Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is Sundays with Bishop Ken.
Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Today. Our guest reader is Fr. Burt Gome, a senior priest from the.
[00:00:18] Speaker C: Diocese of Saginaw in Michigan.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Father Burt was a priest in the.
[00:00:22] Speaker C: Diocese when Bishop Ken was its shepherdess.
[00:00:33] Speaker D: A reading from the holy gospel according to John.
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you get here?
Jesus answered them and said, amen. Amen. I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life which the son of man will give you.
For on him the Father God has set his seal.
So they said to him, what can we do to accomplish the works of goddess? Jesus answered and said to them, this is the work of God that you believe in the one he sent.
So they said to him, what sign can you do that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?
Our ancestors ate manna in the desert. As it is written. He gave them bread from heaven to eat.
So Jesus said to them, amen. Amen. I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven. My father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
So they said to him, sir, give us this bread always.
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.
The gospel of the Lord one of the themes in John's gospel is the failure of people, including the disciples, to understand the deeper meaning of what Jesus is saying.
In today's passage, for example, Jesus talks about giving people the bread of life. He's referring to the gift of divine life.
The crowd, remembering the miraculous feeding of the multitude, thinks he's offering them another supply of barley loaves.
There are many examples of this in John's gospel. I'll give you just one.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that a person must be born again. Referring to divine life, Nicodemus takes this literally and wonders how people can re enter their mother's womb to be born again.
He misses the deeper truth.
I'm not suggesting that in each of these incidents the people should have understood instantly and completely the depth of what Jesus was saying.
I simply want to call attention to the fact that the truths of our faith, our traditions, our liturgical rituals and our symbols have a depth to them. It is one thing to be able to name the truths of our faith as we do, for example, in the creed.
It's another thing to go to the depths of these truths.
How do we do that?
We use human reason to explore and understand more fully the deeper meaning of the truths we profess.
One of the trademarks of the Catholic Church is a friendly relationship between faith and reason.
It's no accident that the church founded the great universities in the world.
It was the church that founded the University of Bologna in the 12th century and the University of Paris in the 13th century and the University of Cologne in Germany in the 14th century.
We believe that faith enriches reason, and reason enriches faith.
St. Anselm back in the 11th century had it right. He coined the phrase faith seeking understanding.
Often after mass, someone will come up and ask a question about our truths or our practices.
The person begins by saying, Father, the way I was taught, his knowledge in every other part of his life has grown. But his knowledge of the faith is where it was 50 years ago.
It would be such a different experience to have someone come up and say, I was doing some reading on the history of the mass, and I was wondering that seldom, if ever, happens.
Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about, one that may be sensitive, but because of that, it might be helpful.
Catholics have various opinions about whether to stand or kneel during the eucharistic prayer.
There is nothing inherently wrong or right with kneeling or standing. The question is which posture best expresses and best helps us to enter into what is taking place during the eucharistic prayer.
Some may say, if it was good enough for our parents to kneel, then it's good enough for us.
A different approach, looking to reason as a helpful friend, would be to say, what is our history of this? What are we doing in the eucharistic prayer and what posture best expresses and helps us to do whatever we are doing?
Let's pursue it that way. An enlightened and perhaps surprising question to help us get to the heart of the matter is this.
In the eucharistic prayer, at whom are we looking?
Some might say we are adoring Jesus Christ, who becomes present in the words of the consecration.
The truth is, we are not looking at Jesus. We are joining Jesus and together with him, looking at and speaking to God the Father.
Every single word of the eucharistic prayer, from beginning to end, is directed to God the Father.
We are joining with Jesus as he looks to the Father and gives himself entirely to God, especially in his dying on the cross, and invites us to join him in doing this.
The crescendo of the eucharistic prayer comes at the end when the priest holds high the bread and the cup.
He is not raising them so we can see them. He is lifting them up to the Father and inviting all of us to look with Christ to the Father and say to the Father through him, with him, in him, o God almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours forever and ever. Amen.
That is why our earliest tradition is to stand during the eucharistic prayer. We are standing with Christ in this act of giving himself and all of us to the Father.
I close with a challenge. I challenge you to grow in the knowledge of your faith.
You don't have to go to a class, although there are an increasing number of adult classes available.
There are excellent books in every field of theology and liturgy and church customs.
Some are thick books and some are slim books. Some are heavy reading and some are light reading. Find what you like.
There are also fine periodicals that provide an excellent way to stay up to date.
I challenge you to go to the depths of your faith and make use of our friendly relationship with reason to deepen your understanding of our truths.
It's a lifelong process, faith seeking understanding.
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