Ordinary Time

Jan 28 2025

The “We” of Life

Excitement is in the air. It is the season of freshman move-in weekend at the University of Notre Dame, where I teach. New friends, new campus, and new experiences begin a whole new chapter in a young person’s life. Beneath the exuberance, there is also worry in the air: Will I fit in? Will I find a solid group of friends? Will I miss my family? Fear of rejection is well-buried amid the sea of smiling faces. Projecting self-confidence is mandatory here.

As I look around at the fresh faces, perhaps a few are asking, “What about my faith?” Parents of deep belief may ask, “Will my child walk out of here in four years with his/her faith strong(er)?”

I have seen yes. I have seen no. Most of the undergraduates I teach in my prayer class are last-semester seniors. They still project confidence. But from their written reflections, beneath the smiles, they have struggled with anxiety and depression, broken relationships, an insufficient self-reliance, the death of friends and grandparents and sometimes the loss or deadening of faith. Others whom I do not see in prayer class have simply walked away.

Jesus asks, in today’s reading, “Will you also go?”

Peter answers, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Notice his very small two-letter pronoun: “We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” We. I have seen yes—students who are healthy and flourishing in faith at the conclusion of their college experience. They have found “we” of some sort: brothers and sisters who support each another when life pulls them under, those with whom to rejoice and praise and exalt God. Context matters. When you’re eighteen, you’ve got life under control. Until you don’t. College years are not easy years. God grant these fresh faces the humility to seek out the context of “we.”

Consider/Discuss

There is a pervasive but largely unspoken grief among those who believe: the faith that means so much to us does not matter to those whom we love. Brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews—they have walked away. This living God who is our center, this Jesus of Nazareth who has made our lives worth living, this Holy Spirit who bubbles within us and brings us such peace— we cannot share that richness with those who do not believe, or with those who find us naïve and simple for believing. Find a friend in faith and speak that unspoken grief to each other. Sometimes we move away from a context in which we have been loved and supported and we cannot figure out what is the matter with us. Having friends matters to our health and flourishing. If you are missing friends, how can you find some? If you are awash in friends, how can you reach out to someone who is new and lonely? How can we strengthen the “we” of faith in the context in which we live?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, we pray for those who are making transitions in life at the end of summer—kindergartners going to school for the first time, new freshmen in high school and college, and those who are moving to a new place. Grant them friends of faith, an environment in which they are loved, and a context that glorifies you. Jesus, Bread of Life, you nourish us with yourself. You fill us with everlasting life, your everlasting life, even here, even now. To whom else can we go?

Jan 28 2025

Scripture Study for

The book of Joshua recounts the entry of Israel into the promised land. Here at the end of the book, after the people have gained the land, Joshua—like Moses before him—admonishes the people to be faithful to the God who has given them the land. And like Moses, Joshua sets a choice before the people (see Deuteronomy 30:19–20). The people insist, as the previous generation had done, that they will serve the God who brought them out of Egypt, and no other gods. The passage goes on the describe a renewal of the covenant between God and Israel, presided over by Joshua, who then sends them to their new homes (24:25–28).

Paul continues to develop for the Ephesians the idea of the church as a reflection of the character of God. Husband and wife also reflect God’s sacrificial love by showing “mutual subordination,” that is, a willingness to serve the other. The church loves Christ, its head, by being obedient to him, and Paul (perhaps drawing on Ordinary Time figures of Israel as God’s spouse), sees in wives a figure of the church. Conversely, husbands—in imitation of Christ—must be willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary for their wives. Together, husband and wife reflect the mutual love of the church and Christ.

The Gospel reading picks up from the passage replaced last week by the Assumption, in which Jesus tells the people that unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood, they do not have life in them (John 6:51–58). Understandably, the response is one of confusion and even distress, as Jesus does not qualify his statement as metaphorical or symbolic. He clearly means exactly what he says. Again we have “murmuring,” an expression of disbelief. Jesus responds by calling once again for belief in what he says and who he is, which itself is a mysterious gift from the Father. This all proves too much for some, who leave. But the rest stay, for they recognize, despite (or because of?) what Jesus has claimed, that he is indeed the Holy One of God.

Jan 28 2025

The Bread of Life

The song makes me quake inside even now. The first time I heard it, I was at a large conference. Still young in faith, I sang the chorus with my whole being as several thousand people processed toward the altar, “And I will raise you up, and I will raise you up, and I will raise you up on the last day.” My ribcage swelled with elation. My mind floated into grandeur. My heart burned with the promise of eternal life. There was nothing so rich as the Bread of Life, here, present among us.

Strengthened by that food, I have walked for the forty years that have followed.

The song goes on: “You who come to me shall not hunger; you who believe in me shall not thirst.” The internal quavering starts again: the vision so rich, the reality so imperfect. I want not to thirst. I want not to be hungry. But I thirst. I hunger. That chasm between what could be and what is, that ache, that yearning for something more, trembles within me.

I walk down the steps. My thumb and forefinger dip into the ciborium, select a small round host and hold it up to the first young man in line: “The Body of Christ.” People come forward in a stream. Hands extend in front of me: rough hands, manicured hands. Some tongues lengthen. Then more hands: flat hands, young hands, shrunken hands, eager hands.

“The Bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world,” sings the congregation. Do we recognize the magnitude of what we are doing here? No? A little bit? I shiver again as we sing, “Yes, Lord, I believe, that you are the Christ . . .” And they keep coming. Palms unfold, reaching for the Bread of Life, murmuring “Amen,” “Amen,” “Amen,” to the grandeur in our midst.

Consider/Discuss

God asks us to sing a song of surrender as we receive the Body of Christ. We have nothing to give but ourselves as we open our hands. In the strength of that food, how can we walk another forty years, even if it takes us into the gates of heaven?
Creation is radiant with the splendor of God. Sometimes we perceive that glory. Other times, the world just looks drab. On this summer day, with the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, where do we see the grandeur of God “flaming out”? Is it only in church? Do we experience it at other times as well?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord Jesus, Bread of Life, your love burns within me. Your Body and Blood sustain me. Your life invigorates me. And yet, never do I get enough of you. On this side of heaven, I still shake with longing for you to come, come heal the brokenness of this world and my life. I cannot grasp you. But you seize me. You are with us in the breaking of the bread. Amen.

Jan 28 2025

Scripture Study for

As God’s prophet, Elijah makes enemies of king Ahab and his wife, Jezebel. In the scene immediately preceding the reading, Elijah has bested Jezebel’s prophets of Baal, whom he puts to death (18:1–46). Jezebel’s response is predictable: she will have the head of the prophet, who now flees for his life into the wilderness (19:1–3). Here we find him praying for death. But his task as God’s man is not done, and so an angel comes to bring him some food. This, then, is not simply a story of God providing food, but is particularly a story of God providing food to sustain the prophet so that he can continue divinely-commanded work.

Paul reminds the Gentile Ephesians that they have been brought into the household of God in Christ through baptism and “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (1:13). Those who fail to conform to the character of God by “living in love,” the same self-giving love shown to them in Christ’s “sacrificial offering,” grieve the Spirit who has been given to them as a pledge of their adoption. The emphasis here, as throughout the letter, is that the church, as the people of God formed to announce God’s salvation, must in its internal and external relationships reflect the love that motivates that salvation. The world must be able to see God’s love in the church created by God.

When Jesus announces to the people that he is the “bread come down from heaven,” the bread the people have asked to receive, they turn on him. Jesus cannot possibly have “come down from heaven”— they know exactly who he is, the “son of Joseph.” Jesus’ call to “stop murmuring” recalls Israel’s “murmuring” in the wilderness when they didn’t believe that God would provide for them (Exodus 16:2, 7–8). The theme of belief thus now comes to the fore. Only those who listen to God (a form of belief) are able to believe further that Jesus has been sent by God and that he, indeed his very flesh, is the bread of life, which is far greater than any manna.

Jan 28 2025

Missing the “Wow!”

I thought about the chocolate bar that I had eaten for lunch. I plodded along, thinking of the mountain we’d just climbed, but even more of my sleeping bag. I stared down at the path. Suddenly the young woman in front of me stopped. I almost ran into her. The person behind me bumped my shoulder before she stopped. I looked up. There, standing six feet in front of us in this Maine wilderness, was the largest moose I have ever seen.

Today I feel as though I am staring at a well-worn path, too. There is an occupational hazard in writing many reflections and studying the same scriptures over and over again. What are the perils? I begin to skim. I think of “mining” the word of God for “the lesson.” I think about pontificating about “those (other) folks” who dwell in the futility of their minds as I dissect Paul’s thought system.

Some of the Israelites in the first reading may have analyzed the biomass of the desert. They scrutinized their path. They correctly concluded that there was not enough forage there to support them. Their whole community was going to die of starvation.

Folks scrambled off to find Jesus. Their brains were racing: “What might we do with a man who can feed five thousand people? Many are starving in Israel.” Like me, they were staring at their path, thinking about their chocolate bar and their sleeping bag.

Jesus is like that moose in our midst. He stops us in our tracks. He says to us, “Hey! Look up! I am the Bread of Life! I am here!” God sent the Israelites manna from heaven to say, “Look up! I am here!”

The moose lumbered off. We trudged back to camp. But that startled “wow!” has never left me.

Consider/Discuss

Sometimes we trudge along the well-worn path of religious practice, staring at the ground. We may figure that we’ve pretty much “got this.” When we are plodding along, thinking about the “how” and the “what,” how might we miss the Who, the “wow!” of the One who is our faith?
The passage just before today’s reading from John is the story of Jesus walking on the water. Are we trudging down the weary path of life absorbed in our own thoughts? How can we allow the Holy Spirit to help us “look up!” to walk on water?

Living and Praying with the Word

In love’s deepest longings, we don’t just want to know about someone, we want to know them. Remind us that St. Paul encourages us to “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” So, Lord of heaven, this day, we want to see you. Step onto the mundane path that we trudge and surprise us! Step into our way and say, “Hey, here I am!” Open our eyes to see you.