Deacon Bob Huber

We Can’t Foul Up the Eucharist, But We Can Improve Our Response

We celebrate today the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. In some ways, this is probably the easiest liturgical celebration on which to preach, and it is the easiest for you to hear preached.

Why is that the case? Because the body and blood of Christ, usually referred to as the Eucharist is really so incredibly awesome that reflection on that awesomeness and responding to it is really so much more important than talking about it.

Of course, this reality has not kept bishops, priests, and deacons from saying a lot about the Eucharist over many centuries. We of course, love and respect our Church’s beliefs about the body and blood of Christ. We talk about the Eucharist as the most concrete example of the all-loving eternal covenant between God and His people. This covenant, which began with Abraham, then Moses, then the rest of the Jewish Old Testament prophets, is symbolized by the blood covenant of animal sacrifice in our first reading from Exodus. That covenant was then perfected for all mankind, by the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ that is described in the letter to the Hebrews, our second reading. And the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist, the visible continuation of that covenant by the sacrifice of Jesus Himself, and the banquet of His Body and Blood to whom we are called, is detailed for us in the Gospel according to Mark (tonight, this morning).

We also believe something else about the Eucharist that is rather remarkable. Through the gospels there is unmistakable proof that when the priest at Mass says the prayer that Jesus says in our Gospel (tonight, this morning) the bread and wine that he prays over becomes the body and blood of Jesus. This ultimate act of love nourishes us with God Himself, every time we receive the Eucharist. Jesus is literally in us. His sacrifice, his banquet, Jesus Himself, is present to us at every Mass. This sacrifice, this banquet, together with the gifts, fruits, and charisms of the Holy Spirit, give us the strength to follow the trail, the journal of love that Jesus blazed nearly 2,000 years ago. The Eucharist enables us to live a joyful life so that no matter what our troubles, we receive what we need to work our way back to Him through a life of service-based love. And what is the ultimate example of service-based love? The Eucharist. That is the reason for our feast (tonight) today.

This ultimate act of love, the ultimate giving of oneself, is the reason why the Church regards the Eucharist as the source and summit of our faith. And it is a good thing. For no matter how any member of the clergy preaches about the Eucharist, no matter how good preachers we think we are, brothers and sisters, not I, not Father Rick, not Archbishop Brunett, not Pope Benedict himself, not anybody, cannot improve on the Eucharist. Conversely, no matter how lousy preachers we may be, we can’t foul up the Eucharist either.

So let us put aside the theology of the Eucharist. Let’s focus instead on an even more important issue. And that issue is: what will be the RESPONSE of all of us to the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, to the Eucharist? Here after all, is the real challenge. The prayer at Mass that we say before receiving the Eucharist: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you; but only say the word, and I shall be healed,” takes liberty with the Gospel passage from which it is derived. The words of the Roman centurion said when he asked Jesus to heal his son or servant (depending on the Gospel account) are a little different. The Catholic New American Bible tells us that the words are actually more like “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof,” or “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter my house.”

Now this is not just an obscure translation factoid of no importance to us. For looking at these words this way helps us to frame an appropriately spiritual and physical response to the Eucharist. For if Jesus is under our roof, in our house, through the Eucharist, we can ask better some effective questions about our response.  What if Jesus had an appointment to come over to our house this afternoon? How would we respond? Would we be indifferent? Would we talk loudly when he was trying to speak to us? Or would we offer our best hospitality? Would we thank him for saving us by taking on the excruciating suffering that He did? Would we respond with an attitude of gratitude and a desire to love Him and to others as He asked us? Would we sacrifice for Jesus, for others if He asked us, the way that He did for us?

Brothers and sisters, every time we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, Christ enters under our roof. He enters into our home. The words of the call to Eucharist in the Mass are anything but symbolic. They are the call to the real presence of Christ entering into us in a way every bit as meaningful as if Jesus were entering our home, coming under our roof. Our response then should be Christ-like, both accepting and spreading His love to the many we encounter. For the Eucharist reminds us in the most powerful of ways that Jesus walks and speaks to our world through each one of us. We welcome the Lord into our lives, into the house that is our bodies, by the way we receive and respond to the Eucharist.

I can go on and on about the Eucharist. But I said I would not. For no Catholic can improve on the Eucharist. Its incredible awesomeness speaks for itself. All of us however, can surely improve the way we respond.
 

Here’s To The Mothers Who Have Touched Our Lives

            In our second reading today from the first letter of Saint John, we read something rather profound. It might have slipped by you as it was read. So let me read it again. John tells us “if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God and receive from him whatever we ask because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.” And his commandment, John says, is this: “we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them…”

            Perhaps the essence of this remarkably powerful statement is simply that God put us on this earth to learn how to love. As the author of life, God asks us to love God and love one another. If we do this, we receive what we need from the Lord. Maybe not always what we want, but always what we need. We learn how to love in two ways. First, through the model of Jesus’ life on earth. Second, through the many people we encounter in this world that try to live that life, utilizing the gifts God gives all of us through the Holy Spirit.

            This rather straightforward but utterly important teaching from St. John applies to all of us, men and women alike. And it seems most appropriate as we honor our mothers today at Mother’s Day.  Recently, my sister-in-law who lives in Shoreline sent Lois and I a picture of five little girls standing hand-in-hand on the shore at the ocean as the waves rolled inward.  My sister-in-law Sharon is a loving and strong woman who is my wife Lois’ both closest sister and friend. She lost her husband a few years ago when he was only 56. The caption at the bottom of the picture says: “Alone they might be washed away, together they stand strong.” Thank you for holding my hand somewhere along the way, when I was facing a wave of my own. I hope you will reach for my hand when your own wave threatens.”

            Our mothers have stood in the way of many waves in our lives. When we were weak, they stood strong. They held our hands when those waves seemed on the verge of washing us away. And perhaps as they grew older, or reached the end of their time on earth, we held their hands as the waves of life ebbed away and the promise of new waves of joy in the next life was just above the horizon.

            Mothers, like fathers, and indeed all of us are called to emulate the Lord of love. For Jesus also calms the storms of life. His word, his sacraments, the model of his service, the perfection of his prayers that he beckons us to emulate are with us always if only we reach for His hand. Jesus in our Gospel according to the same John who wrote the wonderful letter I referred to earlier, tells us that if we remain in Jesus and Jesus’ words remain in us, we will bear much fruit.

            Mothers by definition are very fruitful in a way that resembles the divinity of God. Indeed, mothers, through the miracle of God’s creative power, give us life. Our Gospel this weekend says that the Lord is the vine, and we are the branches. When we are inside our mothers she is the vine, and we are her branches. Before we enter this world, we draw our breath from our mothers, in much the same way that the entire earth came to life through the breath of the Holy Spirit.

            Like men, the creative force given to women builds up the body of Christ much like the work of the early apostles we read about in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles.  Building up the Body of Christ was not then and is not now easy. For men or for women. And so mothers understand that they will face challenges. There is diversity of life, and also imperfections. Women will see others who are prettier. They will see women who are smarter or had better opportunities to advance. Some women will have a bigger house than others. Some will drive a better car. Their children will not do as well in school as some others will. Somebody else’s husband may be able to fix more things around the house. Or some women will lose their husbands when they see others living in joyful retirement with their spouses.

            But through it all, mothers and fathers alike can learn to accept the unevenness of life even as we work with God’s help to smooth out the worst edges. With God’s loving guidance, and that of our Blessed Mother, mothers and fathers learn to let go. They learn to accept their circumstances when through prayer and discernment they began to realize it is time to fight another day or simply accept what cannot be changed.  This also helps us to recognize that what we have is far more important than what we don’t have.

For the prettiest woman in the world can have a troubled heart. Those who are smart and successful may also not be able to have children. The richest woman may be the loneliest. And as St. Paul reminds us in that famous reading so often read at church when men and women marry, if I do not have love, I have nothing.

            So on this Mother’s Day let us offer a word of thanks to God for to all those mothers who touch us everyday of our lives. And let me say to all mothers present, and for that matter to their families: Love yourself. Love who you are. For God clearly loves you. All of us are too blessed to be stressed. Too anointed to be disappointed. God gives us what we need and what we need above all things is love. For Jesus understood mothers as well, beginning with His own. He understood that what we believe and how we behave is far more important than how the world sees us.  To the world a mother might mean ONE PERSON. But together our mothers remind us that loving God and others means the WORLD.
 

Cutting-Edge Christianity

            We live in a culture dominated by advertising and publicity.  We are told that we can have it all.  We are told that we can live the high life.  We can have the best of everything.  In the advertising world, the appeal is always to be on the so-called “cutting edge.”  We have to have a cutting edge computer.  We want a cutting edge car.  Businesses seek to invest in cutting edge technologies.

            Well, tonight brothers and sisters we are reminded that we are called to another kind of cutting edge. It is the cutting edge of Christianity.  Tonight is the beginning of the Triduum, those three days that are a whole liturgical season. They are their own liturgical season because these three days commemorate the most central mysteries of the faith, dealing with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the institution of the Eucharist, the summit of our faith.

Jesus brought his followers to the cutting edge of faith in Him.  To be sure in his public ministry, Jesus worked a miracle of feeding thousands with a few fish and barley loaves.  He talked about God the Father as giving people heavenly bread. He called himself the Bread of Life.

            But in our second reading tonight, St. Paul recalls what Jesus told his disciples about the Eucharist. He forces the apostles, and as Christians us, to the cutting edge of faith in God and faith in Him as the Son of God. In instituting the Eucharist, as St. Paul says, Jesus tells his apostles that unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood, they shall have no life in them. He says that they will have life only if they feed on Him.

Jesus was leaving no doubt that about that which he was talking. Scripture scholars tell us that in the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke, Jesus was actually telling them that they had to gnaw on his flesh and suck his blood to have life in them.

            Now I would imagine this certainly got their attention. This image was the cutting edge of the faith Jesus was to establish.  For what Jesus called his followers to that day, and what He calls us to today is an incredible intimacy of love.  He would offer his very body and blood to us.  He would pay the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.  He would enshrine the ultimate gift of self in an excruciating death so as to demonstrate his all-abiding love and overcome sin and death through the Resurrection.

            This is why Christ’s institution of the Eucharist begins the Triduum. It is the logical entry into the story of Christ’s Death and Resurrection, and the reason for it.

            But Christianity is not just about what Jesus did a little less than 2000 years ago.  It is a radical, if you will, cutting edge faith because we are called to that same gift of self that Jesus demonstrated.  Now I wouldn’t want Father Rick to think that I told you to gnaw on each other.  That is not my point.  Rather, Christian love at its very essence is service-based. It is the service symbolized by Jesus’ washing of feet before the institution of the Eucharist, a symbolic washing that Father Rick and I will repeat tonight. It is service to the God who gives us all that we have. And it is service to others who we are called to love with the same devotion to which Jesus loved us.

            If we are not prepared to show that kind of intimacy to others, our faith becomes lifeless.  We will lack the love that Jesus, the Bread of Life showed to us.

            This is pretty tough stuff. While as humans, we often seek emotional and physical love as our first objective, Jesus was teaching his apostles in tonight’s Gospel that love is not perfected or complete unless it is grounded in sacrifice.  To be sure, we all have physical and spiritual needs. But those needs are taken care of by the Lord in a mysterious and wonderful process defined by our giving to receive.

            We need to understand that every day there will be situations when we can think of ourselves or we can think of others.  There are little acts of kindness or acts of evil. They can happen at work, going shopping, relating to our families, and relating to our friends, our enemies, and strangers.  We can recall Jesus’ love or we can think of ourselves first.  When we fail to serve, we can have a lukewarm faith, a faith that is fine so long as we are not challenged by it in our everyday lives. Such a faith is not on the cutting edge.

            Many of us are blessed with many material gifts.  We often wish for many more things, things we probably don’t need but nonetheless want.  This is why advertising is so successful.  But when we get them, are we really happy?  Compare that to the times when we surprised our spouse or our children with a special gift.  Compare it to the times when we visited a sick friend or performed some other act of forgiveness, healing, or mercy. Were we not far more joyful than when we got something for ourselves?

            That ought to tell us something. Self-giving is the essence of a fullness of love, a Christian love. This bond of charity is what binds us as Christians to each other and emulates Jesus himself, preparing us for life in heaven.  For what greater sacrifice can there be than to die for others? What greater love can there be than Jesus’; to offer the very body and blood of God so that we all can literally have God in us.  

            And even when we weaken, when we fail to love, we receive the ultimate comfort.  Jesus, then as now, offers us the incredible intimacy of his own flesh and blood.   Through the Eucharist, we can have the joy of being raised to new life as Jesus actually feeds us with Himself.

            Christianity, therefore, has a rather different cutting edge. One day, we will be called by God to make an accounting for our lives. If we partake of the Eucharist in a genuine and faithful way,  Jesus tells us that He will raise us up to share his intimate love forever. If we live as Jesus lived, we will be on the cutting edge of Christianity, not the cutting room floor of a lifeless faith and faithless life.
 

The Three Lessons of Holy Week

I am going to let you in on a secret of the clergy preaching schedule here at St. Hubert’s.  Usually, I preach on the first or second weekend  of the month.  Occasionally, in cases where a particularly important liturgical celebration takes place on those Sundays, or there is some other schedule conflict, Father Rick will preach instead.

We have a particularly important liturgical celebration today.  It is the first Sunday of April, but it is Palm Sunday.  And so a few weeks ago, I asked Father Rick whether I would be preaching, even though it was Palm Sunday.  He got back to me a few days later.  He said I would be preaching, but because of the long Gospel describing the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, his words to me were uncharacteristically blunt:  You can preach, he said, but KEEP IT SHORT.”  And so in due deference to Father’s wishes, I plan to preach tonight this morning for only 45 minutes. If I do that, next year, you most assuredly hear from Deacon Larry Jesmer on Palm Sunday.

As I said, the Gospel from Mark tonight (this morning) is the Passion of the Lord.  The Passion story is a remarkable drama, the most remarkable we will read anywhere at any time.  A moving array of human emotions is laid bare before us, anxiety, fear, agonizing pain, courage, betrayal, death, sadness, and ultimately the redemption and resurrection that follows the Passion.

The most beautiful liturgies of the Church year also take place this week. They are very moving, divine, and sacred theater culminating in the Easter vigil this coming Saturday, the most beautiful of all of our liturgies as Jesus passes over from the death on the Cross to resurrection so that our bodies might too rise again.

We suggest to all of you that you attend as many of the Holy Week liturgies as you can. These liturgies illuminate the meaning of Holy Week in a most beautiful and meaningful way. They help remind you why it is such a joy to be a Catholic. But if for whatever reason you cannot join us again before Easter, I want to leave you with three clear lessons for our own lives that we can take from the commemoration of Holy Week.

The first lesson is this. Fame and riches in this life are fleeting. We hold palms in our hands this morning. (In the procession into church,) (we read) of Jesus’ (had ) a triumphant welcome into Jerusalem, with the crowds hailing him with palm branches. On Palm Sunday, Jesus’ was at the pinnacle, if you will, of his earthly power.  But just five days later, God Himself was given a death reserved for the worst of criminals and the utterly despised.

Human history is full of famous figures that, in a way like Jesus, had their lives snuffed out while at the pinnacle of their power.  For us the less famous, many have experienced the loss of a loved one in the blink of an eye, or seen children die well before what we think should be their time because of diseases or accidents.

It is then we realize that everything we have comes from God.  All we have is given to us to glorify God and serve others.  Yes, we have responsibilities to our families and we need our daily bread. But Christians are called to be ready to lose all of it for the Gospel life.

In the final analysis, as St. Paul says, all that we gain in riches and fame will count as loss, if we are not living the Gospel life. For we do not live for life on this earth, but for the next life. Jesus prepared for us for that next life by his model of living, and by His Passion that we read about this morning.

Second, much as we wish we could avoid it, suffering is a part of life. Americans spend an enormous amount of time trying to have the good life, to limit the amount of adversity they or their children must face.  At one level it is an understandable sentiment.

But such a course will never fully be achieved.  If Jesus, God Himself, suffered horrendously in the Passion story we read about this morning, how in the world are we going to avoid it?  But the reality of suffering need not be ultimately depressing. Our reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah reminds us that we can never be disgraced for the Lord is our help. If we join our suffering to that of Jesus, if we ask for his help, if we ask God to activate the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we are joined to His way of life. Suffering becomes an inevitable part of the path toward redemption and eternal life with Him.

Finally, Holy Week reminds us of the incredible, overflowing merciful love of Jesus Christ that we are called to imitate.  God, as St. Paul says in our reading tonight (this morning), took human form and died for people, including us. But people do not deserve eternal union with an all-loving God. We as Christians are not saved because of our actions alone.  We can be saved because God loves us so much that he died for us. He would pay the ultimate price for all of us.  At the heart of Christ’s love, and therefore Christian love, is unbounded service. It is this service-based love, the laying down of one’s life for others, that gives us true freedom. Loving as Jesus loved resurrects us from our sinful bodies into life in the Spirit. Such a life is not about us; it is about God, about others.

Let us pray, brothers and sisters, that God gives us the grace to remember these three lessons of Holy Week; that fame is fleeting, that suffering is inevitable but can be redemptive, and that we are called not only to admire God’s love for us, but live in that love. May we remember and live these three lessons, not just during the moving and inspiring days of Holy Week, but for the rest of our lives.

Do We Really Have to Do This?

In a northern Minnesota town there lived a man named Lars. He was born and raised a Lutheran. Each Friday night after work, Lars would fire up his stove and cook a venison steak.

Normally, this would not bother his Catholic neighbors, except during Lent, when they were required to abstain from eating meat every Friday.  Stuck with eating fish, cheese, and buttered noodles and bread, Catholics would just about die from the aroma coming from Lars’ house on Friday nights.  The local Catholic parishioners asked their pastor to use his powers of persuasion to see if they could get Lars to convert to Catholicism.

The pastor was very persuasive, and Lars agreed that he would go through RCIA and convert to Catholicism. In fact, the pastor even arranged to catechize Lars himself so that he could be brought into the Catholic faith before Lent arrived the following year.  After receiving the sacraments of Reconciliation, Eucharist and Confirmation, the pastor proudly told Lars, “Always remember: once you were a Lutheran, now you are a Catholic.”

Lent arrived and the Catholic community in the town thought that this Lent would indeed be different. No more “to die for” aromas coming out of Lars’ house during Lenten Fridays. And so the Catholic brothers and sisters were shocked when the first Friday after Ash Wednesday arrived, and the aroma of venison steak was again wafting from Lars’ house.  Frustrated and angry, parishioners visited their pastor and asked him if the pastor had clued Lars in about Lenten fasting and abstinence requirements.

The pastor himself was surprised. So he decided to visit Lars’ house.  It was an early spring evening, beautiful for Minnesota and Lars was cooking his venison with a window open. Father took in the wonderful smell, not sure whether to scold Lars or just simply explain the new responsibilities Lars must take on as a Catholic. Still not sure what he would say, the pastor looked into the house and overheard Lars praying over the venison. I was once a Lutheran, now I am Catholic, you were once venison, now you are a sturgeon.”

We are in the season of Lent. We are confronted with a season in which we take stock of our relationship with God, and attempt to move closer to Him through prayer, reading of Scripture, more frequent use of the sacraments, and acts of penance including, yes, fasting and abstinence.

In some important ways I suppose, I am an unlikely candidate to talk to you about fasting and abstinence. As you can tell by looking at me, I hate fasting and abstinence. I haven’t missed too many meals and I hate fish.

But fasting and abstinence is an important part of our faith. Why? Because first and foremost it was an important part of Christ’s life. It was part of his mission of salvation to his people. If we seek to journey with Christ, then we must be like Him. So fasting and abstinence are part of living an authentic Christian life.

We might think of fasting and abstinence only as an individual activity. But if we do, such practices become just a tedious chore. We can’t wait for 12:01 on Saturday morning, so we can snack on a ham sandwich and Fritos. We long for the passing of Good Friday. Then we won’t have to fast or abstain until nearly a year later, on Ash Wednesday. In short, we get hung up on fasting and abstinence at a superficial or mechanical level. We can then really resent it.

If, however, we think of fasting as communal, as a part of Christian and Catholic life, then we can see that the external observance of penitential practices like avoiding food between meals or abstaining from meat is embedded in a deeper action-filled faith that serves God and our world.

All three readings tonight (tomorrow) deal with the issue of sacrifice and the reality that sacrifice is a part of an authentic Christian life. Fasting and abstinence is conduct quite natural to a life dedicated to seeking God’s justice in our world. It is quite natural to someone who gives in order to receive, who puts others first.

Jesus’ whole life involved a deeper kind of fasting and abstinence, and a fasting and abstinence that was not just about food or the lack of it, but based on service to others in the most fundamental sense, even to the point of dying so that others could be returned to God.

And so, if we seek to follow him, our fasting and abstinence must also be more than food deep. It must also be based on service to God and others not just during Lent but all year round. Fasting and abstinence fundamentally is not a matter of missing snacks between meals two days a year, or abstaining from meat seven days a year, all in a condensed six week period.

Now don’t get me wrong. Symbolic actions are important or else the Church would not ask us to do them. They are a start. But let me dare say that if people thought of fasting and abstaining at a deeper level, it might be far easier to do symbolic fasting as well. The rituals of fasting and abstinence then become a symbolic celebration, a gateway if you will, to living the Gospel life in pursuit of justice and love for others. These rituals are then no longer a tedious ritualistic chore because they are accompanied by real charity toward our brothers and sisters.

What does it mean to fast and abstain at a deeper level? This deeper communal form of fasting and abstinence involves fasting and abstaining from oppression so that others not just you feel the freedom of the sons and daughters of God; it involves fasting and abstaining so others can be fed, fasting and abstaining from mindless materialism so the homeless can be sheltered, fasting and abstaining from accumulating obscene and unjust wealth so as to help the less fortunate of all kinds, fasting and abstaining from unjust wars so that people in other countries are not slaughtered, fasting and abstaining from violence so that life is respected to life at all of its stages is respected and protected.

If we can get to this deeper level of fasting and abstinence, we can see that, fasting and abstinence celebrates something unique about human beings. For only human beings are capable of offering sacrifice. And they are capable of offering sacrifice not just for the six weeks of Lent, but all year ’round. It is central to Christianity.

By following Christ’s way through communally based fasting, we fight for God’s justice on earth. Through effective fasting we come to understand that true love to God and others is self-emptying. We become truly free to become the unique persons he has called us to be. We become full members of a Christian community of love for God and love for others. And then we emulate the Trinity, which is a community of persons in oneness.

So Lars and his brother and sister Catholics need not worry about changing venison into sturgeon. For if they, and we, use Lent for prayer, sacrament, and Scripture, we can be transformed in Jesus Christ. The symbolic will be joined with the deeper practical everyday challenges and joys of the Christian life. Fasting and abstinence become not just food deep, but soul deep. And that is why we fast and abstain in the first place.