Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)
Note: In Year B, we follow Mark’s Gospel for the most part. However, just as we reach the point where Mark will give us the account of Jesus’ feeding the multitudes with a few loaves of bread and fish, the Church switches to John’s version of that feeding. For the next five Sundays, our Gospel is drawn from John 6. Since John isn’t part of the regular Ordinary Time cycle, the Church slips his Gospel in at other times, mainly Lent and Easter. Here, it’s to give us a chance to hear from John’s theology of the Eucharist and to ponder it over the next few weeks. To help you get an overall picture, try reading all of John, chapter 6, in one sitting. It will give you a good overview and will help you situate each Sunday’s Gospel reading in its context.
Why do you go to Mass? Or, if for health reasons, you can’t, why do you want to go to Mass?
If someone were to ask you that question “from out of the blue”, you might find yourself struggling, searching for words. You sense that you know the answer; you just can’t say it right away. The first things that may come to our minds might be responses like this: We go because it’s a tradition. We’ve always gone to Mass on Sunday at 9:30! We might say that we go because the Church makes it an obligation, and we want to be good Catholics. We don’t want to risk hell! We might say that we go because one’s spouse or parents take us, or make us go. We might like the feel of a specific parish community: the welcoming spirit, the music, the homilies.
None of these are necessarily bad in themselves. We have multiple motives for many things we choose to do, even a choice of spouse or career. But none of these will be enough in themselves. What’s the core motive? Why am I drawn to Mass? What’s it ultimately all about?
The motives I’ve named – and others like them – may be true for us (at least some of the time). Sometimes, when we’re feeling especially tired or stressed, these motives can help us get over the hump and go to Mass anyway. But if any of them become our main motive, they won’t be enough to sustain us. Mass will begin to feel like merely a duty that comes to us from the outside, with little connection to our daily lives. It will begin to feel irrelevant, even boring. Now, I’ll readily grant you that a Mass can have boring moments. A lector can be unprepared; a priest or deacon may come across as the best sleeping pill around; music can be uninspiring or totally unfamiliar; the congregation can give off an attitude like “I dare you to make me interested!” Nevertheless, if our fundamental attitude to the Mass is boredom, that’s a strong sign that we’ve been going only for some of these secondary motives, and have lost a sense of the deepest motive.
In the Gospels, we discover that Jesus attracts people to himself from all sides. This begins not long after Jesus begins his public ministry. Wherever he goes, a crowd soon gathers. The same happens here, as John 6 begins. Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd follows him, we are told, because “they saw the signs he was performing on the sick”.
That explanation, in itself, is ambiguous. John probably intends it that way. Were people coming to Jesus because they understood the meaning of these signs? Were they coming because they themselves – or people close to them – were very ill and needed healing that no one else could offer? Were people just curious, wondering what Jesus might do next? Were people wondering if these miracles were somehow “staged”, and that if they stayed with Jesus, they might discover how he did this?
Jesus, it turns out, is not satisfied with the motivation of this crowd. After he feeds them with a few loaves and fish, they want to make him king. He leaves the scene before anything can happen. Jesus is the true king, the true Son of David – but not in the usual way we think of kings – or anyone who has power in the world. The crowds do not know this, so Jesus can’t accept their interpretation of it. Later in this chapter, when people follow Jesus to Capernaum, he will tell them, “You did not follow me because of the signs you have seen, but because you have had your fill of the loaves”. In other words, they’re just looking for the next wonder. What else can Jesus do? Some even ask him this very question, as though he were merely a magician. They saw the signs, but missed the point. Because of that, they will soon start walking away – especially when Jesus begins to lead them in the direction of the point.
What is the point? What is the motivation Jesus is seeking? What is Jesus looking for – whether from those crowds by the Sea of Galilee then, or from us now who go to Mass?
Let us go back, for a moment, to the first chapter of John’s Gospel – to the first time that anyone begins to follow Jesus at all. John the Baptist sees Jesus passing by. John tells two disciples who are near him, “There is the Lamb of God!” The two immediately start to follow Jesus. Jesus sees them and asks them, “What are you looking for?” In other words, “What’s your motivation? Why are you following me?” They reply, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” With John’s Gospel, we are always dealing with double meanings. There is the literal meaning: “Where do you live?”, or, “Where are you lodged?” But there is another meaning. “Where do we find you? Where do you remain?” This will be a very important theme in John’s Gospel. Jesus will encourage his disciples to remain in him as he does in them, and that the Father and the Paraclete will also remain in them. This language of staying or remaining in Jesus, and he in them, becomes a metaphor for the intimate love and commitment that exists (or should exist) between Jesus and anyone who follows him. It is, ultimately, the language of spiritual marriage and mystical union – not reserved for a mere few, but offered to anyone who wishes to “remain” in the Lord as he does in them, by the Lord’s own love and grace. It is what the Lord offers to anyone who responds to his gift of love and forgiveness.
Jesus is pleased by the disciples’ response and invites them to stay with him. The next day, they go off excitedly, and invite others to come to Jesus. Having remained with him merely a short while, they know that he is the one they were seeking all along. The love story between Jesus and his followers has begun.
If this is so, what light does it shed on our original question? Why do we go to Mass?
We go because it is the privileged place of encounter between Jesus the Christ and the people he has redeemed. It is the moment chosen by Jesus himself. It is where he wants us to encounter him in the most profound and intimate way. It is the place where we assemble as the Body of Christ. It is the place where we acknowledge our need for Jesus. We cannot save ourselves. It is the place where he reveals to us – again and again – the depth of his love for us, and invites us – again and again – to remain in him as he does in us. The Mass is, in short, our “second honeymoon” with Christ – and our third, and fourth, and so on, until the day we are fully his.
In John 6, the people gather because they saw the signs that Jesus was performing on the sick. We gather, in part, for the same reason. We are sick – if not physically or psychologically, then spiritually. Past wounds fester. Sin seeks to enslave us. We cannot heal or save ourselves. We see how Jesus has healed and saved many, and we want to be among them. So we come to Mass.
In John 6, when Jesus sees the crowd, he goes up a mountain and sits. Throughout the Bible, the mountain is the place of a privileged meeting between God and humanity. Moreover, the seated posture is that of the teacher. Jesus is our teacher. We sit at his feet. He teaches us through the Mass readings and the homily. We need his wisdom. We need help so that we don’t slide back into the “wisdom” of this world. We want the enlightenment that can come only from Jesus. So we come to Mass.
In John 6, Jesus insists that his disciples feed the crowds. The crowds are hungry and need to be fed. The disciples object that they lack the funds to do so. They have found a few loaves of bread and a few fish, but how can these satisfy so many? Nevertheless, Jesus insists that they get the crowds to recline. People only reclined in those days when they were going to have a banquet, a real feast. They are physically fed by those few loaves and fishes, but what is going on ‘sacramentally’ is much more. Jesus is feeding them with himself, as he will explain later in the chapter. He is the food they are really seeking, the food they cannot find for themselves anywhere else. We, too, hunger for this food. We, too, cannot feed that hunger in any other way. So, we come to Mass.
Some will object to this, of course, by saying that they can pray anywhere, and can find God in nature or other people or music or whatever. So why Mass? We may feel this temptation as well. If we get taken in by it, we totally miss the point.
The power of this temptation in contemporary culture is that it speaks to our conceit that we can save ourselves. Think of all the self-help books and courses out there. Think of the desire to have “spirituality” without “religion”. It’s all rooted in my desire to run my own life. I want to be in charge. I want to put together my own “spirituality” or “religion”. I want God on my terms.
But if God is God, this doesn’t work. It’s actually funny to the point of silliness. I am making myself my own idol in this way. I am worshiping myself. Really? Ever looked at yourself, seriously? You are indeed a beloved child of God, but you aren’t God!
No, the Scriptures say. We can’t save ourselves. We cannot even discover the meaning of our lives by ourselves. Our proper place is as disciples, seated at the Master’s feet. We learn from Jesus. We go to Jesus. We go where he wants us to find him. He’s the Lord, not us. We place ourselves in the story of God’s people – the Bible – and let that story “read” us, locate us, and reveal to us what our next step should be. And, if Jesus, through his Church – his Body – calls us to meet him primarily at Mass, that’s where we go. We can hope that the lector is prepared, that the priest or deacon preaches with true conviction, that the music is inspiring, and that the entire congregation is alive with the presence of Christ. But even if we don’t feel one or more of these things on a given Sunday, Christ remains. His call remains. His offer remains. Couples who have been married for many years know that not every day can be filled with marital bliss. Yet they also know that, no matter how the present moment may feel, the love of their spouse remains. It is the same with Jesus and the Mass.
Why do we go to Mass? We go to remain with Jesus, and that he may remain with us. We go to hear his voice in the readings and homily. We go to pray with one another, all fellow pilgrims, all hungry, all needing salvation. We go to be fed by the Lord, by his very Body and Blood, as the ultimate sign of how intimately he remains in us and we are to remain in him. Then, having encountered such unfathomable love once again, we, like Jesus’ first disciples, go out and invite others to come and see. Come and meet the One who remains in us and we in him. Come and hear his words. Come and be healed and forgiven. Come and be fed by the very Body and Blood of the One who is, at one and the same time, our Friend, our Lord, and our Spouse. Come to the wedding feast. Rejoice!