Homily for 19th Week in Ordinary Time

Do you find, at times, that you are irritable, restless or discontent?  I do.   When I feel this way I discover that there is a sort of hole in my soul.  It can be a very tiny hole, or a huge hole that seems to want to devour me.  I run into a number of people each week that have holes of various sizes in their souls.

These holes want, even need, to be fed.  One of our former pastors here at St. Mary’s was with me as pastor at the Paulist University Parish in Morgantown West Virginia.  He’d come up to me and say, “Michael — I’m depressed."  I’d ask him, "Is this depression leading us to Dairy Queen — or do we need to buy a new car?”  I have bought a lot a fattening junk food and useless items trying to fill the various size holes in my life — and I like to think I am not alone.  Buying stuff gives us the illusion of being in control even if we are wasting our money in the process; and as most of us know, in a few minutes or days we feel empty again.

We need comfort food.  The most common kind of comfort food that I know of is bread.  I can still remember, and even smell now those times my dad would be making bread early in the morning — even the smell  of the yeast before baking was comforting.  The anticipation of what it was going to taste like was comforting — to say nothing of when it was finally ready to eat.  Even this memory of bread is comforting.  Bread is the universal comfort food besides being the “staff of life" and "strength for the journey".  Every nationality has their unique form of bread, even styles of bread for almost every special occasion. Our own Fr. Joe Scott, who is allergic to wheat, craves and searches out the best kind of gluten-free bread he can find.  Bread is a  universal language — no matter what form it takes — it satisfies.  Bread takes many forms, flat bread, loaves, rolls, muffins, Hot Cross buns for Easter and my personal favorite chocolate-laced banana bread.  

Is it any wonder that Jesus declared Himself “The Bread of Life, The Living Bread come down from Heaven?”  Is it any wonder that Jesus wanted to give His life as bread so that we could share intimately in His life?  We become, and we are, what we eat.  So why are the people murmuring when Jesus says this?  Maybe it is because they can’t think of anything better than the bread they baked in their homes.  Or, maybe it is because they can’t imagine the kind of relationship or intimacy that Jesus is offering them — and us.  They won’t know that the bread He offers will let them live eternally until they try it.

Bread comes in many forms, forms that aren’t even bread.  Scripture refers to “the Bread of God’s Word, because God’s Word nourishes.  We say things like, let me chew on that idea for awhile.  Any thing, any activity that nourishes our souls can be called bread.  Friendships, relationships can be described at bread.  This past week a couple I married forty years ago came to visit me as they began their 40th Anniversary year.  We have always kept in fairly close contact:   Over the years we’ve written, then emails, then Face-timed and texted but we were rarely really present in one another company physically..  For a few days we were.  What did we do?  We ate.  Long drawn out dinners, telling stories, laughing at our mistakes, and sharing even our sorrowful moments. There is nothing like really being present to one another — there is nothing like Real Presence.  

This is exactly what we are doing here, today.  Gathering, physically, as a faith family, sharing our ancestors' stories through the pages of scripture, and then eating at a common table with the bread of life that Jesus has given us; not just to eat and run, but to eat and become  Jesus for others.  There is nothing like real presence.