Augustinian Church

25 May 2008

Our first reading showed us a people who were suffering. They were in the desert without food or water and surrounded by fiery serpents and scorpions. The lesson for them was that if they learned to trust in God, they would be cared for in the most unexpected ways. Water flowed from the hard rock and food fell on the earth.

That lesson may be harder to learn in a country where there are no snakes and where most people have more than enough to eat and drink. But the lesson is just as important and just as true for us. Our lives are full of work we have to do; things we think we need; stresses and pressures and worries that occupy our minds. But there is more to life than that – we do not live on bread alone. There is a bigger need within us that cannot be satisfied no matter how hard we try, even if all our needs were met, even if all our stresses and worries were resolved.

Pope Benedict said recently that we need all of these hopes and anxieties to keep us going from day to day, “But these are not enough without the great hope which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God...”. Only something infinite, without any limit, will satisfy us completely. No matter how much we look forward to achieving something or to owning something, or to a happy outcome to a crisis, once our hopes are met, we soon find ourselves hoping for something else.

What we celebrate today is something without limit – not like manna the people ate in the desert when they were hungry; after a few hours they were hungry again. What we celebrate is “the bread which has come down from heaven”. Anyone who eats this bread will be part of a life which is without limits because it is the life of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, who has conquered death and evil and every suffering and will never die again.

That life is not something we can create or build for ourselves. It is a gift of God’s love. We receive a share in the life of the Risen Christ as individuals and as a community in the Eucharist. And we can sense that promise of that life in our daily struggles and fears because in our deepest selves we long for it.

Our hope in Christ is not just for ourselves. The trouble about individual hopes is that we are often hoping for the very thing that somebody else is hoping will not happen. Our hope in Christ is for all of our brothers and sisters that we will all share together in a joy that fills all of us. We glimpse the greatness of that hope when we realise that “people of every race, language and way of life”, people of every period of history, people whose culture and perspective are vastly different from ours, will find there the fulfilment of all their deepest hopes.

St Paul said that “you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28) Pope Benedict said the other day that in those words we can sense the strength and power of the most profound revolution in human history. We see that revolution in the Eucharist where “people who differ in age, sex, social condition, political ideas are united”. Those who are united in the Eucharist are not chosen because they are our friends or because they think like us or they share our interests. Like any family, the family gathered around Christ in the Eucharist are people of different ideas and perspective.

The reading said, “Though there are many of us we form a single body”. That is our hope; that is the hope of the whole human race. “We are united beyond our differences of nationality, profession, social grouping, political ideas: we open ourselves to one another in order to become one reality founded on Christ”.

Christ, who is with us in the Eucharist and with us in our lives, promises a hope greater than any individual can grasp because it is a hope for everyone together. For that very reason we recognise that we are called to share that hope with everyone. There is no person, no place, no sphere of activity to which he does not offer the call to follow him and the possibility of finding the hope that he offers. By being united to Christ, far from becoming closed in ourselves, we become “a sacrament for humanity… the light of the world and the salt of the earth”.

This evening we carry the Christ in the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of Limerick. That should be a reminder that every time we are sent out from the Church to love and serve the Lord, we are sent out with his message of hope for all our brothers and sisters.

BENEDUCT XVI, Spe Salvi, 31.

Cf. Spe Salvi, 31.

Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation II.

BENEDICT XVI, Corpus Christi Homily, Rome 2008.

Corpus Christi Homily, Rome 2008

JOHN PAUL II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 22.

+Donal Murray