Mass readings for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Exodus 16.2-4, 12-15, 31 Psalm 78.3-4, 23-25, 54 Ephesians 4.17, 20-24 John 6.24-35
I attended mass at St. Mary’s, Tillsonsburg last Sunday; and this was in the aftermath of the infamous opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Paris last week. Now, Fr. Steven rather ably presented the evil of what was done by the IOC and its artistic director; but also, the great irony of when it was done, because in the Catholic liturgical cycle of readings, we find ourselves listening to Jesus in the gospel of John, deliver what is known as the “bread of life discourses.” That is, while we aren’t reading about the Last Supper, what was so openly mocked in Paris, we hear Jesus talking about the Eucharist, the bread of life, the substance of the Last Supper.
I thought at the time, “what a week not to be preaching!” – but as I reflected on the message of last week’s gospel, it occurred to, as it proved the same for Fr. Steven, that what the gospel story of last week concerned was how the Eucharist is the means by which the kingdom of God will be constituted. It related to the events in Paris because the making of the Kingdom by God’s grace, prayer and sacrament was openly mocked: a kingdom of peace, forgiveness, justice, mercy, reconciliation, healing, etc. The miracle of the Eucharist manifests this among us, because all these things are to be found in Christ, are realized through his atoning sacrifice, and so, we feed upon it, are nourished by it, and we pray, by grace we become conformed to it!
And in case you missed it in the diabolical Last Supper of Paris, it presented to the world its own demonic eucharist. Be under no illusion that any of this is a matter of people reading too much into what was presented. The man who organized it, and his creative team, are all well educated members of the artistic community – everything on that stage had meaning, was deliberately chosen; and even if you buy the explanation that it wasn’t a mockery of the Last Supper, it should still be cause for concern.
What did the naked blue man, clothed to resemble the god Dionysius, mean? Well, presented as the main dish of this supper, it is his body and blood that we’re being invited to consume, that of a pagan god of debauchery, self-indulgence, gluttony and drunkenness, and not Christ, who is his opposite: that is, when we partake of Christ, we partake of selflessness, sacrifice, service, self-control, virtue. This is to say that the subject of what happened in Paris is not exhausted; it is the latest shot in a spiritual war aimed at Christianity, we’d better understand just who our enemy is, and believe what he shows us as authentically what he’s about.
This week’s gospel is about the aftermath of the great feeding miracle, how people struggle to understand, and as they have an inkling of it, ask Jesus how they can do the work of God, be truly children of the heavenly Father.
And Jesus tells them: believe in me. That’s it. The work of God is belief in Christ, and we might say, “Easy enough, I believe!” – but do we really believe? When I say it, when we recite the creed? How ensconced are we in our thinking in the world? How much are we really following the greatest commandment that says to believe in God with all one’s heart, one’s soul, one’s mind, and one’s strength?
Indeed, are we reducing faith to thought? Is Christianity a mere assent to a set of propositions, agreement with ideas put forth by Jesus as interpreted by the Apostolic tradition of the Church? Is faith an intellectual matter? Well, no. As Jesus tells us, belief with all one’s mind is only one part of the belief we’re called to.
And St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians today jumps right on the notion of thought, of our minds having primacy in the discernment of reality, pointing out how corrupt human thought can become especially as one reduces the meaning of things, of oneself, of the world, of God, to what we think. He says, “the Gentiles live in the futility of their minds.”
The non-believer, the nominal Christian, or for that matter, the nominal Jew, the nominal Buddhist, whomever of whatever faith tradition whose commitment is merely intellectual, they are caught up in the futility of human thinking which is so limited. The human mind simply cannot encompass reality, it cannot comprehend the whole, and so, must in some way act on some kind of faith, put its trust in something other than its own intellectual processes – Jesus says, trust me; enter into a relationship with me, and I will ensure that you are living the truth; and we come to know this by being far more than by consciously knowing.
The big questions about life and its meaning, for us left on our own to figure out, well, it’s like telling a computer to calculate Pi to the last integer – the computer can’t do it, but it certainly can busy itself trying. The futility of relying upon the intellect has become obvious in the increasing failure of what our culture has become, a culture described in many circles as a “therapeutic culture.” Now, simply put, this is the idea that we all should be “in therapy.” That is, we should adopt a psychological mindset toward everything, and root it in a process of continuous self-examination. The nasty term for this is “navel gazing” and I want to be clear that there is positive value in guided introspection. After all, Catholics are encouraged to do a regular examination of conscience. But what we’re talking about here is how this can turn into an obsession over self, how one thinks, and even more importantly, feels about oneself and the world; and that this is the reference point for all decision making, all generation of opinion: it’s all very narcissistic, and so, unhealthy.
What was seen in Paris was very narcissistic. And that Olympics organizers could not even see that in what was presented, let alone the insult to Christians, is disturbing because the kind of people who run the Olympics are the kind of people who run an awful lot of things in this world, often with little or no accountability.
As the journalist and commentator Rod Dreher pointed out, an Olympic opening ceremony is usually about, well, the Olympics, about sport, and to a lesser degree the identity of the hosting nation, but usually in terms of its virtues. We all know that when poorly done, such displays are hokey, sentimental, cliché, but when well done, are entertaining. But what we got in Paris was neither, but rather a gob-smacking display of narcissism in which the bizarre and the depraved was lifted up and it demanded our applause – a presentation, that if you saw it featured disturbing images of death, symbolically, but also literally in the form of guillotine victims, as if that is amusing and not cause for mourning for the thousands of innocent people who were slaughtered in the French revolution because of their social class, their name, and indeed, for their Catholic faith.
It was a presentation that flaunted the power of those in charge to force such messages upon the public, to say to us, “this is what will be celebrated” when, again, what gets an athlete to the Olympic games is not the indulgence in vice, but the exercise of virtue. As Christians we celebrate life lived for honorable achievement, and we do not indulge in a fascination with death, particularly murderous death, and then dismiss it as just part of the ups and downs of history.
Jesus, at the time of these miracles he did, was understood by many people as a magician, and as a wonder worker. Were these things happening today, I think he might be called a performance artist, because what he does is replete with meaning, a real work of art that has depth and breadth, something that, as we do today, can be “read” and interpreted, investigated, contemplated because of the richness of its meaning. And he invited people then, as he continues to do today, to reflect on what he does in the feeding miracle as a sign of something more profound.
“I am the bread of life,” he says; and that can be a hard thing to accept… intellectually, in one’s mind. But he’s not asking for assent to an idea; but inviting us into a relationship. When I proposed to my wife, that was not simply an intellectual matter – but something a great deal more; and that is why, I suppose, the Church thinks of herself as Christ’s bride, as all of us make our decision for him in a way that is far more than intellectual, a mere making up of our mind. We accept Christ and his claim to be the bread that feeds us by experience, by surrender of the soul, by the acceptance of our weakness, by the healing we receive – these things convict but also convince us that Christ is life, the true food and drink by which we live eternally. Amen.