18th Sunday 2024
Ezekiel 16:2-4, 12-15; Ephesians 4:17, 20-24; John 6: 24-35
Would you believe it? The Israelites in the wilderness are grumbling. Who would have thought it? Actually, it seems sometimes as if they did nothing else, and God is more than once reported as losing patience with them, as those of us who use the Roman Breviary remind ourselves every morning when we pray the Invitatory Psalm 94(95): “then I took an oath in my anger—never shall they enter my rest”.
Grumbling is one of the most destructive of human activities. It takes away our own peace of mind, and the peace of mind of others, whether we grumble to them or about them. Eventually, negativity becomes deep rooted in us, and we create hell for ourselves, by making ourselves incapable of seeing the good. What chance have we of experiencing heaven if we see everything as bad, miserable, “gone to the dogs”?
Yet how common is that mindset? I remember in the 1950s my grandmother, never the most positive of people—God rest her—complaining how terrible everything was compared with the good old days, by which she meant the end of the nineteenth century, when she was a girl. Now, if you are unwise enough to look at Facebook, you will see that it is those same 1950s which are the “good old days”, compared with the dreadful days which are our own. Or it may be the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s, which are the good old days, depending on the age of the complainant.
St. Augustine, writing in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, was aware of the exact same phenomenon. “The reason you think those days were better” he comments, “is that you aren’t living in them”. I would be inclined to add “and that you were young then, and now you are not”. This mindset seems deeply rooted in the human condition. It shows gross ingratitude to God, a failure to recognise His gifts, and it turns us into negative, unpleasant people who build hell for ourselves. If you find yourself doing it, stop at once; kick the idea of “the good old days” into touch; and be people of gratitude who can thereby transform the world.
We, above all others, have an obligation to be people of gratitude, because we are a Eucharistic people, and Eucharist, as you know, means “thanksgiving”. If we are not grateful people, if we are grumblers, then we are living a lie.
And the source of our gratitude, and much of its focus, is the Eucharist itself. God gave the grumbling Israelites bread from heaven: Jesus points out that He is the true bread from heaven. Where is that true bread to be encountered and received? You know the answer to that: the true bread which is Jesus is encountered in many places, but it is received literally in the Eucharist, in the Mass, where we are given the bread of life, which is Jesus, as our food—no longer manna, but God Himself.
That aspect of eating and drinking doesn’t feature in this early part of the Bread of Life Discourse: we shall build up to it gradually. Today we hear Jesus use two other words: “come” and “believe”. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry: the one who believes in me will never thirst.” We have to COME to Jesus: we have to BELIEVE in Him.
Some months ago I was shocked by a letter which I read in the Tablet, a Catholic periodical. A gentleman was describing how he had followed Mass online during the pandemic, and how he intended to continue doing so, because the liturgy and the homilies were better than in his own parish. He appeared to imply that this online viewing was to be instead of, not in addition to, his attendance at Mass in person.
I was flabbergasted. What understanding of the Mass did this person have? Did the presence of Christ in the gathering of His people mean nothing to him? Was he somehow going to receive the Eucharistic Christ through a television screen? Where for him did COMING to Jesus fit in? Perhaps He believed in Jesus, but he apparently took Jesus’ call very lightly.
All of us, I am sure, would love top quality liturgy, heart stirring preaching, but in the last analysis, that is not why we come to Mass. We come to Mass because Jesus calls us—calls us to come, calls us to believe. He calls us to encounter Him in the gathering of His people, great grey and unwashed as those people may be, in His word, in the sacrament and sacrifice of His Body and Blood. Only in this way can we be true to ourselves, as a Eucharistic people, a thankful people, giving thanks to God for His gifts, and especially for the greatest of them all, His gift of Himself.
