18th Sunday of the Year (B) : Homily / Sermon

Work for the food that endures to eternal life (John 6:27)

Do you believe in mind over matter?

It is certainly true that the mind can have great power over the body. (It’s not just a matter of spoon bending - which may well be a conjurer's illusion). There are those who can will themselves to walk barefoot over hot coals, apparently without pain or injury. Under hypnosis people can be encouraged to do things they would never normally be able to achieve. And there is much evidence that when sick people are given placebos - tablets that they believe to have medicinal content, but which have none - they may nevertheless recover just as if they have been given the real drug. It is not just a matter of will-power and determination, the mind is even more powerful than that.

And so people sometimes suppose that the mind, or the “spirit” as we might say, is always greater, more powerful, more real than matter, body, physical reality. They suggest that if you just pull yourself together, or meditate, or pray hard enough, then all your troubles and even illnesses will go away … And (following this absurd point of view) … If your troubles continue, then your determination, commitment, resolve and indeed faith must have failed in some way. Isn’t it said “faith can move mountains”? If so - this idea goes - I only have to pray hard enough and all my wishes will be be fulfilled. And if they aren’t - then hasn’t my faith has failed …

Well. The mind is powerful. And prayer can help us achieve very much.

But no one is all mind, no one just body, both are part of one another - and we know only too well that if we are ill, then it affects both mind and body. Toothache makes us bad tempered - not even the greatest saint can get away from that.
So we need to be careful. This false division, between mind and body, can affect how we think of our spiritual life.

It is a common mistake, that both religious and non-religious people make, to separate out the spiritual and the physical.

On the one hand, religious people may think of the spirit as something very distinct from our physical existence. In this idea we hunger or suffer in the body but the spirit is free from need and free from pain, it is just pure thought, pure personality, free from the chains of physical life. Don’t be concerned about suffering on earth - so this viewpoint supposes - your reward will be great in heaven.

And the reverse of this particular coin is that the physical world is complete in itself. It has no need of “spirit”, or a “next” life. This view gives us the idea that science can answer every question and solve every problem. The physical world - so it seems - can answer its own questions without - as the atheists put it - resorting to our “imaginary friends”.
These are very commonly held ideas. And though they lead to opposite points of view, fundamentally they share the same assumptions. And they are both wrong.

When Jesus explains the spirit he always describes it in very solid, very physical terms. It is the food which endures for ever. It is the satisfying of hunger and the quenching of thirst. It is the bread which comes down from heaven.

It is the spirit which fills the physical with life and truth and purpose, and eternity. Without the spirit, matter has no purpose, no meaning. It is something to be used. Something to be discarded. Something of no value. With the Spirit, matter becomes something we can use in a right or a wrong way. And how we use the physical world, nature, is a moral issue - as Pope Francis has made very clear. The beauty of nature, the diversity of species, the resources of the planet are as much moral issues as compassion and social justice. 

Spirit and matter, soul and body are not two separate things best kept apart. They are one: created by God, redeemed by him in Christ, the Word made flesh, the bread of heaven.

Lord, give us that bread always! (John 6:34)

17th Sunday of the Year (B) : Homily / Sermon

What is that between so many? (John 6:9)

How should we understand the miracle stories in the Gospels? To be sure, we can assert that if we are able to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Word made flesh, then this is such a big and all encompassing matter to believe, that any stories of miracles are quite small in comparison.

Well, true as this may well be, it seems all too easy for many.
And there are those, good and believing people, who remain uncomfortable about the miracles in the Gospels and try and explain them away. Perhaps there is some natural explanation, they say. Perhaps the walking on the water was a trick of the light. Perhaps the stilling of the storm was co-incidence. Perhaps the feeding of the 5000 was not supernatural at all, but an extraordinary act of sharing by the crowd, so that all were fed.

Mm. Perhaps. But perhaps those who try and explain these things away are missing the point. They try to make the miracles stories into some moral insight about humanity. They are explained as human actions, human misunderstandings, human gullibility. And in reducing the stories they make them unremarkable, hardly worth telling. Their difficulties lead them to make the account - and Jesus - too ordinary, too banal.

We can see this when we consider today’s Gospel in the light of others. For there is another occasion when Jesus is asked to perform a miracle with bread. Only on that occasion he refused. It was when he was tempted by the devil in the desert. Now why perform the miracle now, and not then?

We might suppose that the obvious reason is that Jesus refuses to turn a stone to bread to create a spectacle - but he willingly makes a little bread into much bread to feed the crowd.

But there is perhaps a much more important reason why he feeds the 5,000, but does not give in to the temptation in the wilderness. That is because the Devils tempts Jesus to Destroy - Destroy the Stone to conjure up the bread - while the miracle which Jesus willingly performs does not destroy nature, but multiplies it.

And this is always true. And this is what miracles are.

Jesus takes what we give him and makes more, much more. A little love is multiplied into great love. A little sorrow for our sins becomes an overflowing forgiveness. Our small talents and abilities become great with his help. Our simple prayers are joined to his all embracing will. Drops of olive oil convey his healing power. A little water is made the gateway to eternal life. Our gifts of bread and wine become his Body and Blood.

Christ takes our little offerings and makes them great. God does not destroy nature, but expands it and enhances it and glorifies it. As St Thomas Aquinas says “Grace perfects nature”.

The stone is not destroyed but the loaves and fish are much multiplied.
It is just like the words of the Christmas carol: 

 

“What can I give him, poor that I am,
if I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
What can I give him?
Give my heart.”

 

A small offering: a great reward.