Bread of Life, Bread of Charity
19th Sunday of the Year
The Collect for today’s Mass has colored the way I’ve been thinking about today’s Gospel, a continuation of the Bread of Life discourse from the sixth chapter of John.
Earlier, we prayed that God would “bring to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as [his] sons and daughters.” For review, “adoption” refers to our baptism, when we were taken into God’s family as the Father adopted us as sons and daughters in his Son, Jesus Christ. As the famous theological expression puts it, baptism makes us “sons in the Son,” and the same applies to daughters. But the Collect prays that the spirit of adoption would come to perfection. This implies that we have yet to become what we are. We are sons and daughters of the Father by virtue of our baptism. That has happened, it is a fact, and it can never be changed. But we still must grow into that reality, that identity—and this is what we have asked in today’s Collect for God to accomplish in us.
My central claim in this homily is that we need to work at becoming what we already are. Though that may strike you as deep and profound, let me assure you, it is not. We, in fact, spend the bulk of our lives growing into ourselves. I was ordained a priest four years ago, and every day I discover more of what it means to be a priest; and in a sense I am more of a priest now than I was four years ago or even yesterday. The same could be said of married couples and parents—and it applies also to children.
I am still working out what it means to be a son of my biological parents; and, as great a project as that may be, it pales in comparison with working out my identity as an adopted son of God the Father. In fact, Scripture assures us we will never get to the bottom of it. The first letter of John teaches: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (3:2).
There is confusion at the beginning of today’s Gospel about Jesus’ identity—more specifically, about the family he comes from: “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?” His claim, which we heard last week, that he is the bread come down from heaven that gives life to the world, seems to contradict what the crowds thought they knew about him. How can he come from heaven if he came from Joseph? Now, we know that Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father, and that Jesus is God the Father’s only-begotten Son. But living as Christians in the world today, the crowds are no less confused about our identity—where we come from and where we are going. And it’s easy enough for us to be confused about this as well. Here’s why.
As a society, we are caught up in what I would call the myth of self-determination. Self-determination is the idea that who we are is a result of what we do. You might know this through the phrase of Jean-Paul Satre, “existence precedes essence.” I make myself, I craft my identity, through the decisions I make. But self-determination is really a myth because we are not like independent nation states free to choose our allegiance. No, our choices are deeply conditioned by countless influences outside of ourselves and beyond our control. We don’t really make ourselves to be something in the world; rather, we are made by the world into the something we call ourselves. I don’t mean that we don’t play an active role in this. On the contrary, we can choose to live within various worlds, but each will have a consequence on the person we become. I recently moved from the city to the country, and I have been floored by how much, even in a month, I seem to be a different person because my world has significantly changed. Think of how you changed when you became a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, or even did something as simple as joining a new gym. Who we surround ourselves with—the world we choose to live in—makes us, for better or for worse, into who we are.
Now, who we are as Christians, at the deepest level, is not something we make for ourselves, but something that is given to us at baptism, when we are adopted as sons and daughters of the Father. There is confusion about our Christian identity today because we don’t live in a properly Christian world. Christians have been divided amongst ourselves for centuries, and this is a great problem; but in very recent years, the divisions even within the Catholic Church seem to have swelled to unprecedented proportions. Pick up any Catholic periodical to see the kinds of divisions that exist in the Church for yourselves—or, even better, talk long enough to those around you and you’ll find the fault lines easily. The greater tragedy isn’t that we disagree with each other but that our disagreement at the level of ideas trickles all the way down and results in a profound lack of charity on the ground, among us. When I say we don’t live in a properly Christian world, I don’t mean that we ought to retreat into a self-isolated Christian enclave. What I mean is that we live outside the Christian world of charity. If the old song is true, that “they’ll know we are Christians by our love,” it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they don’t know us, because we don’t love.
As Catholics, we have choices to make about the Catholic world in which we live in: between belonging to this or that parish, subscribing to this or that magazine, listening to this or that podcast, allying ourselves with this or that Church figure or ecclesial pundit, and so on. Those are choices we all make—and I’ve staked my spots for myself. But what I want to suggest is that all this misses a still more fundamental and important choice. The Church’s problems won’t be solved by synods in Rome debating doctrine, bishops’ conferences working out policy, dioceses making pastoral plans, parishes putting together programming. No, the answer to the Church’s problems—what will unite us as sons and daughters of the Father in Jesus Christ his Son—is right in front of us—literally, right in front of us.
Where do children learn most from their parents? At the table, where bread is broken and shared. The bread that is broken and shared at this Eucharistic table is the Body and Blood of Christ, poured out in love for the life of the world. The way back into the properly Christian world of charity is found right here. In the Eucharist, we become what we receive; and to become people of love we must be fed by Love. But this requires a choice—and this choice is more important than any other we make. If we fail to make this choice, we cannot become what we are. Our identity will always remain a mystery to us. Our adoption will never come to perfection. We must choose to come back to this Eucharistic table Sunday after Sunday to be taught and fed by God the Father, through Jesus Christ his Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
It is only here that we will discover the meaning of our deepest identity, and only here where we will be strengthened with the bread of life that comes down upon this altar to live it. For this bread will not fail to do what it promises: to bring to perfection the spirit of adoption in us, and to make us into what God has designed for us to be forever.
May Saint Paul’s words stay with us: “So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.”
Homily preached August 10/11, 2024 at Holy Family, Middletown.