18th Sunday 2020
Isaiah 55:1-3; Romans 8:35, 37-39; Matthew 14:13-21
After listening to today’s readings, I am tempted to say “Read that Second Reading again—in fact, go back a bit further and read from verse 31. Then read it again. Then read it again. Then read it again. Then ponder it throughout the day. Now please stand to profess our faith.”
You might very well be relieved, nay delighted, if I did that. However, I have to keep in mind a saying of my grandmother’s: “Do summat for your living if your clothes cost you nowt.” Many of my clothes have been gifts, so I feel that I ought to do “summat for my living” by speaking a little more.
That is a glorious reading, often chosen for a funeral Mass. It is a reading which, perhaps, we do not always take seriously enough. “Nothing can come between us and the love of Christ.” Seriously? Nothing? Yes, that’s right—nothing.
“But sometimes God seems far away.” He is still loving you through and in Jesus: that sense of His absence is one of “the trials through which we triumph” not through our own efforts, but “by the power of Him who loved us”.
“All sorts of bad things seem to happen in my life.” God is still loving you, sharing with you the sufferings of His Son; those sufferings which have redeemed us and which, when we are given a share in them, draw us closer to Him.
“What about my sins? Don’t they get in the way of His love?” Think about it. If you really love someone, I mean truly love them with the love which a mother has for her child, a totally unselfish love, do you (does she) stop loving them, whatever they do? We can reject God’s love, but He never stops loving us. He puts up no barriers: all that we have to do is to turn back to Him and to accept His love once more.
St. Paul’s assertions are borne out by the signs of God’s love for us. These are hinted at in the reading from the prophecies of Isaiah, the promises of an abundance of water (always an issue in dry climates) and of fine food and drink, and are demonstrated in Our Lord’s feeding of the five thousand plus.
That miraculous feeding is a foretaste of the still more miraculous gift from Jesus of His own Body and Blood, which itself foreshadows the marriage supper of the Lamb, the Messianic banquet to be enjoyed in the Kingdom of heaven. Thus the feeding of the five thousand, who receive more than they need, is a foretaste of a foretaste.
Inevitably that causes me to think of the present situation in which millions of people, throughout the world, have been deprived by the current pandemic of the ability to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. It is difficult to imagine, as someone who has been able to celebrate the sacred sacrifice daily, in the setting of a community, the anguish which that entails for the people of God.
We live by and through the Eucharist. Without it, we starve. I think of the stories of imprisoned priests and bishops, in China and elsewhere, who have managed to conceal small fragments of bread and sips of smuggled wine to enable them to celebrate Mass in their cells, and my heart goes out to those who, for months, have been unable to receive that life-giving food.
Some bishops (not ours) have spoken airily of spiritual communion and of the “value” of fasting from the Eucharist, while themselves continuing to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Those bishops need their backsides kicking , as does the priest who was reported a couple of weeks ago to be refusing to admit Mass-goers to Holy Communion “until it can be done reverently”, whatever he means by that. What cruelty, to deprive people of their life-giving sustenance on the grounds of his own prejudices.
Of course God has continued to love people throughout these months. Of course He will have nourished them spiritually. Of course, by His grace, people will have grown in that grace, and especially in longing for the Eucharist—these are indeed “the trials through which we triumph”—but we need to pray earnestly that very soon all God’s people will once more be able to partake of God’s promises by being nourished again by the Body and Blood of that same God.
