and desired share to the stories about them with as many people as possible.  He traveled to many of the sites of the miracles and developed a web site which contained posters explaining each of the miracles.  Unfortunately, Carlos died at the young age of 15, but the website he developed is still used today to share these Eucharistic miracles with the world.  The documents about the miracles on his website were on display at the National Eucharistic Congress and was one of most popular exhibitions at the conference.  If you have not seen them, I would encourage you to visit the website. Carlos will be canonized a saint in 2025 by Pope Francis.

These Eucharistic miracles have occurred to help those who doubt to have faith in Jesus real presence in the Eucharist.   One of the most recent miracles occurred in 2006 at Saint Martin of Tours Parish in Tixtla, Mexico, where a host that a religious sister was taking to the sick appeared to have blood coming out of it.  The sister returned the host to the parish priest and upon seeing this, reported it to the diocese and an investigation took place to determine what was happening. The independent scientific investigation concluded that the blood was of type AB and detected the tissue of living heart muscles. The same blood type found in similar investigations done on Holy Shroud of Turin, the burial cloth that covered Jesus in the tomb. There have also been many other Eucharistic miracles that have had the same results from scientific testing.  If you know anyone who has a doubt in Jesus real presence in the Eucharist, I encourage you to share these miracles with them to help bolster their faith.

So, you got to let me know
Should I stay, or should I go?

I hope that each of us, have faith like Peter, and choose to stay with Jesus, because he is the bread come down from heaven, which gives us eternal life.  May your choice to stay with Jesus, be something that you freely share to help lead others to have that same faith, so they too can have eternal life. 

 

 

Come to Jesus in the Eucharist always present to heal our brokenness, Homily 16th Sunday Cycle B

 This has been quite a week for me, and 60 other parishioners, along with 50,000 pilgrims who traveled to Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress.     It has been an amazing experience being with Catholics from all over the country and even throughout the world, who came to Indianapolis out of their love for Jesus in the Eucharist.   I need to admit it has been a little overwhelming with the pace of the schedule.    It has been hard for me to keep up with my prayer routine in the midst of all the activity.  But, I did each day, find time, to do what Jesus said in the Gospel today, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”  There was an opportunity each day to spend time with Jesus at Mass and just being with him Adoration of the Eucharist.

Coming into this week, I had the intention of experiencing Jesus in the people that I met at the National Eucharistic Congress.   I really did not know what to expect.    As I arrived at the congress it was a bit like what Jesus encountered when he got off the boat with the apostles. 

When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.    Indeed, this is exactly what I saw many people gathered in vast crowds, being taught many things, by people who our Shepherds, the Bishops, who organized the event thought best to shepherd their people.    I am grateful for our Bishops in organizing this conference to help us grow in our love for Jesus in the Eucharist. In the sessions I attended one of the consistent messages I heard was about our God, who wants to be in personal relationship with us, to heal us through his grace and mercy, in the Sacraments of the Church, especially in the Eucharist and Reconciliation

I did want to share with you a few of the experiences I had encountering Jesus at the conference.     The first one was a woman who came to the Saint Meinrad booth to learn about retreats.  She had recently moved to West Lafayette, IN and was interesting in finding a spiritual place that she could also bring her family.  She had a nine-year-old son, and I told her that Holiday World was right next to Saint Meinrad and would be a great place where the family could come visit or even stay.   I let her know the Benedictine hospitality of the monks to greet all visitors as Christ would be a welcoming place for her family.   She then told me that she had a recent reversion back to the Catholic faith.   She had been raised Catholic, but married a man who was from the AME tradition, and had left her Catholic faith for years.   She then had contracted cancer in her eye that had cause her to lose her vision.   She was on chemo to battle the disease with the hope of a cure.  A friend of her recommended that she pray a rosary daily, asking for the intercession of St. Padre Pio to heal her.    She did so and returned to practicing her Catholic faith and receiving the sacraments.  Her friend also encouraged her to make a pilgrimage to the National Shrine of Padre Pio.   She made that pilgrimage and after attending Mass at the Shrine, she regained her sight.  This was a beautiful example of the healing power of Jesus.

Another lady named Joan who is a 17-year cancer survivor, told me her story of healing, and then gave me a wrist band.   Before she gave it to me, she asked me, what can I do about changing the past.   I told her nothing.   She then asked, what can I do to affect the future?  I again told her nothing.   She then put a wrist band on me that said “Be in the moment”, and said, all you can do is to be in the moment, seeing the presence of God in your circumstance that you are in.   I really took this to heart.   I just read a book on the ministry of the diaconate that emphasized to be present in the moment to be Christ the Servant.   It emphasized that deacons can be so involved in the ministry of doing, and not being present to others as Christ the Servant.   I think we can all take to heart to be present to people that we encounter and trying to see Jesus in them.  Many people are hurt and broken, and really need to be present to them, so we can be the presence of Jesus to them.

Yesterday my wife Linda and I took a break from attending evening sessions and went off by ourselves to a restaurant.   On our return to go home we stopped at Saint John Church which was the Adoration Chapel for the Congress.  As we entered a little girl escorted by a religious sister, gave us a flower and said to give them to Jesus. What a beautiful gift! We sat down and prayed for a while and Linda asked me what I saw in the flowers. I told her that I saw the beauty of God’s creation.    She told me to look closer.   Each of the flowers was broken in one way or another, but they were still beautiful. 

She said that how God sees us, broken but still beautiful. Broken, but still beautiful!  After some time in prayer, we went up close to Jesus on the altar to offer the gift the little girl gave us to offer Jesus.  We had to wind our way through dozens of people that were kneeling on the floor to be at the foot of altar where Jesus was.  As we approached, we could see dozens of bouquets of flowers surrounding the altar.   Linda placed the flowers in one of the vases.

Seeing them from a distance, they were beautiful.   We couldn’t see the imperfections of the broken flowers. All we could see was the beauty surrounding Jesus and that is how He see us! The little girl gave us a beautiful opportunity to give Jesus the flowers in love and recognize how he loves us in our brokenness. 

I thought this gesture of love of giving Jesus the broken flowers is symbolic of the relationship he has with us.   In our brokenness, we come to Jesus in the Body and Blood of the Eucharist, who willingly allowed his body to be broken, so he could spiritually heal us in our own brokenness.    For he knows each one of us are all broken in some way and wants us to heal.   We just need to be willing to come to Jesus and allow Him to bring us healing with his grace and mercy.   Jesus becomes broken for us, so we can heal our brokenness, each time we come to be with him in the sacrifice of the Mass. The Eucharist is the remedy to heal our broken world. Be in the present moment each day and invite those you know who have been away from the Church, to come back and receive the healing presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  

 

 

 

 

Faith in Jesus and modern medicine can heal us, and be a sign to bring others to Christ, Homily 13th Sunday, Cycle B

In today’s Gospel we find two people suffering from illness who sought the help of Jesus to heal them.   Jairus, the synagogue official, feared his daughter was at the point of death, and pled to Jesus help cure her. The women with the hemorrhage had been suffering from her affliction for 12 years without any relief and she heard of Jesus power to heal.  They both had faith in Jesus to heal.  Our own faith in Jesus can have a powerful effect on others and ourselves if we put our trust in him.

In the Gospel we have the faith of Jairus that led him to ask Jesus to heal his daughter.  This took a lot of courage on the part of Jairus.   He was a leader in the synagogue, and many people in the Jewish community were quite at odds with Jesus.  Jairus’ faith in Jesus could threaten his position in the synagogue.  But in desperation, Jairus fell at Jesus feet pleading with him to lay his hands on her to get well and live. This was a heartful intercession on behalf of his daughter, because Jairus had faith in Jesus’ power to heal. 

The woman with hemorrhage for twelve years had suffered a long time without any relief.   She had placed all her trust in doctors, had run out of money, and her condition got worse.  The woman endured more than physical ailment, but also spiritual and social suffering as well.  Her condition would make her ritually impure and anyone who encountered her or anything she touched impure as well.   This ritual impurity would prohibit participation in worship and socially interaction with anyone from the community.   After a period, people could return to worship, but the woman could not because of her chronic condition.  Could you imagine not be able to be able come to church or socially be with people for such a long time?   We all kind a went through this for a much shorter period during the pandemic, and it was quite difficult 

            Without any relief from her condition, she had heard about Jesus, and hoped that he could help her.  She had such faith in Jesus that if she could only touch his clothes, she would be healed.  It must have taken a lot of courage for the woman to seek out Jesus.  She

probably had to conceal herself to get through the crowd to approach Jesus.   But she was able to get close enough to Jesus’ clothes and experience immediate healing.    Imagine how this completely change her life, allowing her to return to the community.   Her healing was unique in that it was her faith that drew the power to heal.  Jesus did not know who touched him but recognized the power coming out of him.  Jesus acknowledged her role in the healing telling her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.”

            Jesus gave Jairus hope in the faith he had, telling him, “Do not be afraid; just have faith”.   The people who were with the girl ridiculed Jesus, thinking she was dead.  But laying his hands on the girl and commanding her, “Little girl, I say to you arise”, she immediately arose and walked around.  And to show she was alive, he ordered that she be given something to eat, showing she had fully recovered. The faith of Jairus in Jesus’ power to heal, brought about this miraculous healing.  He provides us with a model of intercession in prayer to Jesus. 

Both healing stories have several common elements: asking for Jesus’ help and having faith in him.  The most important element of both healings was faith.  When Jesus healed the young girl, he only had people of faith present, her parents, and his disciples.  People of faith help to lift you up.  Prayer and faith in Jesus led to the healing of both women.   I think we can learn from them. 

Our world today has certainly been blessed through the advances of science and medicine to cure illnesses that were totally unheard of in the times of Jesus. The one problem with all these advances is that we can leave God out of the healing process.  We may experience physical or mental healing, but our spiritual healing is ignored.  As humans we are both body and soul, and our souls need healing as well.  Fortunately for us we have the Church and the sacraments to heal our soul in dealing with difficulties.  

When we encounter illness in our life one of the best things we can do is pray to Jesus for the help in our trials.  We can also intercede in prayer for our family and friends, who are struggling with illness to help them heal as well.  Some of them may not have faith in Jesus, but our faith in Jesus can be of tremendous help to them.

We also have healing presence of Jesus through the sacraments, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to perform His work of healing and salvation. This is the purpose of the two sacraments of healing: Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick. The anointing of the sick is not just for people who near death.   This Sacrament can be received by anyone who struggling with physical or mental illness or having surgery as well as their caregivers. When we are faced with these challenges our spirits need healing too. When our spirits are healed, it can help to strengthen our faith.  

I’d be remiss if I did not mention the living presence of Christ available to us daily, in the Eucharist, which can bring us healing as well. It is the source of where sacraments flow from. I think when Jesus told the people to give the little gift something to eat, he was also pointing us to the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist.  Through the Eucharist we are fed and strengthened through the presence of Christ. If you are suffering from physical or mental illness, or emotional distress an encounter with Jesus, in the healing presence of the Eucharist, may be the best remedy to sooth your soul and help life your spirit, to help you heal.