What lies in the depths of your heart?

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B (5 August 2012)

What lies in the depths of our hearts? Give me your full attention, pause for a second, close your eyes, and look within your heart. What desires move there? ...What longings, hopes, and dreams? ... There are layers in our hearts and lives, as if all of our being and experience were a deep pool or ocean.  Passing breezes and surface currents ripple the surface, or even cause massive waves… but the surface doesn’t tell the whole story. If we plunge past the surface of the ocean, we find layers and depths and currents that are largely hidden. If we venture past the superficial passing fancies and desires that each day brings, we will find layers and depths and currents there: some of that is painful, some is embarrassing, some is confusing, and at the core, there is the possibility of finding something very beautiful and enduring,

Do you desire a donut, or a cold glass of water? Do you long for nap? Take a step deeper… are you hungry for a friend, thirsty for a conversation, or longing to simply sit still out in the woods? At the core… are you hungry for love, or forgiveness, or truth? Are you sad, or feeling flat and lifeless, or full of enthusiasm?

As children, we must learn not to act on every impulse—we can’t take every cookie we see, hit every person that makes us mad, or go to the bathroom the moment the urge strikes us. This is the beginning of virtue—to make decisions about how and when and if we will act on our desires. However, much more is required! Maturity, and holiness, cannot be merely the ignoring or suppressing of our desires. We must learn to discern, purify, and move from the surface to the depths, to those deeper currents, to the deepest truest innermost current which is God’s own life and love, the Holy Spirit.

This dynamic is played out over the whole course of salvation history, and in each person’s life, and it is vividly present in our readings today. Moses led the people out of slavery in Egypt by wonders and signs into the desert, and very quickly they began to grouse and complain about the lack of food, so God sent quail and manna in the desert. God did not ignore the most basic desires:

He commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven; he rained manna upon them for food and gave them heavenly bread. Man ate the bread of angels, food he sent them in abundance. And he brought them to his holy land, to the mountains his right hand had won.

Centuries later, Jesus encountered the same dynamic, we heard about it last Sunday.  He saw the crowd hungry before Him, and he multiplied the loaves and fed their bodies. Now, they have followed him to Capernaum, looking for more. It is good that they seek Him, but Jesus sees into their hearts, that they are still just looking for more bread.

Why are we here at this Mass? Part of it is may be habit, part obligation… maybe we’re here out of obedience to our parents or to please them or to please a spouse. Part of why I’m here is that it’s my job! None of that is bad, but it’s not enough…the Lord wants your whole heart, mind, and soul, and He wants mine, too. Jesus Christ challenges us: do we want food that endures? Do we want more than going through the motions or fulfilling a duty or making someone else happy? Do you want to go deeper than seeing who this new priest is? How do we get there? How do we go deeper? The people asked, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus said, “Believe in the one he sent.” It is by faith in Jesus Christ, that faith itself a gift, that we go deeper and draw nearer to the Living God.

To make an act of faith, to step beyond what we fully understand, that takes courage, a leap beyond our comfort zone… and the people of Jesus’ time wanted a sign, like Moses had given. They’re still stuck hoping to see another miracle and get some more bread for free. But a miracle, miraculous bread comes from God—it is God we seek. The deepest current, the truest depths of our hearts seek God and Him alone. Nothing else will satisfy us. We see this painted across the screens of the media so clearly - men and women rich, famous, and powerful far beyond our circumstances, and scrabbling in the mud with their fingernails trying to get just a little bit more. Clearly the things of this world do not themselves bring peace. Jesus knows this, He knows that it is to answer our hunger and thirst that He has come, that it is to answer our deepest desire that He will die… and so He tells us the truth so far beyond our expectations, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Brothers and sisters is Christ… for the next three weeks we will unpack what Jesus meant when He said, “I am the bread of life.” The sixth chapter of John is a long one, but it’s long because it’s important, and here Jesus draws us into a very deep mystery, the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith. I love this chapter, this mystery, the Eucharist, and I hope you do too! It is a great mystery, always beyond our full grasp. But we can turn to this mystery once again, and enter into its light and beauty. To do this, however, we must come attentive to the deep desires of our hearts. God responds to what is deepest and truest in us, but if we don’t know what’s there, if we haven’t had the time, or the inclination, or the courage to look within, if we’re not willing to go deeper, we get stuck on the surface. Do you want to go deeper? God will help. St. Paul challenged the Ephesians to go deeper, so let me close with His words directed now to each one of us:

Brothers and sisters: I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; that is not how you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, 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.

This is God’s invitation to us, to be open to becoming new men and women in Christ, and this happens above all through the Eucharist. In the Eucharist we encounter God, the only source of lasting peace, and we are empowered to know the depths of our own hearts and souls. May we open our hearts to this beautiful mystery now, and in the weeks that lie ahead.

+ A. M. D. G. +

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