The Mass Is Hard

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. The Jews quarreled among themselves saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” What we’re doing right now, is very hard. It’s not very hard physically. Unless you have a priest who gives a long homily, when the benches are very hard, we’ve made sure that the benches are hard. And it gets hot here sometimes. So sometimes it’s even difficult physically, but it’s not the Mass in itself. It’s not a physical trial, like a marathon. And it’s not hard, intellectually, like calculus or something like that, where you need a high IQ to understand it. But it’s very hard to believe. It’s very hard to believe what we’re doing, even though it seems like a routine because we do it every Sunday. But it’s extremely difficult, so difficult that the first time that it was announced, which is the Gospel we have today, we have part of the gospel today. No time and the gospel shows no time and Jesus all his public ministry, until His crucifixion, where He had such a bad response, where not only of course, He had enemies who often rejected what He said, but even the crowd, the crowd rejected it. And even many of His disciples, those who had already committed to following Him, this was the point that many of them said, that the Gospel goes on to show that they said, This is too hard, who can understand this teaching. And He lost many of His apostles as rather His disciples. And if anyone had a gift for preaching, it was Jesus. And not just preaching, but He had just worked the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and so many other miracles. And yet, even with all that, it was so hard that many of, even of His disciples abandoned Him, think of that… Jesus begins to preach  with an enthusiastic crowd, and when He’s done preaching, almost everyone has abandoned Him. That’s encouraging for us preachers, because sometimes, results are not what we’d like. But so from the very first moment that He said, this, most emphatic no, this is too hard. And for instance, when the protestant reformers are beginning to develop the church the way they felt it should be, they all rejected belief in Transubstantiation. Most of them kept some sense of the Lord’s Supper, a banquet where we get together to listen to the words, the word of the Lord and pray and sing and share a symbolic meal sometimes, but not the belief of Transubstantiation that the bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus. And today, 2000 years later, well, we’re done with those struggles with faith right? Way, on the contrary, the studies show that two thirds of Catholics in the United States don’t believe in real presence. So this core teaching of the Vatican Council says that the Eucharist is the source and summit of all the Church’s life. That’s not something secondary. And two thirds of the Catholics don’t have, those who call themselves Catholics, don’t believe. And that’s for those who are still left in a Church because many have left. We all know many people have left the Catholic Church. And I saw a statistic recently, which said for every person who enters the Catholic Church, six are leaving in the United States, that’s a catastrophe. If this was a business, you would fire the CEO and make some radical changes or the business wouldn’t last very long. So it’s a sign of a crisis. You know, I was looking at a statistic recently, which was showed the Catholic Mass attendance beginning late in 1955. compared to today, it’s less the percentage of Catholics who go, still go to Mass regularly on Sundays is about half what it was back then. You may say, Well, that’s the way things are in our society, but in the protestant churches in that same period, their attendance has been pretty steady. From 55 to today. In fact, a lot the evangelical churches, they’re the number of those who attend regularly, that the percentage of those who attend regularly has actually gone up. So it’s a sign that the Church is in a crisis today. And the fact that many are leaving the Church is a sign that they don’t believe.  I’m not, blaming them, a lot of times the, the responsibility is not so much for them, but it’s on those who are responsible for the liturgy, in the Church, for the teaching and liturgy. So this is a reminder that from the beginning, throughout the Church and especially today, this is a very difficult thing to believe, this that we’re celebrating every Sunday. In fact, right in the very middle of the Mass right after Consecration, right after the elevation of the body and blood of our Lord, the priests proclaims the mystery of faith, mysterium fidi, The mystery of faith, this is a mystery of faith, which is very difficult for our faith. The first part of the Mass, which is the part we’re in right now, where we’re reflecting on the Word of God, listening and reflecting on His word. That’s an easier part to understand. But the second part that I could say, like that’s when things get weird, that’s the part that becomes hard to understand. And there’s so many challenges to believe in it because it seems so ordinary. What is at the heart say that this little host, which is just a little wafer, of wheat flour, no different, doesn’t look any different, doesn’t taste any different than many other wafers. And even a pagan idols, at least they made a statue, something that looked somewhat like something. And if they, if they had a lot of money, they would make a big impressive statue. But this is just a little, what we’re called to adore, looks like just a little wafer. And also, it’s not something that’s just happening, if you wanted to help people understand how important it is, it might make sense that, like the temple in Jerusalem, there was just one temple, there was just one temple that you could worship at. There was no other temples. And that give people a sense of how important that is. But here, it’s all over the place. Even in our poor little Mission of Divine Mercy. This is extended, all throughout, all over the place. And it’s not just of course, a magnificent cathedrals like the temple in Jerusalem, the Lord gave very clear instructions about how beautiful and how carefully it was supposed to be done. But that the blessing, that the Masses celebrated, often very humble, poor chapels, like our chapel here, obviously, with some magnificent cathedrals, but there’s also most of the Churches, some of them are very simple. And it’s not something that is just done, like for the Israelites, in the Holy of Holies, in a temple, the high priests, the one person could go in there one time a year. So one place in the whole world, one person out of everyone, and only one time a year. That gives you a sense that that’s very important. But what days do we celebrate the Mass? Every day. So it doesn’t, that makes it seem not so important. And it’s not just one person, like the high priest. But it’s a multitude of poor sinners who have been chosen to be the priests in this ministry, like myself. And so that’s one of the things that makes it so hard to believe because it seems so ordinary. And then on top of that, there’s all the terrible liturgical abuses that have been multiplied in recent decades. And that makes it even much more difficult. And that’s one of the causes of, I think, of so many people losing faith and on top of also all the other scandals. But beyond all that, also, there’s this shocking claim that we hear right in the gospel, that this, this bread and wine, which is so ordinary in Church, which is ordinary, on an ordinary Sunday, by an ordinary person is changed into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord. And for when people are listening, it sounds like cannibalism. That sounded, maybe that sounded like to many of them, like a call to cannabis. But of course this is not the mortal flesh, but the glorified body of our Lord and given in a sacramental mode. And a big difference also of cannibalism is this is the Lord Himself who is offering Himself in His body, and all His self as a gift. But so the difference between how ordinary it seems, and the extraordinary claims make it very hard to believe. And then on top of that, oftentimes, we don’t feel anything. Oftentimes, we don’t feel anything special at Mass. And this, these difficulties are similar to the difficulties that people experienced in the life of Jesus, like the people, in Nazareth, He seemed so ordinary in so many ways, that it was very hard for them to believe, when He began His public ministry, because He was so human, so different from what we expect from God. And so this is the way we see this, this mystery in the Eucharist. We see it when in the Incarnation, that God’s ways are so different, that God hiding His infinite majesty, in very ordinary appearances. And so why does He make it? Why is it so demanding? Part of the reason is the magnificence of what is given here. How much God wants, we were talking about this last week, how much God wants to give Himself. It’s like He’s bursting to give Himself, that He doesn’t want to give Himself just a little bit. He wants to give Himself totally. In a sense, you could say God is an extremist. He’s an extremist in love. He’s not moderately loving, He doesn’t say I love you, moderately. I love you that’s not a very good poem is that I love you moderately. It’s not a very good song. I love you moderately. And God doesn’t love moderately, He loves in extreme. It’s kind of like He goes crazy for love. And not just to a few select people. But to each one of us, ordinary poor sinners that we are, it’s to each one of us that He wants to give that gift. And not just each one of us, but to all His children, He desires to give. And so this Eucharist, which is a sign of which is, comes from the greatness of His love, is also a sign of the greatness of your call, and your dignity. We often don’t feel that, because we often feel our sinfulness. But it’s a sign of the dignity, the infinite dignity that God has given you. And that’s also hard to believe when we struggle, and we fall, it’s hard to believe that God could want to give Himself that much to me. And it’s also a sign of how important your life is. Right now, life often doesn’t seem that important. A lot of times we don’t even understand what’s going on. But the Eucharist is the fact that you, that you’re able to receive the Eucharist today, that this is happening today. I’m not talking about something that might someday happen. I’m talking about something that, God willing, is going to happen today, right now today. And it’s a sign of how important these moments that you’re living right now in your life are. And that even though we often don’t feel Him, that God is Emmanuel, God with us, God wanted to be so close as not even just so close to us, but God wanting to be in you. And that’s expressed so strongly in the sacrament. God doesn’t want to just be close to you. He wants to be in you. And so the Mass that we celebrate every Sunday is a formation, a training in this key virtue that we need to receive His gift, which is faith. When we were starting our poor little mission, the Lord led us gradually to discover that what He wanted us to focus on is for our time, is faith. And that’s our mission, is to try to help share this grace of faith. In this case, the faith of course requires a lot of humility to recognize our limits, and it requires trust in the Lord, trusting beyond appearances beyond what we see, and trusting beyond what we feel, to sometimes it might give us the grace to feel His presence. Many times I’ve heard people talking about special experiences they’ve had in this chapel. Right now, I mean, right here during these Masses, of seeing things like seeing a light or seeing stuff, seeing a special sign of our Lord. That’s fantastic, the Lord gives those signs. But many times, He doesn’t. And we don’t see or feel anything. And we feel, what’s wrong with me that I don’t feel anything. It might not be that there’s anything wrong, it’s that He’s trying to form us in faith and believing in Him, not because of what we feel, but because of what He said, believe in His Word. Because how do we know that He’s present in the Holy Eucharist? Not because we can feel it that we can prove it. But because He said so. And so, it’s a pure act of faith. He said, “This is my body. This is my blood, Do this in memory of Me.” You know, the Catholic Church is often accused of not being faithful to Scripture, that’s always a challenge. But the Church throughout these two 2000 years, has continued to teach this, which is so difficult to teach, this crazy thing, that that little host is changed into the body and blood of our Lord. And so, it stretches our faith. It’s trained as a faith that what He’s doing, every time we come on Sunday, He is training us in faith, to believe in Him, to believe in His love for you. And to invite you to trust in Him, and to abandon yourself to His love. Again, this is a continuation, we were speaking about this last week. So this on this feast of Corpus Christi, we recognize that this is very hard to do what we’re doing. I mean, it’s not just hard to sit in the church, and we can sit in a church for the time it takes to go to Mass. But to believe, is hard. Sometimes it’s not so hard when things are going well and gives us certain graces, but sometimes it can become extremely difficult. And again, many people have lost that faith. So the Holy Spirit, to help us believe, gives us a very practical help. It gives us a mother, gives us His mother to be our mother. She who is the greatest example of believing when it seemed impossible to believe, at the cross, when everybody’s faith was falling. She is given to us to help us believe. And so that’s one practical thing we can do. And that’s the sense of a consecration, or in trusting ourselves to her is to ask her to help us. She who gave us the example at the Annunciation, when she was just a young woman, of opening her life totally to the Lord and believing, and abandoning herself, giving herself to Him, we can ask her help to help us as we prepare to receive Him in Holy Communion, to receive Him with adoration, with faith, with reverence beyond what we feel.  We don’t have to feel anything. We’re not doing it because we feel it. Even if we don’t feel that we can make it even greater, activates the Lord. I’m not doing this because I feel something. I’m doing it simply because I believe Your word, I trust in You. And so believe in Him, which leads to adoration and how much our world needs adoration. Not an American idol. Not because we have so many idols, not idols, but adoration of our true God, who comes hidden in this Blessed Sacrament. And so that’s why we’ll have this special time where we won’t do a procession today because so often we’re in July or June, it can get very hot here in Texas. So we don’t, we’re not we’re not planning that procession. But we’ll just take a few minutes at the end, of a special time of adoration at the end of Mass, and then Benediction, a special time of thanking Him and adoring Him in the Blessed Sacrament, because adoration is so powerful because it gets us out of ourselves. It frees us from our idols, so that we can recognize the one true God. Recognizing the true God, frees us from all the false gods, that are always, that the demons that are always trying to dominate us. And so today in this feast of Corpus Christi, let us ask our Blessed Mother, to prepare to adore our Lord, and receive Him with faith and with surrender, and in Holy Communion. And I’ll just end by reading again. A passage from the Gospel today. “For my flesh is true food. And my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him, just as the living Father sent me, and I have life because of the Father. So also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Amen.

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
John 6:51-58