To Whom Shall We Go?

The 2st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel

John 6:60-69

Many of Jesus' disciples who were listening said, "This saying is hard; who can accept it and take it seriously?" Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he asked them, "Is this a stumbling block to you? What, then, if you were to see the Chosen One ascending to where he came from? It is the spirit that gives life; while the flesh in itself is useless. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. Yet among you, there are some of you who do not believe." Jesus knew from the beginning, of course, those who would refuse to believe, and the one who would betray him.
So he went on to say: "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted them by my Father and Mother God." As a result of this, many of Jesus' disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?" Simon Peter answered, "Master, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God!"

The drama of decision stands in the forefront of today’s gospel. The desertion of Jesus by some of his disciples illustrates the difficulty of discipleship, which is just too challenging for the faint-hearted or the merely curious. Peter's later denial of Jesus during His Passion illustrates just how challenging it is to follow Jesus, but for now Peter voices a Faith in Jesus that springs from the powerful first-hand relationship he has had with him. Peter has seen Jesus with the lepers, with the Samaritan Woman, with little children and prisoners, with the poor and pleading, with the sick and sinful, and Peter has seen Jesus in glory with Moses and Elijah on the Mountain of Transfiguration. Peter has come to believe that Jesus who stands before him is the clearest, sharpest, most perfect picture mortals have of the face of God--compassionate, just, all-mighty, all-knowing, merciful, and loving. With God-given faith Peter confesses his loyal belief in Jesus... "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of Eternal Life." After 3 years of being immersed in Jesus' teachings, of witnessing his peaceful ways, his dedicated prayer life and communion with his Father/Mother God, his incisive yet humble interactions with detractors, and his miracles for healing and good, Peter can say, "We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God!"

It is ONLY the spending of time with Jesus in community that enables the disciples to respond to the God-given gift of faith within them. And so it is with us--unless we have a regular prayer life centered on Jesus and have faith community involvement (worship, study of the word, & service) we will not be able to sustain our belief in Jesus as the Holy One of God! Even the greatest saints realized that prayer (this spending time with Jesus) is required to have faith which is a gift from God that must be developed. St Anselm (d. 1109), has given this classic prayer for faith--"My prayer is a cold little thing, Lord, because it burns with so faint a flame. But you are rich in mercy. Lord I am not trying to reach your height, for my poor mind can never approach it. I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand, and further, I believe that unless I believe, I shall never understand."...

Understand what? -- precisely what those disciples in today's gospel walked away from--that God is so loving as to have desired to become incarnate, to show us how much we are loved.

 St. Valentine Faith Community
Mass: 10AM Every Sunday
2670 Chandler Avenue
Suite 7 & 8
Las Vegas, NV 89120
702-523-8963 Rev Sue Provost, Pastor

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. " (1 John 4:9-10)

Jesus is Our Bread of LIfe

The 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel

John 6:51-58

Jesus said to the crowds: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever."

Today we are in nearing the end of four weeks of reflections on the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ. The Gospels the last two weeks, this week and next are all a continuation of John’s chapter on the meaning of the Eucharist. This is very unusual in terms of Church liturgy and doesn’t happen very often – usually the themes change every week. To devote four weeks to the Eucharist indeed stresses the importance that it must be in our lives. Then for the third week in a row we are asked to think about Jesus as the living bread that came down from heaven. The Gospel of St. John was very different from the other three Gospels because it was written later, and a theology of Jesus had had time to develop more fully, we can see the constant stress on Jesus as the one who came down from heaven.
In the very first chapter we hear that the Word became flesh. The Incarnation of Jesus that we profess in our Creed each week is very simply that God became one of us. What follows throughout the Gospel of John is a theological presentation of Jesus as this God-man, and an attempt to make sense out of it, an attempt to see the Wisdom in it. For what could seem more foolish than Jesus’ statement: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you shall not have life within you”? Certainly anyone in their right mind would find these words ridiculous and foolish, as did his Jewish audience. Because of these statements, it was rumored for years that Christians were a bunch of cannibals! Where is the Wisdom in all of this?
Jesus gives us the ultimate food and drink in order that we can be close to our God – so close that he is within us. If we have really loved someone, we know that one of the qualities that love comes with is that we want to be with that person all the time. This is the closeness we are talking about and the closeness that Jesus is talking about: “Whoever eats my flesh remains in me and I in him.” But there is something more about this closeness – we don’t just get close to God when we take the Eucharist but we get close to each other, too. Because God comes into all of us, we are all united by that fact and we can truly say that we are one body.
The words that we have been hearing from Jesus about his body and blood come from a section of John’s Gospel, not at the last Supper, when you might think he would have said these things, but an earlier section where Jesus is teaching his followers. As we read them today we cannot help but pick up on the Eucharistic foreshadowing here. The question we might ask is that how could Jesus have spoken these words in the middle of his Ministry and expected them to be understood. Yet, everyone who reads John’s Gospel knows that there are 5 chapters devoted to the Last Supper without a mention of the institution of the eucharist.
Jesus tells us that through eating His flesh and drinking His blood: we are nourished and kept alive in faith; we are in communion with one another in the One Body of Christ; we are in union with God when we are in Communion with Jesus; and we are partaking of eternal food. Jesus is saying that all we have to do is believe in Him and we can have this miraculous sustenance.....but his listeners couldn't find it in themselves to trust Jesus' Divine Gift, and instead tried to analyze his words with human knowledge ("they quarreled amongst themselves, saying, "How can he give us his flesh to eat?")...........and that's precisely where they failed, for while knowledge is complex (and its debates will go on forever), wisdom is simple and for the simple......Jesus' Jewish audience listening to him as they were during this last week before his Passion, just couldn't yield to Jesus' Divine Wisdom.
So Jesus probably did not say these words at that particular time, but John uses this time to develop the Eucharistic concept. The listeners of Jesus ask: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? It is a question that could be asked today. And it was certainly still being asked when John was writing, 60 years after Christ’s death. The drinking of blood was forbidden to Jews, yet “eating the flesh of Jesus” and “drinking” his blood became a common way of describing the way we partake of the Eucharist.
Scholars believe that the language developed as a way to show the intimacy, the close relationship, the closeness of Jesus to those who choose to believe in him. So again, the Eucharist is all about closeness, our being close to our God, and our being close to each other. It is the food and drink that sustains us and brings us life. And not just life till we die, but life beyond this life. John sees the Eucharist not so much as a memorial of Christ’s death nor a continuation of the last supper, but as an extension of Jesus’ incarnation – God becoming man, God becoming close to us and then continuing to be close to us by this food and drink.
Let us this week meditate on the Wisdom of God and his ability to make him or herself part of our lives through his closeness to us – and how much closer can we be than partaking of our God and being the vessel for him.

Valentine Faith Community
Mass: 10AM Every Sunday
2670 Chandler Avenue
Suite 7 & 8
Las Vegas, NV 89120
702-523-8963 Rev Sue Provost, Pastor



"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. " (1 John 4:9-10)

Jesus is the Bread of Life!

The 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel

John 6:51-58

Jesus said to the crowds:
"I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever."
Nourishment provides strength and the ability to survive and thrive. In the ancient Jewish and Christian biblical traditions, bread along with water, wine, and olive oil were the actual and metaphorical images for sustenance for a thriving life. Twice in the Elijah narrative (including today’s), and frequently in the four Gospel narratives, bread becomes the metaphorical image for the source of life.Jesus had been using the metaphor of bread in the earlier verses in the narrative of John 6.
He had provoked some in his audience both by claiming an unusual closeness to God and because they perceived him as behaving (by preaching) above his station. They believed their familiarity with him (“Do we not know his father and mother?”) was a sort of cultural power over him, a power by which they could keep him humble, and at their religious level. Jesus, however, described himself as having come from Heaven, which really meant, from God.
This chapter is very Eucharistic in a very sophisticated manner. It does not lend itself to a literalist interpretation. The first principle employed here is the very Mystery of God, including the distinction of divine Persons, and the intimacy among them. The early Church evolved and grew in its understanding and appreciation of God’s Mysterious Reality. John’s 6th Chapter is a magnificent, even if somewhat obscure, literary articulation of the mystery of God’s Presence. It also harkens to the future in Jesus’ words about “...the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
Our modern Eucharistic Theology demands that we appreciate the Real Presence of God as much more than a simplistic use of the Risen Christ “in” the bread and wine. Rather, Christ’s presence is first in the Assembly of the Baptized Believers (“whoever believes has eternal life”). Second, the Real Presence of Christ is in the proclaimed Word of God in the actions of the lectors, deacon and priest at liturgy. The complementary action of the Assembly’s hearing the proclaimed Word is another aspect of Christ being effectively present in the liturgical assembly. Finally, of course, Christ’s Real Presence is in the sacred elements of the consecrated bread and wine (and in each of the other Sacraments).
But, the reception of Christ in holy communion is meaningful in healthy and balanced manner only in relation to the Gospel fellowship of the liturgical assembly and with the proclamation of Sacred Scripture. “Full, conscious, and active participation” are essential and necessary disposition for each believer who “listens to my Father and learns from him.
We must remember that we become the real presence of Christ in the world to the others that we come into contact with.

Valentine Faith Community
Mass: 10AM Every Sunday
2670 Chandler Avenue
Suite 7 & 8
Las Vegas, NV 89120
702-523-8963 Rev Sue Provost, Pastor


"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. " (1 John 4:9-10)

Jesus can take care of all our needs!!!

The 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel

John 6:1-15

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee anda huge crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. Jesus climbed the hillside, and sat down there with the disciples. This happened shortly before the Jewish feast of Passover. When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that the large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, "Where can we buy some food for them to eat?" Jesus knew very well what he was going to do, but asked this to test Philip's response. Philip answered him, "Not even with two hundred days' wages could we buy loaves enough for each of them to have even a little.'"
One of the other disciples, Simon Peter's brother, Andrew, said, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?" Jesus said, "Have the people recline." There was plenty of grass there, and as many as five thousand families sat down. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. When they had had their fill, he said to the disciples, "Gather up the fragments which are left over, so that nothing will be wasted." So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat.
The people, seeing this sign that Jesus had performed, said, "Surely this is the Prophet, who was to come into the world." Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.



Today's Gospel tells another story of God working through a faithful prophet to work abundance, despite opposition, with meager resources from an unlikely source -- but, the Gospel account of Jesus' action is so much more important on many levels.... The story of the miraculous feeding of the multitude was extremely important in the early Church. It is recounted six times in the gospels and it is the only miracle recounted in every gospel! The scenario is uncomplicated. The compassion of Jesus attracts a large crowd and soon they find themselves in a deserted place where no food is available.

The disciples, who frequently seem disconcerted by Jesus' apparent lack of foresight, point out that there was a real problem since no food was readily available for this large crowd. Jesus seems quite unconcerned and tells the disciples to provide them with food. When they protest that it will never be enough, Jesus simply asks that they give him the loaves, blesses and breaks them, and then gives them to the disciples for distribution. All eat and are filled with the twelve baskets of left-over fragments!

Again we see the contrast between the total inability of the disciples alone to deal with a desperate situation and the ease with which Jesus provides a solution. It is about the inability of humans, in any age, to deal with serious problems without divine help. As in the first reading, this Gospel teaches us that, even with sparse resources, the work of Christ is accomplished, when we cooperate with him, and when we work explicitly in God's name. This reading can be summarized in this theme: A true servant of God has implicit confidence in the divine generous, powerful character...Though they encounter opposition, they refuse to be deterred.....Though other ministers ridicule them, they act according to God’s Word and Ways...God does not fail them, but honors their trust....The more one receives from God, the more they should share with others....The servant of God who is faithful in giving to others will themselves receive even more.

If we examine, though, what happened before and after today's selection of John's gospel, we see an even deeper message than any of these listed above. We know from previous verses of this gospel that it is the last Passover before Jesus' death....he knows he has little time to show how he is the manna sent from heaven to feed the people; and we know from just a few verses immediately after this passage that Jesus directly tells the people that he is the Bread of Life! While the people's hearts were set on the earthly, on the physical benefits they could receive if Jesus would be their king, he tries to explain to them who and what He really is. He is the great I AM, the very revelation of God becoming one of us to save us all.

Bread, is a basic staple of life; it is one of the basic means by which our life is supported here on earth. Without bread we die. So it is in the spiritual realm. Jesus is necessary food for our souls. Jesus is the absolute staple of spiritual life... the soul's basic and only need...the living Bread, able to impart spiritual life as well as to sustain it, able to give it as well as to keep it, able to bestow it as well as to nourish it and make it grow. Just as other foods are more tantalizing than bread, other things will tantalize our spiritual tastes (status, control, fame, wealth), but they only leave us empty in the end. Other saviors may promise us satisfaction, but only Christ fills our soul with grace that saves from sin and death, with grace that fills us with peace and life with God and the hope of eternal life.

As we gather today at the Lord's table, we recognize all the hungers we have that need to be fed-- our physical needs and wants yes, but more importantly, our personal weaknesses and failures; our need to grow in faith and obedience; our ignorance and lack of spiritual discernment, our needs of guidance and wisdom, courage, honesty and character......As we gather today at the Lord's table, we recognize too, that we already have been given food to share ... our gifts, talents, and God-given ministries, not forgetting Jesus himself, his teachings, his love, his forgiveness, his constant presence....At every Eucharistic gathering, our souls are nourished and our 'baskets' are restocked....as we leave the holy gathering, we carry away with us, the resources that we will need for the week ahead. We, too, can perform wonders in our own time and place, by imitating the four "Eucharistic verbs” of Jesus: a) take humbly and generously what God gives us, b) bless it by offering it to others in God’s love, c) break away from our own needs and interests for the sake of others, d) give with joy-filled gratitude to God who has blessed us with so much.

I call all of us this week to REFLECT on these questions:

What meaning should we seek in that Jesus worked this incredible, important miracle through the gift offered by a child (one of the 'least' in Jewish society)?

What meaning should we seek in that Jesus didn't ask qualifications of anyone whom he fed?

When did God's generosity, abundance, and graciousness "feed" me when I felt weary, alone, empty or dissatisfied?"

What word or resolve will I carry away with me in my basket today with which to feed others?

Valentine Faith Community
Mass: 10AM Every Sunday
2670 Chandler Avenue
Suite 7 & 8
Las Vegas, NV 89120
702-523-8963 Rev Sue Provost, Pastor

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. " (1 John 4:9-10)

Jesus' Mission Goes on the Road

The 15th Sunday in Ordinary time
                                                                        Gospel

Mark 6:7-13

Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick--no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic. He said to them, "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave. Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them." So they went off and preached repentance. The Twelve drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Today’s gospel reading from Mark recalls a development in the mission of Jesus that concerns us all. He makes his disciples sharers in his mission. In Mark’s telling of the story of Jesus this comes immediately after his own townspeople have rejected him at the end of his Galilean ministry. If, during his earthly life, he is not to fulfill the great mission he has received from his Father in person, he will do so through his disciples. Initially he will employ the twelve collaborators who symbolize the New Israel through whose life the Savior will be present in every age.

We who take part in this liturgy have all been called to share in Christ’s great mission to the whole world. As we ponder this we should recall that God’s call is mysterious, originating in the eternal designs of God – as Paul writes, ‘Before the world was made, God chose us, chose us in Christ’. God’s call does not match our human expectations. Amos, the 8th century prophet, was a farmer who found himself charged with the daunting task of challenging the hypocrisy evident in the worship of the northern shrine of Bethel. The Twelve Apostles called by Jesus were an unlikely group, with backgrounds as varied as fishing, tax collecting and terrorism. Jesus sends them out with instructions that make very clear the seriousness of the task he is sharing with them: absolute reliance upon the ‘authority’ they have received from him, and an unselfishness and single-mindedness that will commend them to their listeners.

Their mission reflects the mission Jesus has been engaged in: the call to a ‘repentance’ which is open to what God is about to do, ‘casting out devils’ and healing the sick. (The modern reader should not be distracted by the gospels’ frequent references to exorcism. The culture of the society in which Jesus lived assumed – as many cultures do, even today – that ills and maladies, physical and psychological, are due to the influence of evil spirits. Jesus’ mission to triumph over all evil was inevitably seen as a conflict with evil powers.)

It is enlightening to compare the second reading’s summary of key themes of Paul’s thought with the themes the Twelve took with them on the missions on which Jesus ‘began to send them’. What Jesus promised as he announced the coming of God’s Kingdom was far from clear to them. They were sustained by their admiration of Jesus and the authority with which he had inaugurated his mission. The Christians for whom the letter to the Ephesians was written knew the fulfillment of all that Jesus had promised.

The blessings brought by the Paschal Mystery were beyond imagining for the Twelve as they told their hearers of the coming of God’s Kingdom. Paul, on the other hand, can tell the world of the ‘mystery’, God’s design from all eternity, as he ‘chose us in Christ’, and determined to bring the whole of creation ‘together under Christ’. In our text are many of the great themes with which our faith gives expression to the blessings brought by the Paschal Mystery: ‘grace’, ‘freedom’, ‘adoption’, ‘inheritance’ and ‘the seal of the Spirit’. It also tells us today of the importance of our community, and how this community is meant to pray together, support each other and grow together.

I think over the years we may have lost this aspect of community, and instead we get the Sunday Christian who comes to Mass, prays and goes home. No, we are a community and that implies doing things together – two by two – supporting one another, grieving with one another, sharing joys and sorrows, praying together, listening and discussing what God is saying to us. Only then are we prepared, as Jesus prepared his apostles, to go out to others outside our community and invite them to join us, and to bring our prayers, our healing, our help.

It is interesting to note how much a thing Mark makes of the poverty that Jesus sends his apostles out in. They are to have little to nothing. Their mind must be on the mission, not on their daily needs. “Give us this day our daily bread” was definitely played out in the apostles’ lives when they were out. They were to have sandals on their feet to allow them to travel distances, they had a staff which was a symbol of authority (one of the reasons Bishops today carry staffs) and they could take no sack to store up any food they might be given. Since they had no resources, they were to rely on God completely, and stay free of distractions. It would also mean that people would have to be hospitable to them, which is something that Jesus also was teaching and which became a principle of life in the early church.

Also, it let people see that they were not doing this for their own gain, but because they believed in the message. Not everyone will accept our invitation to join us, just as not everyone accepted the apostle’s invitation and message. When Jews used to come from Gentile territory they would shake off the dust on their feet before they entered a house. The Apostles were to shake the dust off their feet of any who would not accept them or hear their message. They were not to be discouraged, however. Their job was to bring the message. Success was in God’s hands, not theirs.

Finally, we learn exactly what the apostles did when they went out two by two. First, the preached repentance – which if you remember from previous homilies, meant turning your life around, changing your priorities, focusing your heart differently. In the Catholic church, we believe In the Sacrament of the Sick, and this passage is the Biblical basis for it. The apostles anointed the sick with oil and cured them. Today, when someone is sick, we use oil and anoint them. It used to be used only when someone is near death, but is much more widely used today for any sickness.

So, to draw to a close, I want you to realize that God is calling you to be a prophet. As we often sing: All That Is Hidden will be made clear. What you have heard in the dark, proclaim in the light. Listen to him. He will answer you. God is asking you to commit to your community our larger church community of this world, and when you are ready, be a prophet: go out to others in Jesus’ name, not worrying yourself about anything except sharing what you have heard from Jesus and carrying out whatever service you can do in the larger community. Let us pray that today we listen, answer and take action.

 Valentine Faith Community
Mass: 10AM Every Sunday
2670 Chandler Avenue
Suite 7 & 8
Las Vegas, NV 89120
702-523-8963 Rev Sue Provost, Pastor

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. " (1 John 4:9-10)