During the summer months, the Diocese of Bridgeport will be sharing homilies from pulpits all over Fairfield County in an effort to showcase our diversity and our communities of faith.
This week’s guest homilist is Father Colin Blatchford from St. Pius X Parish in Fairfield.
Over the next few weeks, we’re continuing our look at the Bread of Life discourse, preparing for it here in John chapter six. So pay attention to that. There’s a lot of Eucharistic imagery. But there’s also some things that go a little bit deeper too, here.
Paul’s telling us in the second reading we need to live as if we believe that the Eucharist means something, as if God has truly given us a new life, as if we’ve truly been fed with his Body and Blood and can go forth and do whatever it is that he asks, because we have confidence in what he has told us.
And then in the first reading, which is a reference to the passage from Exodus that the townspeople quote in the Gospel, we hear the Israelites so worried about what they’re going to do after following a massive pillar of fire that has destroyed the Egyptians, led them into the desert, parted the sea. But I don’t know if he can feed us. And so here they are saying, well, we’ll go back, we’ll go back to Egypt, even if they’re gonna have the lash, right? Even if we’re gonna be slaves.
You know, this is, I think this is something that kind of speaks, at least to my soul, probably everybody’s experience on one level or another: that we will work so hard for certain things, right? And yet we struggle to have that conversation with God, right? How many times did we retake that selfie for Insta, right? Get it just right. How much have we worked to get that next promotion? And these things aren’t bad, but we can get caught up in them. How much more did we study or prepare for that sports trial to that test?
You know, there’s a desert father, they would live out, out in caves or up on pillars of stone by themselves. And the town came to seek his wisdom and asked him to come into town and, and give them his wisdom. And he comes in and he comes to the town square and he begins to weep like, “Oh, holy Father, holy Father, no.”
“What is it? Why are you crying?”
He says, “Do you see that, that theater actor over there? Do you know how hard they work to draw others right in into that, that fantasy to make them feel good? I don’t even work half that hard to love my Lord and to serve him.” This guy lived in a desert on his own. I mean, whew.
But I think he makes a good point, right? How hard do we actually work on our relationship with God? How often do we spend time with him or, or contemplate what it is that he’s asking of us? We can do many charitable things, giving money or serving the poor, et cetera. But that’s not what we’re about as a Church. What we’re about is giving Christ to others.
Mother Teresa required her sisters to do an hour of Adoration before they served the poor. And one of the sisters at one point came to the realization that if they shaved a few minutes off their Adoration, they could get another 30 or 40 minutes caring for the poor. And mother said, “Thank you very much for this and your attention to it. You’ve done a wonderful job daughter. Two hours of Adoration for your convent now.”
Because it’s not about serving the poor, it’s not about giving money. It’s not about giving time. Those are all things that will happen. It’s about giving Christ. It’s about giving Christ when you go to school. It’s about giving Christ when you go to work. It’s about giving Christ when you encounter a friend in everything that you do. Not just on Sundays, not just when it’s convenient.
I was running a big conference last week, and I did not give God his time. And there were a few times I didn’t give Christ to other people. And that was on me. Ten, 15 minutes in the morning would’ve probably given me enough to keep going even though we had Mass every day. It was exhausting. And yet throughout that time, he kept showing me how he was with me and working for me. And he had it in hand.
“Lord, I don’t know if I have the time for that.” All of a sudden I make, I go ahead and make a stop thinking I don’t have the time for it, but okay Lord, whatever. And I encounter a couple of people who really needed to talk to me that I had no idea were there. And they didn’t know that I was a priest at the time., because I was in cities. I was driving back in my car, but it just came out of the blue.
And so if we give ourselves to the Lord, if we surrender ourselves to the Lord — “Lord, I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything” — right? If we give ourselves to the Lord, then he will continue to deliver for us joy and happiness, even in the midst of suffering in this life. See, this is what it means to be a Christian, to be a follower of Christ, to become a saint is when we come here to receive our Lord. And he takes up residence within your soul. You then take him out into the world.
At the end of Mass, we say, “Go forth. The Mass is ended. In Latin, it’s ite Missa est, you are sent forth, to bear Christ in your souls into the world.
That’s what it means to be Catholic. That’s what it means to go to Church, to receive the Eucharist this week. Let us take some time to think about that. Do I take Christ with me from mass out into the world? For he is the way and the truth and the life. If I carry Christ with me, I have life within me. I don’t hunger and I don’t thirst. And the more and more that I surrender myself to him and I bring him with me, the easier it is to discern his will and to become the saint that he has called me to be.
Let us take time to meditate upon this, this week that we may go forth and become those saints we’ve been called and the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
