PROPER 17, YEAR B

August 29, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Today’s Gospel reading raises in acute form the question of the place of ritual in our life and worship. Ritual is an essential element of being human. We enact dozens of formal and informal ceremonial rituals every day. We meet a friend or acquaintance, we stop, shake hands, and say, “Hi, how are you?” “Fine thanks, how are you?” We mark the transitions of life with well‑established rites of passage. Raising our wineglasses for a toast. Wearing an engagement ring. Blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Putting flowers on a grave. Anthropologists tell us that the ability to enact such rituals is a crucial component of membership in a human community.

Such rituals not only express what we feel inside, but also give shape and form to those feelings and beliefs. The handshake not only expresses but also nurtures and strengthens friendship. Such rituals are necessary because we have a basic human need to give outward and visible expression to what’s inside us precisely to keep it alive and strong.

It follows that if our worship of God is to engage us as the people we are, then it, too, must involve ritual and ceremony. Those adhering to more puritanical strains of Christianity would like to banish ritual from religion. Sometimes they cite such passages as today’s Gospel in defense of their position. They argue that the external trappings of processions, vestments, bells, incense, genuflections, and bows are at best unnecessary and at worst idolatrous. They argue that an authentic personal relationship with Christ happens within the human heart, and consists of purely interior belief and devotion. That would be all well and good if we were disembodied intellects or pure spirits. But as embodied human creatures we need liturgical rites and ceremonies to give tangible expression and shape to our relationship with God.

Consider, for example, the venerable custom of blessing ourselves with holy water as we enter the Church. Some of us find it helpful to dip our fingers into the water and make the sign of the cross, quietly saying “In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

The water reminds us of our baptism. The sign of the cross reminds we’ve been baptized into a life of taking up our cross and following Jesus. The words reaffirm our baptismal faith in God the Holy Trinity. We already know all this somewhere in the back of our minds. But the ritual tangibly focuses these truths for us so that we can acknowledge and appropriate them anew whenever we enter the Church. The power of ritual is such that one little action can convey so much meaning.

The danger, however, is that ritual can become an end-in-itself rather than a means-to-an-end. We can fall into the trap of thinking that we’ve served God and fulfilled his will by performing the ritual rather than by following through with what it represents. At that point, the ritual begins to lose its meaning and turn into an empty, legalistic observance.

In today’s Gospel, we see this process at work. Certain Pharisees ask Jesus why his disciples eat with defiled hands. Their question doesn’t imply that the disciples’ hands are actually dirty. The point isn’t hygiene. In New Testament times, people performed certain ceremonial ablutions before they ate together. So, these Pharisees are reproaching Jesus because his disciples are neglecting the customary ritual purifications before meals.

Our Lord responds harshly: “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.’” His point is not that there’s anything wrong with the rituals, but that it’s all too easy to make them more important than what they represent. Ceremonial washing is meant to express the desire for purity of heart before God, but here it’s become an end-in-itself.

Jesus drives his point home by saying, “There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.”

In other words, true defilement results from something deeper than failure to keep the prescribed ritualistic observances. Those who think they can achieve purity before God by rituals alone are missing the point. The rituals are well and good in their place, so long as they don’t eclipse the inner dispositions they’re meant to reflect.

Years ago, when I was living in England, a priest to whom I was going for confession and spiritual direction told me the story of something that happened when he was a chaplain at Oxford University in the years just after the Second World War. One Saturday evening, he was visiting with one of the students, from South Africa. They were enjoying a good conversation, and the hours passed. Finally, late in the evening, the student suggested that they have something to eat, and pulled out a tin of ham that he’d received from his family in South Africa. In those days, food rationing was still in effect in England. Meat in particular was scarce. So this was a rare treat for both of them. 

Just as his friend opened the tin and scooped the ham out on to a plate, ready to serve, the priest glanced at his watch. It was five minutes past midnight. With great embarrassment, he said, “I’m very sorry, but I cannot eat that now.” He then explained that the discipline of the Communion Fast prohibited him from eating anything after midnight on Saturday.

He told me this story so many years later with a deep sense of regret and sorrow. To avoid violating his ritual fast before Communion, he’d committed a far worse violation of Christian charity: he’d spurned his friend’s hospitality; and he’d caused good food to be wasted. Now, he was in no way suggesting that the Communion Fast is a bad thing. On the contrary, he commended it as vital spiritual preparation for Holy Communion. Instead, his point was that even such a worthwhile practice becomes destructive when enacted at the expense of basic Christian virtues.

Christianity would be a lot less challenging if all we had to do to get right with God was to obey a few rules, and correctly perform a few ceremonies. We might even be tempted to think that we could do it all on our own. But in today’s Gospel Jesus holds up a higher standard. He sets out a list of defilements that come from within, and that list spares none of us. We’re all guilty. None of us can make ourselves worthy by our own efforts. If we would be made pure, we must look not to ourselves but to God. Only God can make us clean. And the good news is that in Christ God has done precisely that.

PROPER 16, YEAR B

Sunday 22 August 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18

John 6:56-69

Today’s readings highlight the importance of telling the story of what God has done in our life together—and then making the right response!

 

The episode in the Old Testament reading takes place near the end of the life of Joshua. Having led the Children of Israel across the River Jordan to take possession of the Promised Land, Joshua summons all the people to Shechem—a town in the north of Israel which, before the fall of Jerusalem to King David several centuries later, functioned as the central gathering place of the Twelve Tribes.

In his speech, Joshua challenges the people to put away the gods their ancestors served in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and serve only the Lord. The people respond by reciting the great deeds that God has done for them: “It is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and who did great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way that we went …”

Some Old Testament scholars have speculated that what’s being described here is a periodically repeated liturgical ceremony renewing God’s Covenant given on Mount Sinai. Be that as it may, the key point is that the best means of recalling people to faithfulness is to tell the story, over and over, of the great deeds that God has done for them. In a similar way, the Church’s first task is always to proclaim the good news of what God has done for us in Christ.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus proclaims the good news of what God is doing in and through his own ministry. During the month of August, the Gospel readings have been taken from the sixth chapter of Saint John, where Jesus announces that he is the true bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live forever.

The inconvenient reality, however, is that those who hear the good news are free to respond (or not) as they will. Joshua is clearly aware of this problem as he addresses the Tribes of Israel. While he passionately exhorts them to serve the Lord, he also respects their freedom. There’s nothing authoritarian in his speech: no commands, no threats. Instead of “You’d better serve the Lord or else,” he says: “If you be unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve … but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Similarly, in today’s Gospel, when many of the disciples fall away in disgust at his words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, Jesus also respects their freedom. He simply asks the Twelve: “Do you also wish to go away?” No commands, no threats, nothing coercive: just a gentle challenge to make a choice.

In both cases, our protagonists know how difficult it may be to respond positively to what they’re asking. Joshua’s words reflect his understanding of the powerful appeal of the ancestral gods and goddesses. He speaks as though he won’t be at all surprised if the people backslide and forsake the one true God—especially now that they’re living alongside peoples who still worship those same pagan deities. The subsequent history recounted in the Old Testament proves Joshua right. Again and again, large segments of the people fall away, with only a faithful remnant keeping the Covenant and continuing in the service of Israel’s God down to the present day.

Again, Jesus is unsurprised when large numbers of disciples draw back and fall away, murmuring amongst themselves: “This is a hard saying; Who can listen to it?” Knowing what’s in their hearts, he simply remarks: “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail … This is why I told you that no-one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

Both these scriptural episodes are particularly apropos for us, who live in a time and place where so many people seem to be turning their backs on the Church and its faith and worship. This trend may sadden us, but it should not surprise us. It’s nothing that we haven’t dealt with before at multiple times in our history as God’s people. The good news, now as then, is that we’re here (whether in person or virtually!)—a faithful remnant choosing to follow the Lord even when it means swimming against the cultural tide.

So, we stand today in the place of those who answered Joshua, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods … We also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.” We likewise stand with Peter, who answers the Lord’s question by asking in turn: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

Commenting on this passage sometime in the early fifth century, Saint Cyril of Alexandria wrote: “It is not the number of worshipers but those who excel in the right faith, though they are few, that are precious in the sight of God.” In other words, Cyril implies, Jesus is content to continue working with only twelve disciples after the multitudes fall away because he knows that these twelve have the right faith, as expressed by Peter on their behalf, to be the ones ultimately sent out to bear witness to his resurrection to the ends of the earth.

A few years ago, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI offered some thought-provoking reflections on the Church’s decline in Western Europe and North America. A smaller and leaner Church, he said, is not necessarily a weaker Church. As it loses social privilege and cultural approval, it must simplify its life and concentrate on what’s truly important. Those who persevere in attending worship and participating in the Church’s life will be those with the strongest faith, or at least the deepest knowledge of their need for God. The Church’s losses in the quantity of its numbers may be outweighed by its gains in the quality of discipleship as it responds to God’s call to engage in mission to a broken and hurting world.

In the coming days, as we approach our congregational discernment meeting, my recommendation is that we all reflect on the words of both Joshua and Jesus in today’s readings: “Choose this day whom you will serve,” and “Do you also wish to go away?” By God’s grace, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we shall be able to respond with the tribes of Israel to Joshua, “We also will serve the Lord, for he is our God,” and again with Peter to Jesus, “You have the words of eternal life.”

ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Sunday, August 15, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt

In the Episcopal Church calendar, today’s feast is called simply Saint Mary the Virgin. In the Roman Catholic Church, its official name is the Solemnity of the Assumption. In the Orthodox Churches it’s the Dormition of the Theotokos, that is, the Falling Asleep of the God-Bearer.

By whatever name it’s known, August 15^th has been observed in both East and West since the early centuries of Christianity as a feast commemorating the mysterious circumstances surrounding the end of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s earthly life. 

The Episcopal Church does not explicitly acknowledge Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven. Nonetheless, today’s Collect in the Prayer Book hints at it: “O God, who hast taken to thyself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of thy incarnate Son …” The Collect then proceeds to ask that we may share with her the glory of God’s eternal kingdom—the glory into which, it is implied, she’s already been taken up.

Even though the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption only as recently as 1950, the belief is documented as dating back to the early centuries of Christianity. According to Saint John of Damascus, writing in the eighth century, during the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451, the Byzantine Emperor asked the Patriarch of Jerusalem for the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Relics of the saints were in high demand in those days; the churches in most cities possessed and treasured the bones and other keepsakes of their founding Apostles. It would thus have been a great coup for Constantinople to have taken possession of Mary's mortal remains.

But to the Emperor’s surprise, the bishop explained that no bodily relics of the Blessed Virgin were to be found anywhere. He then related the Jerusalem Church’s local tradition that when Mary was coming to the end of her earthly life, all the Apostles but one—I’ll come back to this presently—returned to the Holy City from their missionary travels to bid her farewell. Having peacefully fallen asleep, she was carried through the streets on a bier to her final resting place, and laid in a tomb. 

The one missing Apostle was Thomas, who arrived three days later, and asked that Mary’s tomb be opened so that he could pay his respects. (Just as Thomas had been absent from the Upper Room on the first Easter Day, so he was absent from Mary’s funeral and interment.) When they opened the tomb, however, they found it empty. In some versions of the story, the gathered apostles then saw a vision of Mary being lifted to her waiting Son in the heavens. And in a few further versions, on the way up, she dropped her sash or waistband down to Thomas below, furnishing the doubting disciple with incontrovertible proof of her Assumption.

I hasten to add that none of this is attested anywhere in Scripture, so as Anglicans we’re free to make of it what we will. Interestingly, when Pope Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption as binding upon Roman Catholics seventy-two years ago, he did not explicitly cite any of these apocryphal traditions. His argument was instead a theological one: that since Mary was full of grace and without sin, it was inconceivable that God would allow her to decay in the tomb. But again, as Anglicans we’re not required to believe in Mary’s Assumption if we remain unpersuaded, and neither are we prohibited from believing in it if we find ourselves so inspired.

Either way, whether we take it as literal truth or symbolic image, a scriptural key to understanding the Assumption’s meaning for us is John 14:3 where, at the Last Supper, Jesus says to his disciples: "In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? When I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also."

In other words, the Assumption is not about Mary alone. It depicts not only Mary being taken into heaven at the conclusion of her earthly life, but also our own future resurrection (on the Last Day) and assumption into God’s presence following the completion of our earthly lives. Mary is thus sometimes referred to as the “First of the Redeemed”—or, we might say, the advance representative of redeemed humanity in heaven.

The Feast of the Assumption celebrates the hope of eternal life for all who are united to Christ. It’s that simple, really. In the Apostles’ Creed we recite the words: I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Those words teach us that the world to come is not some ethereal realm of disembodied spirits, but rather the restoration of the material creation in all its glorious physicality.

To be fully human is to live in the body. God created us for embodied existence in a material world, which in the beginning he proclaimed to be “very good.” It follows that to fulfill the promise and potential of our creation, our redemption must be a bodily redemption. Only then can the life of the world to come bring about the perfection of our humanity in communion with God. As Jesus rose from the dead, so in the last day he will raise us as well—in bodies that are somehow continuous with those of this life, yet wonderfully restored, transformed, and made new, no longer subject to corruption, decay, and death.

Mary’s Assumption is best understood in the context of this hope. Just as Jesus rose not just in spirit but in the fullness of his bodily existence, so when the time came for Mary to fall asleep, God took her to himself in both body and soul.

Today, some of us may experience the same difficulty visualizing Mary's Assumption as we do Christ's Ascension. For we no longer think of heaven as a place somewhere up there, in the sky. The important point, however, is that somehow, in a mysterious way that defies explanation, Mary has been taken up, in the fullness of her humanity, into the fullness of God’s presence. 

The life that Mary lives with God as the first of the redeemed is none other than the life we’re all called to share in the age to come. In the meantime, we enjoy a living relationship with her here and now. She prays to her Son for us. We may certainly entreat her prayers on our behalf. And her prayers will help us towards our heavenly destination, where she and all the angels and saints are waiting for us, and from which they cheer us on as we make our pilgrimage through this life in this world.

PROPER 14, YEAR B

Sunday 8 August 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

I Kings 19:4-8

Psalm 34:1-8

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

John 6:35, 41-51

The image or theme running through today’s readings can be summed up as “food for the journey.” 

In the Old Testament reading from the First Book of the Kings, Elijah’s journey into the wilderness recapitulates that of the Israelites out of Egypt centuries before. The parallels are remarkable. Just as the Children of Israel fled to escape death at the hands of Pharaoh, so Elijah flees to escape death at the hands of the wicked Queen Jezebel. Just as the Israelites murmured against Moses and Aaron, saying that it would have been better to have died in Egypt than of starvation and thirst in this wilderness, so Elijah falls into despair and asks God to take his life. Then, just as God gave the Israelites water from the rock and rained down manna from heaven, so an angel of the Lord appears to Elijah by night and gives him a cake baked on hot stones to eat and a jar of water to drink. 

And finally, perhaps the most direct parallel of all, just as the bread from heaven enabled the Israelites to continue their journey to Mount Sinai, so in the strength of that food Elijah travels forty days and forty nights to Horeb the Mount of God—traditionally identified as one and the same place as Mount Sinai. Just as the Israelites received God’s Law at Sinai, beginning their new life as the People of the Covenant, so at Horeb Elijah will hear the still small voice, making clear that his mission as a prophet has not ended but is only just beginning.

The good news in the juxtaposition of these two stories is that God never asks us to undertake any journey in his Name without providing us with everything necessary to complete it. He gives us food for the journey. So, as we think about the various journeys on which we find ourselves, both individually and collectively, the challenge is to examine how far we really trust God’s providence to supply us with all we need to see us through.

The interim period between rectors in a parish a kind of a journey. God has asked you and me both to undertake the journey of this transition process together, with all its steps, tasks, meetings, and other items to mark off the checklist. Just as the Israelites grumbled in the wilderness, so perhaps we’ve all done a bit of grumbling of our own. Why does this process have to take so long? We’ve never had to do it this way before! 

Nonetheless, we’re being asked to trust God to lead us through what is for most of us largely unfamiliar terrain, provide us with what need on the way, and bring us safely to our destination. As Psalm 34 puts it: “The angel of the Lord encompasses those who fear him, and he will deliver them; taste and see that the Lord is good, happy are they that trust in him.”

Speaking of angels: In this parish we have a powerful angelic patron, Uriel, the fourth archangel—after Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael—and we may trust that he will watch over us, protect us, and provide for us on the way, just as that unnamed angel of the Lord brought food and water to Elijah. (Perhaps it was Uriel. Who knows?)

Moreover, we have each other as companions on this journey. We’re all in this together. In the reading from the Epistle to the Ephesians, Saint Paul gives us good advice on how to conduct ourselves on the way: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you … Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

That reference to Christ giving himself as an offering and sacrifice reminds us that for this journey, and for all our journeys, he has provided the most precious food and drink imaginable. The Fathers of the early Church understood the manna in the wilderness as an anticipatory sign or foretaste of the Holy Eucharist.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the people, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven that a man may eat of it and not die … If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

These words of our Lord are fulfilled here and now, and every Sunday and weekday, when we gather to break the Bread and offer the Cup in his Name. In the late fourth century, in a sermon to his congregation in Milan, Saint Ambrose said this: “You ask me why God does not rain down manna as he did on our ancestors … If you reflect, you will realize that he does, even daily, rain down manna upon his servants … How much more excellent this is than what went before! Those who ate that manna, or bread, are dead, but he who eats this bread will live forever …”

The consecrated bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, are food and drink not only for the journeys that God asks us to undertake in this life, but also for the greatest journey of all. In the Church’s Last Rites, it’s no accident that the Communion of the dying is called Viaticum, which means “food for the journey.”

The manna in the wilderness strengthened the Israelites for their journey first to Mount Sinai and then to the Promised Land. The bread and water provided by the angel strengthened Elijah for his forty-day journey to Mount Horeb. But Horeb, Sinai, and the Promised Land can legitimately all be read as symbolic figures of heaven itself. And in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus gives us himself as food and drink for our journey through the wilderness of this world to our final goal and destination in the next.

PROPER 13, YEAR B

Sunday 1 August 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

Psalm 78:23-29

John 6:24-35

The recurring image in today’s readings is that of bread from heaven. In the reading from Exodus, the Israelites murmur against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. Despite their liberation from bondage and the gift of freedom, they complain that death at the Lord’s hand in Egypt, where they sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full, would have been better than being brought out to die of hunger in the desert.

The real crisis is not one of hunger, however, but of faith. The people’s grumbling bespeaks a lack of trust in the Lord who delivered them to continue to provide for them.

In response, God rains down from heaven a fine, flake-like substance that distills on the ground from the early morning dew. The word “manna” means “What is it?”—to which Moses replies, “It is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.”

The miracle’s real purpose goes beyond satisfying the people’s hunger to building their faith in God’s loving care and providence. As God says to Moses, he’s providing this bread from heaven so that “you shall know that I am the Lord your God.”

Ever after, the children of Israel remembered the manna in the wilderness as a sign of God’s goodness and mercy. As Psalm 78 joyfully sings, “He rained down manna upon them to eat and gave them grain from heaven. So mortals ate the bread of angels; he provided for them food enough.”

The manna ceased after 40 years when the Tribes of Israel crossed the River Jordan into the Promised Land. Nonetheless, a belief grew up in later centuries that one of the signs of the coming of the Messiah, and the dawning of God’s kingdom on earth, would be a resumption of the manna, the bread from heaven. This belief just may lie in the background of today’s Gospel, where the crowd challenges Jesus: “What sign do you do that we may see, and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

What we encounter in this reading is one of those wonderful dialogues of double meaning, so typical of John’s Gospel, where people focus on a word or image’s literal meaning, while our Lord employs its spiritual meaning instead.

After the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand in the wilderness by the multiplication of five loaves and two fish, the people have followed Jesus back to Capernaum. Remarking that they seek him because they ate their fill of the loaves, and are perhaps hoping for more free meals, Jesus admonishes them: “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life …”

Commenting on this verse around the end of the fourth century, Saint Augustine of Hippo says this:

It is as if he said to them, “You seek me to satisfy the flesh, not the spirit.” How many seek Jesus for no other objective that to get some kind of temporal benefit! One has a business that has run into problems, and he seeks the intercession of the clergy; another is oppressed by someone more powerful than himself, and he flies to the church. Another desires intervention with someone over whom he has little influence. One person wants this, and another person wants that. The church is filled with these kinds of people! Jesus is scarcely sought after for his own sake … Here too he says, you seek me for something else; seek me for my own sake. He insinuates the truth that he himself is that food … “that endures to eternal life.”

Then, in response to the crowd’s request for a never-ending supply of what he’s just described as the true bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, Jesus boldly declares: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

Reflecting on this bold statement down through the centuries, the Church has discerned two ways in which Jesus is the Bread of Life: by Word and by Sacrament. 

Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus quotes the Book of Deuteronomy: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” But Jesus is himself the Word-made-flesh, and we feed on the Bread of his Word whenever we hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest his teachings.

In addition to feeding us with his Word, Jesus gives us his sacramental Body and Blood as food and drink for eternal life. Just as ordinary bread and wine sustain and nourish us for the life of this world, so the Body and Blood of Christ sustain and nourish us for the life of the world to come.

So, Jesus admonishes us, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.” Now, does that mean that it’s wrong to ask God for things in this life that fall short of God himself? Despite what Augustine says in the passage that I just read, the answer is: Not necessarily.

In another commentary on today’s Gospel, Augustine’s near-contemporary Saint Ephrem of Syria offers another take on the question. He says this:

Our Lord made bread in plenty from just a little bread in the desert and changed water into wine at Cana. He first sought to accustom their mouths to his bread and his wine until the time would come for him to give them his blood as well as his body. He allowed them to taste a superabundance of transitory bread and wine, so that he might excite them to a superabundance of his living body and blood … He gave us lesser things to entice us to come and receive this supreme [gift] … These lesser realities of bread and wine … were pleasing to the mouth, whereas that of his body and blood is of benefit to the spirit. He enticed us with … things that are pleasing to the palate to attract us to that which vivifies the soul.

I find that image of the Lord enticing us by means of lesser gifts to desire the greater gifts too lovely for words. Many writers on the Christian spiritual life down through the centuries, such as St. John of the Cross, have also suggested that when God seems to be withdrawing the lesser gifts, such as the joys and consolations of the beginner’s life of prayer, it’s not because he’s punishing us but because he wants to draw us in deeper. Like the crowd in today’s Gospel, we want an unending supply of temporal loaves and fishes, but he wants to give us nothing less than himself—for he is the Bread of Life, and we who come to him shall not hunger, and we who believe in him shall never thirst.