Follow Me The bread of life By Bishop Terry R. LaValley

Aug. 14, 2024

Editor’s note: The following is Bishop Terry R. LaValley’s homily from Aug. 4. It was delivered at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Old Forge.

In today’s Gospel Jesus quickly recognizes that the crowd following Him is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. It was right to follow Jesus, but the crowd’s reason for following him was questioned.

We can hardly blame those hungry people for hoping that here perhaps was the solution to their pressing problem of having enough to eat at a time when food was never plentiful. The apparent magic of Jesus that had just fed a huge crowd gave the people reason to believe that history was repeating itself. They were reliving those good old days of the Exodus from Egypt when, after much grumbling, their leader Moses gave them their daily desert diet of manna and quail.

But Jesus quickly dismisses such happy reminiscing when He tells the people, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.” Jesus was not born among us so He might be a generous grocer distributing free food for the famished. Of course, He is genuinely concerned with the issue of giving food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, (corporal works of mercy) but Jesus’ major mission is essentially spiritual. He is not the Stuffer of Stomachs but the Savior of Souls.

That is why Jesus says the bread He gives comes not from a bakery but “from heaven.” The food He gives will not grow stale, but “endures for eternal life.” Jesus wants us to understand that He is not the one who gives us bread, loaf by loaf. Rather He is the Bread of Life. His purpose is to feed us, nourish us with His very own life, His very own love, His very own presence.

And that’s why, my friends, we come together like this Sunday after Sunday in this sacred space. Our church is not a grocery store where we come and shop to fill our freezer. We come here to fill our heads and our hearts with the nourishment we need to give us spiritual strength, to grow in holiness.

The goal of the Christian life is holiness, but somewhere along the way this term has disappeared from a Catholic’s vocabulary. Either because we thought holiness was an unattainable ideal or because we felt it lacked relevance in the modern world. Maybe we thought the idea of holiness made people feel guilty. Perhaps we just wanted to make it easier for people. To many, holiness means being a wimp in a world where power, rudeness, selfishness and greed seem to rule the day. Whatever the reason, the disappearance of this goal to be holy hasn’t made it easier for modern Catholics; it’s made it harder for us.

A great confusion that is torturing the Church and weakening our faith surrounds one question. Do I want to be holy? It’s more than a pious platitude. We have become disoriented because we have lost our focus. If you don’t think we’ve lost our focus, take a look at the recent opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. The despicable display of pathetic sexual perversion, the sacrilegious ridicule of the Last Supper and its unconscionable promotion by so many including the Olympic organizing committee and the French government is an affront to our Catholic faith and the dignity of every human person made in God’s image.

We must never tire of receiving the awesome gift of the Eucharist as the necessary food on the holiness menu. We come here to feed on Jesus who is our bread of life. We come to hear his words of life that refresh our faith, our hope, and our love. We come to eat His Body and drink His Blood in Holy Communion, a holy event since the first Eucharist, the Last Supper. We come for the greatest, most mind-boggling gift, the very presence of Jesus Christ. We will not be timid or lacking in the Spirit’s gift of fortitude in proclaiming our faith and challenging those who make such a mockery of our faith. As Bishop Barron wrote: “Christianity is a fighting religion and it calls evil by its name.”

This gift of Jesus Christ himself is what makes our celebration of the Eucharist our most precious privilege as Catholics. We come to Jesus so we will never hunger, to believe in Jesus so we will never thirst, to receive Jesus who is food that endures for eternal life. What a privilege! What Good News! Thank you for being here, even in the face of so many obstacles. Let’s never stop praying for loved ones who ignore our Eucharistic faith and those who demean it. May God be praised…forever may God be praised!