HOMILY FOR EVENING MASS OF THE 20TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR B
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 18 AUGUST 2024
Parapraxis, according to Sigmund Freud, is an error of speech due to an unconscious wish or internal train of thought.[1] More than moments of humour and humiliation, these ‘Freudian slips’ (as they came to be called) are supposedly windows into our true thoughts and feelings.
Some years ago, I heard a bishop misquote Christ to the effect that He and his priests had come “not to serve but to be served”. Realising his mistake, he tried to correct himself and said, “No, I mean, I came to be served, not to serve!” You can imagine the fun the clergy made of this episcopal malaprop…
President Joe Biden will long be remembered for his gaffes. Earlier this year he claimed to have been speaking with European leaders François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, both of whom died many years ago. He introduced Ukrainian President Zelensky as President Putin, and called VP Kamala Harris Vice President Trump. While some put his bloopers down to exhaustion or mistakes anyone could make, but others say they are unfiltered revelations of what Mr Biden really thinks or demonstrations of ever-advancing muddle. It has cost him his candidacy for the forthcoming election.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus continues with His Bread of Life discourse (Jn 6:51-58). It left many wondering whether He was having a slip-of-the-tongue moment. “I’m bread,” He says, “living bread, baked in heaven. My flesh is for eating and gives eternal life.”
“What nonsense,” the critics mumble, “He’s no gingerbread-man. He comes from Nazareth which is no heaven. And we certainly won’t be eating him. He’s talking gobbledegook.”
But Jesus doubles down: “I tell you most solemnly, if you don’t eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will have no life in you. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day… He will live in me and I in him… He will draw life from me.”
Scandalous it was back then, and scandalous still today. The Israelites were absolutely forbidden to eat human flesh or to drink the blood even of animals.[2] In the Scriptures cannibalism is regarded as an inhuman act of desperation and curse.[3] The ancient Romans accused the Christians of being atheists for refusing to worship the pagan gods, but also of being cannibals for worshipping their own god in their strange ‘eucharistic’ way.[4] Even to modern ears, it can be shocking to hear that Christians receive Christ’s flesh and blood. Some have responded by treating the Eucharist as merely symbolic and Jesus’ teaching as only figurative. Some diminish its importance and deny we need it weekly or even yearly. Yet, like Jesus, the Catholic Church has doubled down: the Eucharist is the sacred banquet in which Christ is received.[5] So are Catholics cannibals as some of Jesus’ first hearers and later detractors claimed?[6]
Of course not. First, because Jesus is not killed in the Mass: He has died once for all. The “sacrifice of the Mass” makes His death and its saving effects present to us, but there is no question of re-sacrificing Christ. Once was enough: His death was all-sufficing.
Secondly, the Eucharist is about life more than death. Unlike cannibals, who consume the flesh of the dead, communicants receive Christ fully alive. He is life itself and in His resurrected body He can never die again. So, we don’t have to worry that in receiving Him we are hurting Him. In the Eucharist Christ is not diminished in any way.
Thirdly, in the smallest particle of the host we receive all Christ is: His flesh and blood, body and soul, humanity and divinity, the entire person. Cannibals consume only part of their victim.
Fourthly, in His great sensitivity Christ makes Himself palatable, transforming the substance of bread and wine into Himself but leaving the ‘accidents’ or appearances of bread and wine in place. Cannibals, on the other hand, consume both substance and accidents of human flesh and blood.
Fifthly, the sustenance cannibals receive is physical and it is fleeting. The Eucharist, however, is a lasting spiritual gift that transforms us and carries us through life into eternal life.
Above all, in making us in His own image in the Creation, in assuming our bodily nature in the Incarnation, in restoring us to His likeness in the Redemption, God was coming as close to us as He could without obliterating us. In giving us His flesh and blood, body and soul, humanity and divinity in the Eucharist, He was coming as close to us as He could without obliterating Himself. In the Eucharist God so completely identifies with us and we with Him that you could say the Eucharist consumes us, not just we the Eucharist. As it becomes part of us, we become part of it! Receiving Christ’s sacramental body makes us part of His mystical body, the Church; as we receive Holy Communion, we are received into the communion of saints. As Jesus said today, through the Eucharist He lives in us and we in Him—forever.
What are the practical effects of our receiving Christ in this way? Well, if God becomes part of us and we become part of God, we can expect it to change us, to make us more like Him. And it will affect us on many levels. The early Christians spoke of this ‘sacred banquet’ as the ἀνάμνησις (anamnesis) or memorial, where our memory is filled with recollection of the holy deeds. They called it the ἀγάπη (agápē) or lovefest, where our heart is filled with the most all-encompassing love. They described it as the εὐχαριστία (eucharistia) or thanksgiving, where the mind gratefully appreciates all God has done and is still doing for us.[7] We are made into people of sacred memory, love and gratitude. So Paul suggests in our epistle, instead of being drugged with wine to dissipation and singing bawdy songs, the Mass is the chance to be filled with a much nobler spirit, singing psalms and hymns of everlasting thanks (Eph 5:15-20).
But what will we ultimately become? The sacred banquet in which Christ is received, St Thomas Aquinas explains, is not just a memorial of Christ’s Passion past or a reception of Christ’s grace in the present: it is also a pledge of future glory.[8] Pope Francis has also emphasised its promise: what we receive now is a foretaste of the Age to Come, of the heavenly banquet that awaits those who love God and follow His ways.[9] St John Paul II spoke of Holy Communion as an encounter that anticipates the supreme encounter that awaits us, a day when “we shall be like [God], for we shall see him as he really is” (1Jn 3:2).[10] Glimpsing that summit in this life, we have a special vantage point upon what our life should be like here and now.
No sacred gaffe, then, Christ’s confronting words to us today, but precisely worded wisdom and sheer gift. Receiving His body and blood is received the greatest gift—the gift of All He Is—given for the sake of our holy communion now and for all eternity.
[1] Sigmund Freud, Psychopathology of Everyday Life (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1914), p. 84: “I almost invariably discover a disturbing influence in addition which comes from something outside the intended utterance; and the disturbing element is either a single thought that has remained unconscious, which manifests itself in the slip of the tongue…”; see also pp. 112-18.
[2] See Gen 9:3-8; Lev 3:17; 7:26-27; 17:10-14; 19:26; Dt 12:23; Mic 3:1-4; cf. Acts 15:20,29.
[3] Lev 26:29; Dt 28:53-57; 2Kgs 6:28-29; Jer 19:9; Lam 2:20; 4:10; Ezek 5:10.
[4] Jackson Morgan, “Why were the early Christians accused of cannibalism?” Clarifying Catholicism 23 April 2021.
[5] St Thomas Aquinas, O Sacrum convivium, antiphon for the Magnificat on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.
[6] See Tim Staples, “Are Catholics cannibals?” Catholic Answers 7 November 2014; “Are Catholics cannibals? What Catholics believe,” Augustine Institute 4 August 2024; Chris Stefanik, “Are Catholics cannibals?” https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=VylEoyTTsjY; Michael Foley, “The Eucharist and cannibalism,” The Catholic Thing 6 August 2011; Karlo Broussard “Is the Eucharist cannibalism?” Catholic Answers Live https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=xS29MKkkxpU
[7] See Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Eucharist, Communion, and Solidarity’ a lecture given at the Eucharistic Congress of the Archdiocese of Benevento, Italy, 2002. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020602_ratzinger-eucharistic-congress_en.html
[8] Aquinas, O Sacrum convivium.
[9] Pope Francis, General Audience, 12 February 2014. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20140212_udienza-generale.html
[10] Pope John Paul II, General Audience, 25 October 2000. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/2000/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_20001025.html
INTRODUCTION TO EVENING MASS OF THE 20TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR B – ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 18 AUGUST 2024
Welcome to our Evening Mass here at St Mary’s Cathedral. I especially acknowledge our seminarians who are with us tonight as I begin my visitation of the Seminary of the Good Shepherd for 2024. I salute the Rector Fr Michael de Stoop, Vice Rector Fr Paul Durkin, First Year Director Fr Dominic Nguyen, and Spiritual Director Fr John Armstrong. To visitors and more regulars, a very warm welcome to you all.