19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Celebrated By Archbishop Denis Hart
at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne
on Sunday, 13th August, 2006, at 11.00am

Introduction

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today and for the next two Sundays we consider the Eucharist as the food by which God draws us to eternal life.

We know that Jesus is really and truly present in the Eucharist and we seek to live that presence by remembering that in the Eucharist our God comes to us as we are. For this reason we need to be properly prepared and disposed so that we and he can be one in life.

Let us call to mind our sins.

Homily

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

You and I know that food is a basic need of human existence. We speak of being hungry for food or tired, and yet the greatest hunger of all is for the bread of life. In these Sundays Saint John tells us of that hunger and of Jesus’ teaching, “No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who has sent me.” “I am the living bread, which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.”

Yet we know that the Eucharist is both sacrifice and sacrament. It is the re-presentation of the one perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, made present in our own day and time. When our priests say, ‘this is my body, this is my blood’, they transform bread and wine into the body and blood of the Saviour.

There are two great challenges, which come from the Eucharist. First, to walk with Christ in our daily life, to know that it is he who nourishes and guides us on our journey. Secondly, we know that in the Last Supper and the Cross Jesus gave himself that we might have life. As human beings we find it difficult to understand and yet in faith we accept it.

The Holy Father reminds us of an important dimension of the Eucharist mentioned in his address to his collaborators on 22 nd December last year. “It is moving for me to see how everywhere in the Church the joy of Eucharistic Adoration is reawakening and being fruitful.

Saint Augustine said, “No one should eat this flesh without first adoring it … we should sin were we not to adore it.”

Indeed, we do not merely receive something in the Eucharist. It is the encounter and unification of persons; the person who comes to meet us and desires to unite himself to us is the Son of God. Such unification can only be brought by means of adoration.

Receiving the Eucharist means adoring the one whom we receive. Precisely in this way and only in this way do we become one with him. Therefore, the development of Eucharistic Adoration as it took place in the Middle Ages, was the most consistent consequence of the Eucharistic mystery itself: only in adoration can profound and true acceptance develop. And it is precisely this personal act of encounter with the Lord that develops the social mission which is contained in the Eucharist and desires to break down barriers, not only barriers between the Lord and us, but also and above all those that separate us from one another.”

My invitation to you is that just as theology needs to be studied on our knees, so too the whole preparation for priesthood needs to be completely Eucharistic. In the Mass, by which we give ourselves with Christ to the Father, and in adoration by which the union of persons, which mirrors the oneness of Jesus with his Father, shows our oneness with Jesus to be the very source of all that we do despite our human weakness.

When we enter the Cathedral, Jesus is present, he is our friend: he listens to our prayers and speaks in our silence and stillness.

May the Lord be with us as we eat the bread of life, knowing that we will live forever.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.