Three Reasons You Might Not Attend a Crab Feast—or Mass

21st Sunday of the Year

I sat down to write this homily yesterday evening having just left our university’s annual crab feast. Under normal circumstances, I don’t like to wait until the last minute, but it was a long week—my first week here with everyone back on campus—and I haven’t settled into a writing routine yet. But, as a Baltimorean who considers Old Bay to hold the power of a quasi-sacrament, I hoped the lingering seasoning under my fingernails might be the sweet aroma that leads the mind to think of heavenly things.   

You might laugh, but the context of a “feast” is not at all outside the context of today’s Gospel. In fact, today we conclude five weeks of reading from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, known as the Bread of Life discourse, which began with the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish—a feast in which more than five thousand were fed. In the weeks since, Jesus has pivoted from earthly bread to heavenly, as he unpacks the miracle (and the Old Testament miracle of the manna which prefigured it) in light of the far greater miracle of the Eucharist, in which the Lord Jesus gives us his flesh to eat and blood to drink under the forms of bread and wine.

After revealing to them the mystery of the Eucharistic feast, now Jesus asks them to decide. Will they accept his invitation to this feast or not: “Do you also want to leave?”

I’d like to consider three reasons why one might leave—or, why one might stop coming to Mass. And as it happens, these are also three reasons why one might not go to a crab feast.  (I do this kind of thing all the time, so you’d better get used to it).

(1) The first reason people don’t go to crab feasts is because they’re too expensive.

Now, I chuckled to myself when I heard that some students were complaining about the cost of this year’s crab feast increasing from $5 to $10. Now, I remember what it feels like to be strapped for cash as a college student. But in the real world, you’re looking at $75-$150 for what you’re getting here for the price of your Starbucks order.

In a strict sense, it doesn’t cost anything to come to Mass. But in another sense, the Eucharist costs a great deal. Because if this is true—if Jesus is really present in the Blessed Sacrament—than what this truth will cost you is nothing less than your entire life. This is what Peter means when he says, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Or think of the memorable words of The Misfit in Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. The escaped convict says of Jesus, “If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can.”

So, there’s a price for believing in the Eucharist. Doing so will make demands on you. You won’t be able to live your life the same way anymore.

I’ll be honest. I don’t know how many people leave the Church because of that—at least not consciously. Certainly, people don’t like religion because religion tells you “No” and the world offers you one great big “Yes.” But I do think there’s a real temptation for people like us, who believe in the Eucharist, to ask “Is this really worth it?” Because it’s easy enough to look at people who don’t believe and envy how they get to live their life—while we labor away at “holiness” (whatever that means).

Remember Peter’s exclamation: “You have the words of eternal life.” What we are promised in the Eucharist is sustenance, food for the journey. This food is to nourish and strengthen us until we reach our true homeland in heaven. If we abandon the Eucharist, we might gain the world, but we would forfeit our soul. And in the end, believing in so small a thing as a tiny Host is really not a great price to pay for so great a reward.

(2) The second reason people don’t go to crab feasts is because they’re boring.

Crab feasts are boring. For several hours, you are doing the same thing, and eating the same thing, over and over again. Now, to be fair, sitting around the table laughing and telling stories is a lot of fun—and I did really enjoy myself yesterday—but the act of picking crabs is tedious and painful! After about half a dozen, the novelty of it all starts to wear off and you wish you could just get the meat without all the work.

I do think this is a real reason why people walk away from Mass. It’s the same thing every single Sunday—the same bad preaching, the same terrible music, the same obnoxious people—and after a while the same becomes stale and what’s stale gets thrown out. Now, I’m doing my part with the preaching and the music, and you all seem like perfectly nice, non-obnoxious people—but there’s a chance there might be some who come to Mass on campus every Sunday and still find it boring. Because, after all, what we’re celebrating in every mass is exactly the same: the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ—and even that might get old.

The advice I give to people who think Mass is boring is a little surprising. I tell them, “Stop paying attention and start praying instead.” You don’t have to hang on every word that comes out of my mouth. It’s my job to pray on your behalf—to lift up the prayers you’re offering in your heart. If you’ve heard the Eucharistic Prayer so many times you know it by heart, then use that time during Mass to pray for someone or something that matters to you. The Mass won’t be boring once you find the right way of inserting yourself into it. And when you do, you’ll come to recognize the Mass as the most important space in your life, and you’ll never really want to leave. Again, you’ll say with Peter: “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

(3) Finally, the third reason people don’t go to crab feasts is because crabs aren’t very filling.

A venerable part of the tradition of going out for crabs with my parents is stopping on the way home at McDonald’s for real food. No one leaves a crab feast because they’re full—they’re just tired of eating; and, even if the crabs are all-you-can-eat, there are always other food options on hand to make sure you don’t leave hungry.  

So too, people might receive the Eucharist every Sunday for years and might just walk away because, after all that, it never meant anything to them. It never gave them the satisfaction others promised it would. They never experienced the Eucharist as the bread that gives eternal life. Maybe they hung around for a while because of the side acts—the preaching, the music, the community—but the main event always left them wanting more. And so, they went looking for bread elsewhere.

I assume you’ve felt that, because I have too. What I’ve become convinced of, though, is that for the Eucharist to matter in your life, you have to receive it believing it already does. God rewards faith—and faith is about stepping out into the darkness of uncertainty. I can’t tell you with any precision how receiving the Eucharist will change your life; but I can tell you that it will. So, if you come forward for Communion believing that God will do something here, even if you don’t know what, you will be better prepared to receive whatever it is. Go into it believing that this bread is enough to feed you for eternity—and it’ll do the rest.

To close out, what I’m hoping you take away from this homily is that if you chose not to go to the crab feast yesterday because it was too expensive, or you thought it’d be boring, or you wanted to have a real dinner instead, that you now realize the foolishness of your ways and repent in sackcloth and ashes. I’m kidding, of course. But I hope you will think about what Mass means to you this year and in your life. The feast that the Lord Jesus invites us to is a tremendous honor and the grace he gives us here is beyond our greatest imagining. His invitation stands every Sunday. I hope you’ll accept it every time.

Homily preached August 25, 2024 in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception at Mount St. Mary’s University.