Extreme Faith

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

“After this, many of His disciples drew back and no longer walked with Him.” Think of that situation. Think of a preacher begins with an extremely enthusiastic crowd, a large and enthusiastic crowd, and after he preaches to them, almost all of them have left. Not just the enemies of Jesus, who always opposed Him, the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, but the crowd. Most of the crowd had been so enthusiastic have gone away rejecting. And not only that, and this is the only time we see this in the Gospel, until His passion, but even many of His disciples who are committed to following Him at that moment it says they turned and went back to their former way of life and no longer followed Him. So think of that, a preacher who begins with this enthusiastic crowd, and after he preaches to them, almost all of them have left. What would you say to that preacher? Well, you know, you didn’t take the right approach I guess, you kind of really messed up that one. Maybe this really isn’t your gift, right, preaching. This is encouraging for those of us who have to preach. I think of, over my decades as a priest, a lot of ministries. I remember beginning a number of ministries which start out small, but then little by little, with time, they get smaller. And so I think of this passage of Our Lord. So it would seem like that He was not very effective in His preaching. If we judge by enthusiasm and numbers, which is the way we usually, we usually judge these type of things, how enthusiastic are the people at the end? How big are the numbers? This was a terrible failure. It would have been better if he is the greatest of all preachers.  He’s the greatest example of someone who practices what He preaches. And not only that, but He has miracles, and He knows His subject, of course, completely, and He knows His audience completely, like no one, no other preacher has. So the problem is not on the side of Jesus, right? It’s not that He did something wrong, or He said something wrong, and yet, still the consequences. It seems like a disaster, a failure. So what happened? So remember that this is the fifth Sunday, the fifth and the last Sunday of the series, reflecting on the sixth chapter of Saint John. And so a chance to kind of put together the pieces of these last Sundays. And so there were three key points. One is that we begin with the hunger of the crowd, the hunger which can represent not just physical hunger, but all the needs, all the deep desires of the human person. And God is the only solution to that. And that leads us to the second point, the good news that God responds, God, in His mercy, responds. And no one is more realistic or practical than Jesus. No one is more dedicated to eradicating this problem than Jesus. He knows the reality of evil, and He knows the suffering and the struggles of us. And so He offers His sacrifice, His body and blood and His Soul and Divinity, offering Himself on the cross. We have today also, if we had more time, we could look at it. We don’t have a lot of time. But that the second reading of St Paul, using this example of Jesus as the model for men how they should love their wives. This model Jesus offering Himself on the cross. And you know, our society presents a lot of different models of how a man should treat a woman. And this gives us the perfect example of our Lord Jesus in His offering for His bride, the Church. And so that’s the source. It’s His sacrifice which is the one source which can respond to the deepest needs of the human person. And to propagate, to help these graces propagate throughout history, to each one of us, He instituted this very sacrifice that we’re about to celebrate in a few minutes. St John Paul had those beautiful words, “in this little host is the solution to all the problems of the world.” But if that’s the case, then why are there still so many problems? If Jesus offers the fullness of all that is needed in His sacrifice, and that sacrifice is made present in this very Eucharist, then why is there, are there still so many problems? And that leads us to the third point, which is what this gospel today is talking about, because we also have our part, our part, our response, our cooperation, and our cooperation is, above all, an act of faith. Because remember, we spoke of how the graces of Jesus on the cross, it wasn’t just that, as soon as He died on the cross, everyone was converted, and it wasn’t even at the people closest to them physically, you know, the soldiers and the crowds in Jerusalem. It wasn’t just the ones who are closest, and it wasn’t them who were converted. Who were the ones who received the graces of Jesus on the cross? It was those who believed in Him. So faith is what opens the door so that these graces can be received. The graces are poured out on the cross, and we have the image of Divine Mercy, which represents that, the rays coming from the heart of Jesus. But as the image says, “Jesus, I trust in You,” That is it’s the trust which opens us to these graces. And so same way with the Holy Eucharist, it’s not just receiving the Holy Eucharist physically that saves but it’s receiving it with faith that we can receive its graces. It’s in the measure of our faith that we can, as Jesus said to St Faustina, “in the measure that we trust we can receive.” It’s in that measure that we receive His mercy. So Jesus calls for our trust, our cooperation. And remember at the very beginning, He began this miracle by asking for the cooperation, the trust, the sacrifice of that young boy. So just like in a human relationship, trust is so essential, there can’t be any deep union without trust. And so in this relationship with our Lord, trust is essential. It’s not enough for Him to offer His grace, His mercy, His love, but you need to also freely choose to respond. So the crowd says this is too hard, and they reject it. What is hard here? Is Jesus saying, like, you have to climb up to this 25,000-foot mountain? It’s not hard physically. Or He’s not saying you’re going to have to fast on bread and water for six months. He’s not asking them something which is hard physically. And it’s not hard intellectually, like, say, a difficult math problem that only people of high IQs can understand. In what way is it hard? It’s hard to make that act of faith. That’s what’s hard, is the faith. Jesus says “truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” It’s hard to accept, to have faith in what He just said. You know His disciples, that’s like what His disciples say, this saying is hard. What is hard? You know, there’s a lot of hard sayings of Jesus when, like when He says Love your enemies or take up your cross, that’s hard, but that’s not what the crowd is rejecting. The striking thing is that what they’re rejecting is an unbelievable, unimaginable gift of God. It’s not that God has asked them to do something which is so hard, as I say, physically or esthetically, it’s that what God wants to give them is so great that it’s hard for them to believe that God could want to give this to them. So that they misunderstand that. Worse, it can sound like He’s speaking about cannibalism, but even when we understand what He’s saying that He’s not, (well. I mean, understand to some degree), that he’s not talking about something, not talking about cannibalism, not talking about eating flesh, the way we would normally think of that, but He’s talking about something very different in a sacrament. But it’s still very hard to believe. Most all our Protestant brothers and sisters, that was one of the things that they immediately rejected when they left the Catholic Church. But even most Catholics today in our country don’t believe this, so it’s a hard thing to believe. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the changes which were instituted after the Second Vatican Council, I think contributed to a lot of that making the faith much more difficult. But in any case, it’s difficult; this holy, this sacrifice, the Mass which seems so ordinary and so boring, right? Because so many people seem so such a boring thing, the same old thing each time. To think that something would seem so ordinary, and oftentimes we don’t feel anything extraordinary, could be, could contain something so, I don’t want to say unbelievable, because it’s possible to believe, but it’s so difficult to believe. Like today, in our poor little chapel here, with poor little me, celebrating with poor little you all, that God Himself is going to come down from Heaven and change what used to be a little piece of bread and a little bit of wine into His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. And not just stay there, but the worst thing is, He’s going to come into you, as if He had no awareness of where He was going, right? No, Lord, not that person. I mean, obviously, if we’re in mortal sin, we shouldn’t receive until we’ve had a chance to go to confession. But even if we’re not in mortal sin, we’re still sinners. And it’s so hard to believe that He would come to me again. Didn’t He realize how bad I am at receiving Him. I mean, if He was only doing it once, He would have an excuse, but if He’s done it before, and we’re still poor sinners, and He’s doing it again, that’s very hard to believe. So the hard thing here for them to believe is it’s hard for them to believe that God could be this close to them and could love them this much. And we have the great example of our Blessed Mother at the Annunciation, the great example of someone believing in how much God can give, how close God wants to be, how much God wants to unite Himself to us. So the Mass, the normal Mass that we’re living right, the Mass seems like such a normal thing. But the Mass, I mean, it’s not a very good expression, but Mass is so weird. Mass is so extreme. It’s not an easy thing to believe what you’re being called to. I mean, this is like high, there’s high intensity workouts with the other workout pushes you to do something very difficult.  Well, for faith, which is what is necessary for belief, for salvation, Mass is a very high intensity training. Because to really believe what’s happening here on this day, which just seems like an ordinary day, and again, we’re not in a, I wish we had a beautiful gothic cathedral with a super high ceiling and beautiful stained-glass windows, and that would help a lot. Here we are stuck in a South Texas heat, Hill Country heat of August, to believe that the sacrifice of Jesus is going to be made present for the sleepy little crowd that we are. It’s very hard. It takes a very demanding act of faith. So God is forming us in extreme acts of faith. Again, notice that the Mass is not something normal and easy. I mean, we think of it that way, but the Mass is something extreme, and that’s why so many don’t believe, because it takes an extreme act of faith. If we said that we’re going to share the Word of God today, we’re going to read and reflect on the word God gives us, well, not everybody believes that the gospel is the word of God. But that’s a lot easier still to believe. And our protestant brothers and sisters believe that, and a lot more Catholics believe that. But to believe that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is made present, today here, that’s much harder to believe. So again, this is something weird to put in a very human way. This is something extreme, extreme faith that God is calling us to. And I’m not making this up. This is the Catholic Mass that the Lord instituted, which is so extreme, the faith that it calls for. Again, what does the gospel say? “As a result of this, many of His disciples,” again, not enemies, not the crowd, but his disciples, “returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied Him.” And so what does Jesus do? He doesn’t run after them, saying, no, wait, you didn’t understand me. Let me explain. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t really mean eat my flesh. He doesn’t go after them. He doesn’t even give an explanation. Notice that. He doesn’t even give an explanation. Even when the crowd had begun to react to it, He didn’t explain it. He just repeated it. “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life within you.” That’s not an explanation. That’s just making it worse. They could have said, Well, maybe He misspoke. So to make it clear that He wasn’t misspeaking, He repeats it, several times. So why does Jesus want to do this? Is He trying to lose disciples? Why would He do it that way? Doesn’t He care? Obviously, He does. No one is more committed to the salvation of souls than He is. So why does He permit this? Because there’s no other way. There’s no other way for us to receive the greatness of what He wants to give than by an extreme act of faith. Because what He wants to give is Himself, and there’s no easy way for a little, poor, little human to receive the gift of God Himself.  And so more than His words, it will be by His pain, by His blood, by His sacrifice, that He will speak, that He will reach out to hearts. Words are very weak. It will be by His sacrifice that many hearts will be opened. I’ll share with you a little passage that the Lord gave us. This was a message that the Lord gave us during covid. This was October 20, 2020, because remember, they were trying to force us, the whole Church, to no longer, at least in this country, to not receive Holy Communion on the tongue.  They said that receiving in the hand is more sanitary, which is crazy. I mean, I, as a priest, know that placing Holy Communion a lot of times, you’ll touch people’s hands when you do that. It’s very rare when I place the Host on a person’s tongue, that I touch the tongue. A lot of times when you do it in the hand, you almost always touch the hand. So it didn’t make sense, but that’s what we were being told we had to do. And we knew that the Lord did not want that, because it’s such a different, it’s such a different experience. And so this is part of the little message He gave us. He says, “there is a mystery here that cannot be comprehended. And all that we do, one thing leads….” (So excuse me, what the Lord was encouraging us to do, instead of receiving in the hand, make an act of spiritual communion. And there were people who were scandalized that we were saying that, that we were making a spiritual act of communion, and not receiving Him physically, instead of receiving in the hand. But that’s what we knew, that’s what the Lord wanted. We couldn’t share this message publicly back then, but He was the one who was asking us to do that. “There’s a mystery here that cannot yet be comprehended. And all that we do, one thing leads, guides to the next. Each time, bringing My children closer to My heart, back to the place where they were born.” And so that was the Father speaking. Now Jesus speaks, “just as my physical body communicated My truth, My reality, My sharing of everything with you, it then led to My body present invisibly in the consecrated host, the physical leading to the spiritual or invisible. The physical and visible leading to the spiritual and invisible. One act of faith was necessary before the next could be made.” So it was progressively leading to a deeper faith. And then He speaks of three stages of faith. Believing while seeing and touching…” (That is those who saw and touched Jesus and believed in Him), “leads to believing without seeing or touching” … (which is what we have in the Holy Eucharist, believing in Jesus without being able to see or touch Him). And then He says, which leads, and this is the third stage, “which leads to believing beyond all human reason.” “Believing beyond all human reason.” “Do you see why the enemy must destroy faith in the Most Holy Eucharist, not only because it is an offense to Me, but because it destroys the bridge to absolute faith. Without faith in My presence, in the Eucharist, the soul cannot have the living faith that goes beyond all reasoning.” So the Eucharist is this demanding formation in faith. Demanding because what the Lord wants to give is, so what He wants to give to you is so great. You know, I think a lot of this moment of Jesus question, “do you also want to go away?” I think of that in our current situation here in the Mission of Divine Mercy, because we’ve lost a lot of friends, a lot of people who were coming here to the mission supporting us. And I don’t think there’s anything we can say that’s going to convince them. I think eventually, the Lord Himself will give manifestations that will convince them. But in the meantime, I don’t think there’s something that we can say that can convince them. It is hard to believe. It is hard to believe what the Lord is doing here, what it was His words and what He is promising. And it’s been a hard path for me. This especially began 30 years ago when these two women came and said they had a message from the Lord for me, and He was asking me to be their spiritual director and so forth. It’s been an extremely hard path, not hard physically. Again, it’s not like He’s asking me to climb up a high mountain, and it’s not hard intellectually, like takes a lot of studies, but it’s been extremely hard as a call to faith. And I think all those who have been close to the mission, our community, our staff and volunteers, our Amici Christe, all those who are close have experienced this, how hard it is, hard. But you know, that’s what the Lord is forming us in this Mission of Divine Mercy. It’s not an asceticism, you know, just like, say, asceticism, of all the different types of asceticism, like whipping. You know, there are groups that whip themselves and so forth, or there’s all sorts of different practices. But what the Lord, the Lord is not asking us, what He is asking us, though, is extreme faith. Extreme faith. Extreme faith, so that God can act. So Jesus says, Do you also want to go away? Notice, Jesus respects our freedom. He doesn’t want robots or slaves, but He wants friends who trust Him. And so how does Peter respond? And so Peter and the apostles don’t understand what Jesus is saying any more than most of the people there do. And yet the response is different. Peter says, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” So Peter’s not saying, Lord, I understand completely what you’re saying. That was not a problem for me. He’s not saying that he understood it. But he believes in Jesus. He believes that His words are words of eternal life, that Jesus is the only one who has these words. The apostles had gotten to know Jesus personally as their companion, their leader, their friend, and their Lord and their God. So they had begun to trust Jesus. Begun, because it was still imperfect, but they had begun to trust Him more than they trusted their own understanding. And that’s a big test. Do I trust more my understanding, or do I trust more Jesus? And so to do that, we need to get to know Jesus. In these difficult times that we’re living where there’s so much evil, God wants to give extraordinary graces. But that’s calling us to extreme faith, extreme trust, extreme hope. So each one of us can hear those words of Jesus, directed to each one of us personally. “Do you also want to go away?” Each of us has to make a personal decision. We can ask our Blessed Mother, in this very holy sacrifice that we’re celebrating right now, of the Mass, for the grace to believe with extreme faith. Extreme faith to believe that even though you’re a sinner, that God loves you that much, that He’s willing to make Himself so little, so poor, to hand Himself over to you, to entrust Himself to you, to give Himself to you. And even if you don’t feel anything, we talked about that a couple of weeks ago, even if we don’t feel anything, that doesn’t mean that it’s not true, but it means that He’s asking you to trust Him beyond what you feel. To trust His words more than your feelings. “Master To whom shall we go. You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”  Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
John 6:60-69
Ephesians 5:21-32