Body and Blood of Christ - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2019

The phrase from today’s Gospel that echoes most clearly in my mind is the comment made by the Twelve, “We are in a lonely place here”. For me, it seems to sum up how many Australian feel today, “We are in a lonely place here” – despite the thousands of ‘friends’ and connections made possible by social media. Lots of connections but not much communication; lots of ‘friends’ but not much love!

What was the real hunger that had led five-thousand-plus Galileans to follow Jesus into the wilderness and be so absorbed as to lose track of the time? The Gospel gave a hint: “Jesus made the crowd welcome and talked to them about the kingdom of God, and cured those who were in need of healing”. They could not have been too physically disadvantaged if they had followed him into the wilderness. Perhaps their wounds, like the wounds of most of us, were wounds of the heart, wounds of the human spirit. Certainly, Jesus’ response was to “welcome” them. How precious was that – real, genuine welcome? And, perhaps as he moved around among them, listening to their needs, listening to their pain, he led them to share, and to reflect on something much deeper, something much more human – issues that Luke summed up with his comment: "[Jesus] talked to them about the kingdom of God”.

Jesus was not rapt by the Twelve’s reaction to the need of the hungry crowd, and their proposal “to send the crowd away”. Nor was he over-impressed by their knee-jerk objection, ”[Do] we go ourselves and buy food for all these people?” when he suggested that they “Give them something to eat yourselves”.

In the light of last week’s passage through the Victorian Parliament of the voluntary euthanasia legislation, and our own possible uneasiness, might Jesus be saying to us, “Give them something to eat yourselves”? Like the Twelve, do we simply complain that it is too late now for us to do anything? And again like the Twelve with their fall-back recourse to an economic-rationalist solution, are we satisfied that the government is already looking after that by putting more money into palliative care?

Last week’s legislation speaks to me of a need for a reflective, more truly human, response on our part. I see traces of loneliness there. Like Jesus, do we need to welcome, be open to people, listen to what they are saying? Can we deepen the conversation by sharing our sense of the further light our personal experience of the kingdom of God may throw on the issue?

I suspect that the loneliness highlights a crisis of loving. Our culture is lonely because we have not explored the riches of what loving involves and what it enables. People speak of compassion, but I think that loving takes us significantly beyond compassion. And truly loving schools people in trust and allows them to let go of their compulsions to control. It enables them to accept the vulnerability and limitations in which love paradoxically flourishes. That does not make sense to many and, in fact, is learnt only through experience. Death can terrify because it often involves losing control – yet losing control and learning to trust can make people more human, not less.

Pain levels are not a factor solely of a person’s medical condition. Pain can be affected by people’s fears, by the presence or absence of a sense of meaning to life, by whether they feel surrounded and saturated by love or whether they feel lonely. Experienced palliative care specialists insist that pain can be managed, controlled and personalised, even if at times the steps taken may also contribute to or accelerate the process of dying.

As believers we have the opportunity to develop our own learning to love, to reflect on our experience, gently to support friends struggling to deal with death and, when appropriate, respectfully to articulate where we are at. And what is that if not to live eucharistically, and with St Paul to “proclaim the death of the Lord”?