One thing that is pretty fun about being at new churches, wherever that is, is looking at and praying with the art.  The art, the statues, the windows, it is all meant to draw our hearts and minds to God in a deeper way.  As humans we are tangible, we need to see and experience God with all of our senses.

On my second night here as Pastor, I walked over (here/to St. Joseph’s Church) to pray in the evening, and as I knelt in front of the Altar, I noticed the art under the Altar and the words written in Latin.  Now I am not a Latin scholar by any means. As seminarians we all are required to take a year of Latin, and I passed those two classes at Loras, but honestly my retention has not been good.

But there are a few words that I retained, “panis” is one of them which means bread, “dabo” which is a verb that means “I will give,” “mundi” which means world, and “vila” which means life.  

So as I looked at these words, which you can see clearly in the picture if you got a bulletin before Mass, and I thought about it along with the depiction of the wheat and the grapes, and I began to wonder if the Latin was from the Gospel we are going through right now, here in John 6, called the Bread of Life Discourse.  

Google Translate confirmed it for me, it is the last part of the last verse we just heard, “Panis quom ego dabo, caro mea est pro mundi vila.” which means “The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” John 6:51.  We heard it today, we will actually hear it again next week at the start of the Gospel, which is highly unusual that it is repeated like that (in the lectionary).

But whenever something is repeated, that means it is important, it is really no different than when Jesus says, “Amen, amen” that’s like saying “Hey, you better pay attention now” which is what He said today: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.”

That’s clearly important!  We all want eternal life.  We all want to go to Heaven.  The question is always “How?” “How do we get there?”  Short answer of course is really clear, very simple. Jesus. His sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins allows us to go to Heaven. 

Longer answer is more complicated, but this Gospel is a great starting point.  Just to set this up a bit, this is near the Passover, a year before Jesus’ death and resurrection.  So He is foreshadowing the Last Supper and the Institution of the Eucharist, giving us His flesh to eat. 

And I should note here that the word “Eucharist” is from a Greek word “Eucharistia” which means “To Give Thanks.” So even though that word doesn’t show up here, it is in the other 3 Gospels at the Last Supper.

I bet you weren’t expecting a language lesson today, but these little details are important.  It is a difficult teaching to understand still for us today, and that is why we have to go into it deeper.

And clearly it was difficult to understand for those first followers of Jesus… in the 11 verses we heard this weekend, the Jews that were following Jesus, these weren’t His enemies, these were His followers. Yet, they are murmuring among themselves, and next weekend we will hear them begin to fight with each other about it.  

And in the Gospel we will hear the weekend after that, many of them will actually stop following Him, because they just can't accept what he's saying! (John 6:66) And He doesn't go after them, so we know He means what He says. 

When we look at their difficulty in understanding, it's confusing for us too. Jesus is claiming to be Bread from Heaven, the new manna for the journey to the promised land of Heaven, but to His followers, prior to the last supper and His death, it just doesn’t make any sense that He is bread. 

Even though it is hard to believe, in our Gospel next week, Jesus gets even stronger with His teaching, and understanding that has everything to do with understanding the language and the words he chooses - I am excited to preach about that, because it was those 7 verses that brought me back to the Catholic Church.  

Because if you can believe Jesus' words, then you can believe that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist, if you can believe this teaching that Jesus is present here, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity; it changes everything.  Everything.  Radically.

You can even give up a six figure salary and commit to a life of obedience and chastity if you can believe this teaching of Jesus in the Eucharist.  

Jesus said in John 6:51, “The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” We believe the Eucharist, Jesus, the Bread of Life, is the Source and Summit of our Faith.  The Source and Summit.  

The Source - so everything that we have, and everything that we are, flows from encountering Jesus - our good shepherd (in Latin - Bone Pastor - written on the other side) - here at the Mass and gives us life, abundant life here (John 10:10). 

So often the first question we have to wrestle with is not about the Eucharist, it is about if God loves us, if He is good and if He truly cares for us and provides for us? And how does He do that? He asks Peter, the rock on which He built our Church, to feed His sheep. (John 21:15-17)

We heard in our first reading how God cared for Elijah, sending an Angel to care for Him, to feed Him with bread and water. Then we heard in our psalm, “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”  And in our second reading from Paul we heard, “So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us.” 

God loves us!  He created us out of love, He wants us to be with Him for eternity, and that is why Jesus died for our sins. 

And to that end it is also the Summit that we are headed to, eternal life.  Jesus is the Summit, here on earth, we all seek God, and Jesus is the Summit in Heaven also.  Heaven is just eternity spent with the God that we loved here on earth.

For those first disciples of Jesus, they loved Him, and they knew He loved them, but they saw Him perform so many miracles, they were witnesses to His resurrection, and He worked miracles through their own hands, it wasn’t a stretch to believe that He could turn bread and wine into His Body and Blood. And through their hands too. 

And once they believed in Jesus’ teaching, that He really meant what He said, you know, they could look back in hindsight and go, “Oh, that’s what He was talking about at Passover last year.” Well then they also knew they could come here to continue to be fed by Him, to grow in their relationship with Him, because He never left, and this is the fulfillment of His promise at the Ascension, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Do we believe that?  Do we believe Jesus is truly present here in the Eucharist and loves us and wants a deeper relationship with us?

Because it is not enough to just believe.  Jesus of course says “whoever believes has eternal life” but Jesus was talking about more than just believing in Him as God, but believing in His promises, believing He is present in the Eucharist, and believing in all of His teachings which flow from that. Our eternal relationship flows from our belief and our response.  

It’s our response to these words from Jesus that matters. Scripture is clear that our belief requires response with James saying “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:17)  and “Even the demons believe [in God] and tremble.” (James 2:19) 

The demons believed, they just didn't want to be obedient, they said “we will not serve.” But it is easy to serve and be obedient when you know you are loved.

We serve and sacrifice for those we love in our lives, we respond to love with love, and we do the same with our response to God.

Belief comes with response, truly living a Christian life, the first of which is showing up to receive the Bread of Life each week, or more often, every day if you can, because it is important, it is quality time spent with God both in scripture and in the breaking of bread as the first Christians did.  

Here at Mass we can see, touch and taste our God to know of His enduring presence and His goodness to us.  “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord” comes to life here on this Altar!

As with Jesus' words, in art, there is nothing done by accident, and this Altar tells us just how important this teaching is, our forefathers in faith reminding us.  It is important because it is Jesus Christ, truly present out of love for us, the Source and Summit of our Faith.