Sunday Homily 2-6-11, 5th Ordinary Time
Readings: Isaiah 58, 7-10; Psalm 112, The Just Man is a Light in Darkness to the Upright; 1 Corinthians 2, 1-5; Matthew 5, 13-16.
Intro to Readings
Our gospel readings, beginning last Sunday and continuing for the next several Sundays are part of the great Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. This section of Matthew’s Gospel is the first and most well known of five major discourses, which are in this gospel. Matthew had situated Jesus on a mountain; recall one of the themes of this gospel is to show how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament.
Moses was on a mountain when he received the Ten Commandments from God, Moses was acting as intermediary. Jesus is portrayed very differently – phrases from next Sunday’s gospel – “you have heard it said…. but I say to you” Jesus is no intermediary!
Just before this Sermon, we are told that Jesus went about the whole of Galilee preaching the Good News of the Kingdom. Now this sermon spells out what that means. For instance Jesus tells the disciples about their new relationship with God in that he refers to God some 17 times as “your Father”.
The whole sermon, which covers three chapters in Matthew, can be divided into three sections, the first dealing with the Law, then a section on religious practice and the final section on material possessions and human relationships, ending with the famous golden rule. In the middle section we find the instructions on prayer, with the teaching of the Our Father.
There is much to ponder on in these readings, and interestingly the contents give us a rare insight into what was probably very early Christian preaching as the Letter from James has much the same content and this is considered one of the earliest writings we have from the new community, written somewhere around the year 50!
The Homily
I want to continue our discussion of the sacraments. Today we will discuss very briefly the third of the three sacraments commonly referred to as the ‘Sacraments of Initiation’, the Eucharist. This sacrament has many names, First Communion, Communion, the Eucharist and the Mass. I think that the revised Rite of Christian Initiation has gone a long way towards helping clarify the confusion.
If you are familiar with the RCIA program, you will recall that in the period leading up to the Easter Vigil, when the candidates are admitted into the community fully, they are invited to attend just the first half of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word, and then they process out of the church. I think the reason the words “First Communion” came about was because just as with our discussion of Confirmation, when originally a new candidate joined, they received all three sacraments at the same time. It was again due to circumstances and time that each event became separated and became individual sacraments.
So much could be said about the mass that it could be a topic each Sunday at least for a year. Today I want to cover just a few highpoints. My intent is to help us remember why we are here each Sunday.
The Mass as we know it began its life at the Last Supper. But even before that Passover Meal, there was a whole history connected with the Jewish history and THE most important event, their salvation from slavery in Egypt. So that last meal the Jews ate before their escape to freedom and the Promised Land is the backdrop for our Mass. The earliest mention we have of that last meal Jesus took with his apostles comes to us from Paul in his letter to the Corinthian community. 1Cor 11, 23ff. And this letter dates to around the year 56 or 57 CE. Meals were important in the gospel stories about Jesus. And one of his first appearances was to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, when they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. As the years passed and the early community gathered to remember Jesus, that Last Supper began to be called the Lord’s Supper. And it was quickly seen in conjunction with His death and resurrection. Pretty soon its parallel to the Exodus Event with its resultant freedom for those who were baptized and received into this community was vivid. The sacrificial aspect became uppermost.
That Jesus’ death and resurrection won for us a whole new freedom in our relationship with the Father. In typical human fashion, attempts have been made to explain the words, “this is my body, this is my blood” and like everything else connected with God, it is a mystery, so I prefer to leave it to the realm of faith and accept it rather than try to understand it. Suffice it to say that the Jesus we receive in communion is there, not as a result just of those words by the priest, but as a result of the whole community, with the priest at its head, because of the entire action of the mass.
There has been much debate about whether the mass is a sacrifice or a meal, with one side or the other coming to the fore at different times. The reality is: sacrifice includes meal, the two are not separate.
Our coming here each Sunday is to participate as a community in that sacrifice. We listen to God’s Word, we offer our gifts of bread and wine and then we pray the Eucharistic Prayer, the word Eucharist means thanksgiving. We then believe that by eating the bread and drinking the wine we are receiving the risen Jesus into our lives. This communion, this meeting brings us closer in our relationship with God and hopefully the effect spills over into our lives where we live and work and pray.
Picture 1: Mass Begins
Picture 2: Mass Beginning
Picture 3: The Music Machine, Wendy & Shonda, Ray & Jon
Picture 4: The Keszler Klan, Jan & Sir Charlie, their son, Chuck, & Chuck's wife, Ellen, & their older son, Andrew.