My name is Fr. Andy Upah and I am happy to be here as your new Pastor.  This came as quite a surprise to me about a month ago, and I am sure it did to you too, but I am looking forward to getting to know you and walking with you, and hopefully we will both grow in our faith.

Now might be a good time to introduce myself, but I did put an introduction in the bulletin, I understand you are accustomed to reading the bulletin 3 times, so I’ll try not to repeat myself.  

Besides, I feel like a lot of you have already heard about me, I’m somewhat of a known entity here from being so close in Dubuque these last five years.  Some will recognize my voice from the radio - I did a lot with KDTH AM 1370 and The Cat 92.9 FM. Plus I have done some speaking in Bellevue, I gave a Vocations talk in 2016, spoke at a Theology on Tap in 2018, and was here for a Parish Mission last year.

I’ve always enjoyed coming to this area, it’s a beautiful drive, a beautiful part of the state, beautiful churches.  One of my good priest friends, Fr. Seda, a fellow Tama County Czech, a while back, he is 62 so he’s closer than me to retiring, and he told me that out of all places, Bellevue was his ideal spot to go to for his last parish and retire there.  I have often thought about that since then, so I called him yesterday to rub it in that I am here and he is not.  He is stuck at my sister’s parish in Cedar Rapids.  

It’s nice to be out of the city.  I grew up in the country, outside of a small town, and I enjoy that I can hear the crickets when I sleep here, not emergency vehicles and people talking outside the bar on University Ave.  And I couldn’t drive my side-by-side on the streets in Dubuque, so that will be fun here, but just to be able to walk around the whole town will be nice too.  Lots of great restaurants in these towns too. And people wave at me!  Just to be part of a small town again is awesome.

But, while the amenities are nice, most of all I am looking forward to getting to know all of you, I’ve just met so many good, faithful people here.  The faith is strong and the Holy Spirit is active here.

I believe God has sent me here according to His plans.  We don’t know His plans, it seems like He rarely reveals them in advance, we are just asked to move forward in faith and trust, and grow in holiness as we do.  That’s my main hope and desire for my time here, whether it’s 6 years or 12, that we would grow in holiness.  

The “Universal Call to Holiness” - we know for sure we are all called to that.  I believe this is what St. Paul was talking about in our second reading today when he said, “that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”

For my part, one thing I realized in this move was just how many material possessions I had, I’ve accumulated soooooo much stuff.  And it isn’t bad stuff, like good spiritual books and religious art and my side-by-side, but the realization is, all of this stuff, it never satisfies, ya know?  We just want more, and more, and more… but you know, we can’t get enough of what we don’t really need.

And this is where Jesus comes in.  The people have just been fed miraculously by Jesus, and the next day they want more free food, they want more signs, they want more proof that He is the Son of God and that they should believe in Him.  At their request, “Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst."”

Jesus is what we really need, Jesus is who we really want.  The closer we grow in our relationship with Jesus, the more we grow in holiness, the less everything else material matters.  And if you could see the inside of the Rectory right now, you would know that I have a ways to go!

But my sense is that we all do, in some way, if we are still alive, still breathing which it looks like most of you are, (even my servers), we have some room to grow, we are not yet ready to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, or else God would just take us there, ya know?

God wants to help us grow in holiness, and He will when we open ourselves up to Him, when we put in the effort in little ways, He will respond in big ways, just like we heard last week at the beginning of John 6. Often people ask me “what is my favorite verse of the Bible?” Well, conveniently, today’s Gospel is from my favorite chapter of the Bible, I say “it’s hard for me to pick just one verse, I pick John Chapter 6, known as the Bread of Life Discourse.”  

I remember the day and moment when I heard this Gospel presented to me at a Men’s Conference in Cedar Rapids - it was a major conversion moment for me at the age of 25 - I had never fully believed in the True Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, which is central to our faith, but I had left our faith for about 5 years thinking it really didn’t matter where I went, as long as I believed in Jesus, I didn’t need to go at all.

But then I heard this Gospel again, and it blew me away, I will talk more in the next three weeks about why exactly, but let’s just say it was this chapter and this conversion experience that sent me down the path towards priesthood, much to my girlfriend’s dismay, but hey, that’s a story for another day too. 

I like short homilies, and it is enough to just say that this whole Eucharist teaching, it’s either true and we need to receive Jesus here and believe He is helping us to grow in holiness, or it’s false and we need to run as far away and as fast as possible.  There is no middle ground on our teaching of the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is Jesus, the Bread of Life, God giving us bread from Heaven to satisfy all our needs.  May God bless you abundantly as you receive His body and blood in the Eucharist again today, with eyes open to Jesus present in our midst.