Body and Blood of Christ

Gospel LuKe 9:11B-17

Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God,
and he healed those who needed to be cured.
As the day was drawing to a close,
the Twelve approached him and said,
"Dismiss the crowd
so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms
and find lodging and provisions;
for we are in a deserted place here."
He said to them, "Give them some food yourselves."
They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have,
unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people."
Now the men there numbered about five thousand.
Then he said to his disciples,
"Have them sit down in groups of about fifty."
They did so and made them all sit down.
Then taking the five loaves and the two fish,
and looking up to heaven,
he said the blessing over them, broke them,
and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.
They all ate and were satisfied.
And when the leftover fragments were picked up,
they filled twelve wicker baskets.

"Have them sit down in groups of about 50."

I know that many of you have prepared food for large groups. What is the largest group you prepared a meal for? 20 for thanksgiving? 50 for a graduation party? Maybe a few hundred for a wedding? It's a lot of work, to prepare and serve food for 50, 100, two hundred, maybe three hundred. At St. Alphonsus when we celebrate Guadalupe we have food for almost a thousand people, it's a lot, it's difficult, and it takes a lot of work. But 5 thousand, 5 thousand is incredible; it's a big number. Lets not talk about the miracle of the 5 loaves and two fish, but try to imagine feeding 5,000 people. The details are huge and the logistics complicated.

If you were going to feed a group 5 thousand people the most logical thing would be to ask that people line up, maybe in different places and explain, that they will go through there, first collect the bread and then the fish. It would also be possible to have bags, prepare a bag for each person and simply deliver a bag of fish and bread for everyone. Seriously, today we would have a Drive thru like McDonalds.

But with so many people Jesus is not thinking about what would be more practical, he does not want something very fast either. What Jesus says is, "Make them sit in groups of fifty." He has the 12 serving the 5000 people. Then try to imagine groups of 50, it would be 100 groups of 50.  Each one of the disciples would have to be a waiter for 8 groups or 400 people. So as the people are sitting there waiting for their food what are they doing?

I can imagine the folks sitting down, waiting for their food and I can imagine them talking. Where are you from? What do you think of what Jesus is preaching? Are you from Nazareth? My cousin Richard is from there. As they are sitting they’re talking. They are meeting one another, they are creating community.

Today we are celebrating the great Feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus. On Holy Thursday we remember the institution of the Eucharist but in the 12th century St. Thomas Aquinas said that the Eucharist is so important that we must have a day dedicated to it. That is why today we are celebrating the Eucharist. Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, it is an encounter with Jesus. Christ is here in body and blood and he wants to have an encounter with us, he wants to enter our bodies and be part of us. He wants to talk with us, he wants to hear our concerns and needs and he wants us to listen to his advice.

But Jesus does not just want us to have an encounter with him. He also wants us to sit down and encounter our brothers and sisters. With our families, with people we know very well, and others that we do not know. The Eucharist is a moment of encounter with Jesus and with all others. That's why we come here every Sunday, to meet Christ but also to meet our brothers and sisters.

An encounter is not simply two people being in the same place at the same time, as it happens in the supermarket, or when you are sitting on the plane. Someone is in front of you, and someone is behind, someone is next to you. Being together is not an encounter. To have an encounter involves action, there is give and take.

But even more importantly, it involves openness to mystery and relationship. To encounter another person is to realize that no matter the depths to which we may get to know each other, the well of mystery will never be exhausted. Ask couples who have been married a long-time, they continue to discover new things about each other because there relationship is deepening. A Christian encounter is both  active and relational—it occurs between two or more persons or between a person and God. An encounter between two people is a graced experience in which one realizes a strange paradox: the seemingly contradictory human situation of the utter connectedness within which we live in solidarity with each other and at the same time the wild otherness which makes us our own beings living in solitude.

Pope Francis has told us that the mission of the church is to form a culture of encounter. He says that the church has to be a place where we can find the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but also where we can find the presence of Christ in ourselves.

For these last two years the Redemptorists have been blest to serve the community of St. Gerard’s. We have an opportunity to encounter you, and in our encounter with you, in our encounter with one another we have an encountered Christ. That is what means to say that we are Eucharist community.