17th Sunday 2021
2 Kings 4: 42-44; Ephesians 4:1-6; John 6: 1-15
Year B is the Year of Mark in the Lectionary, but because Mark’s is a relatively short Gospel, we spend five weeks in the summer reading chapter six of St. John’s Gospel, the Bread of Life (or Eucharistic) Discourse. We begin today with the feeding of the five thousand, preceded by the account of Elisha’s similar multiplication of loaves, which look forward to the still more miraculous feeding of God’s people with the Body and Blood of the Redeemer.
There will be much to say about this in the weeks ahead, so today I would like to take the opportunity of focusing again on the often neglected Second Reading.
Today’s extract from Paul’s Letter to the Church at Ephesus begins “I, the prisoner in the Lord”. What does Paul mean by this?
I suspect that there are two meanings. Firstly Paul has, as he says elsewhere, been captured by Christ. He belongs to Christ as His servant, His prisoner, His friend. Like the prophets of old who found that, if they attempted to refrain from prophesying, there was a fire burning within them which obliged them to fulfil their calling, so Paul finds that he cannot avoid proclaiming the Gospel.
Secondly, he is, or will be, literally a prisoner, seized by his fellow Jews and handed over to the Romans. As a prisoner, he will be conveyed from place to place until he meets a martyr’s death in Rome.
What then of us? Have we been captured by Christ? Do we fully belong to Him as His servants, His prisoners, His friends? Does our life speak of Christ? Is it a prophecy of the Kingdom?
And to what extent are we prisoners in a negative sense? Are you or I held captive by our emotions, our desires, our habits or addictions, even our routines because “we have always done it this way”, or at the other extreme, by our restlessness and desire for change? Are there any ways in which we are kept away from Christ because we are prisoners?
“I implore you to lead a life worthy of your vocation.” Again, I sense a double meaning. On the one hand, there is our major vocation to a particular state in life, whether it be religious consecration, priesthood, marriage, motherhood or fatherhood, single life, widowhood or whatever. Then there is our daily response to God’s call: how am I living out my relationship with God today?
What sort of life is worthy of your vocation? At one time, that seemed deceptively simple. You prayed, you kept the rules, you avoided scandal, you followed the lines. More recently, the answer has become less obvious. It is rarely enough simply to follow the rules, to avoid rocking the boat, or upsetting the apple cart. If that is all that we are doing, we need to be alert to the danger of Pharisaism, of making the rules an end in themselves, rather than a means to an end.
Sometimes, Christ calls us to strike out in unexpected directions, as He Himself did: to “take the road less travelled” as my spiritual director puts it. I remember hearing a certain saint, once regarded as a role model, but now less popular for those very same reasons, described as a “model novice”, to which the obvious response is “What use is a model novice? We need one of flesh and blood.” It is not a matter of innovation for its own sake, but of allowing the Lord to lead us, at times, in unexpected ways, along rocky and less familiar paths, always with the help of wise guides and a life of deep prayer.
Paul goes on to speak of charity, selflessness, gentleness, and patience, and particularly of that unity which is the work of the Spirit. The Evil One seeks to sow disunity, and it is of this that Pope Francis has been particularly conscious in his restoring the limits on the use of the Tridentine rite of Mass.
When Pope Benedict XVI extended the facility to use this rite, which he labelled the Extraordinary Form, his principal wish was to foster unity. He himself was appalled to discover that, in some cases, the result was the opposite. There were many people, devoted to the Extraordinary Form, for whom it became a means of fulfilling Pope Benedict’s wishes: sadly, there have been others who used it as a weapon, a mark of superiority, and have taken it as an opportunity to reject the vernacular liturgy altogether, along with the authority of the most recent General Council of the Church. It is for the sins of the latter that the former may feel that they are being penalised.
So, are you and I living lives worthy of our various vocations? To seek an answer to that question, we must look at the depth of our prayer lives, and of our love for our neighbour, especially the neighbour who is called to unity with us in the one Body and the one Spirit.
