Robert Barron - Where Heaven and Earth Meet
Peace be with you. Friends, during the B-cycle of readings for the liturgical year, we always have this section during the summertime. We read, I think it's for five weeks, from the sixth chapter of John's Gospel, which is all about the Eucharist. And here's the interesting thing, everybody, in John's Gospel, there's an account of the Last Supper, but there's no mention in that account of what we call the institution narrative. That means the little recounting of what Jesus did with the bread and the wine and so on; what you find in the Synoptic Gospels. John has the account of the Last Supper, but we find there the washing of the feet of the disciples, and then we have this long discourse by Jesus, but no institution narrative.
People have been sometimes puzzled, "Well, why would that be missing in John, which is the most mystical of the four Gospels"? Well, here's the short answer. It's missing there only because in the sixth chapter of John, we have a deeply and intensely Eucharistic theology. John develops his Eucharistic theology in this chapter six. Can I recommend to you, everybody, take out your Bibles and just open to John chapter six? Read the whole thing, it's not that long. There's no better, no more intense reflection on the Eucharist than there. And the whole tradition from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to the present day is really just an extended meditation on John six.
So we have the privilege now, the next several weeks, to be going through this section. So I'm going to walk through it with you. Very interesting now how it commences. Jesus will get into a lengthy discourse about the Eucharist, but it begins narratively. And what's being narrated here is this familiar story of the multiplication of the loaves, but what's really symbolically being narrated is the mass, is the mass. We're not going to get the Eucharist apart from the mass, outside the context of the mass. And so John lays it out now, not denying for a minute that this miracle really happened. It was so deeply ingrained in the memories of the first Christians, but he presents it in this iconic way that brings out the different dimensions of the mass. This is now the very beginning, the opening verses of John chapter six; "So a large crowd followed him because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain and there he sat down with his disciples".
Now, look at these elements, first of all, you've got a large crowd following Jesus. Why do we come to mass? There might be saints coming to mass. There might be someone just at the very beginning of their spiritual life, just a seeker, but everyone that comes to mass is coming because they sense in him the answer. They sense he's the shepherd. They're magnetically drawn to him. So think of the crowd now coming to Jesus like the crowd gathering for mass on Sunday. It struck me all my years as a priest and as a bishop, you come and you see the people arriving from all different walks of life, different ages, different backgrounds, different levels of education, different ethnicities and races; all coming to the mass magnetized, if you want, by Jesus. So he then went up the mountain.
Now, of course, mountain is a standard trope in the Bible for the meeting place of God and humanity, of heaven and earth, because the mountain goes up. It's our ascent to God, and it's a place where God comes down. Think of the smoke on Mount Sinai, et cetera; but mountains from Mount Eden in the Book of Genesis, Mount Sinai of course, Mount Tabor, Mount Calvary. All these places of encounter. Well, think of the mass, next time you go to mass, you're on in a way all of those mountains. It's Tabor, the transfiguration will take place. Sinai, the law will go forth from that place. Eden, because it's this garden where our real life is recovered. Calvary, yes, because the sacrifice of Christ will be represented. The mass is the privileged meeting place of heaven and earth. The crowd comes to him and they go up the mountain.
Then listen, "And there he sat down with his disciples". In the ancient world, the seated position was the position of the teacher. So it's the opposite of ours. So here I am, for example, I'm at this podium, I'm standing and I'm preaching to you. When I was a teacher all those years, I'd go into the classroom, I would stand at a podium like this. The students would sit. It was almost the opposite in the ancient world, as the teacher wouldn't come and stand at the podium, he would sit and then the disciples would arrange themselves at his feet. So we speak of sitting at the feet of the master. Well, that's an ancient image. It wouldn't be true today, we'd say taking up a chair in the classroom while the master gives a lecture. But in the ancient world, the teacher sat.
What's the first part of the mass? But the liturgy of the word. We read from the Old Testament, read from the Psalm, read typically from Paul, then of course the gospel. We have lecturers or deacons perhaps doing these readings. But see, who's speaking? Mystically, it's always Christ who speaks. He's the word. And so whenever the divine word goes forth, it's Christ who's speaking. At mass, all of us, as it were, sit at the feet of the master as he teaches. It struck me now especially I'm bishop of dioceses, and when I have in my cathedral the cathedra, that's why it's called a cathedral because the chair of the bishop is there. Whenever I'm at my own cathedral and I'm preaching, usually I come and stand in front of the people. But when I'm at the cathedral, I like to stay in that chair, in the seated position, because I'm the bishop formally teaching my people.
Well, see, all I'm doing there is trying to symbolically represent Christ who teaches his people. Think about that next time you've gone up the mountain for mass, and now you sit down to listen to the word, you're in the stance or the attitude of these disciples. "Jesus raised his eyes and saw a large crowd coming to him. He said to Philip, where can we buy enough food for them to eat"? It says he was just testing him. He knew, of course. And then Philip says, "Well, 200 wages of food would not be enough to give each of these people even a little". And then Andrew, "Well, there is this little kid here, and he's got five barley loaves and two fish". Jesus said, "Have them recline and give them to me".
So following the liturgy of the word, and we have the creed, which is interesting because the creed is not just a abstract, formal statement, it's the people's way of saying, "I believe in what I've just heard". See, because the creed lays out the basic narrative of salvation. So in saying that, amen to the creed, we're saying amen to what we just heard. Then gifts are brought forward, aren't they? Little bread, a little wine, a little bit of water. If we're talking about feeding people's physical hunger, that little wafer that you give one to each person would barely address their hunger. You see, we're just like Philip and Andrew. There's this giant crowd to feed, but what do we have here but a few little morsels, a few little items? Jesus says, "Well, give them to me".
What happens at mass is these tiny elements come forward. The crowd is marked by the deepest kind of spiritual hunger, and you think, well, what good will this do? These little gifts that we give? But if you give them to Christ, what happens? They come back elevated and transformed unto the feeding of that whole crowd. So there's a physical miracle being described here, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. What happens at mass is something really even more staggering because it's a miracle at the spiritual level. Christ doesn't need these little gifts that we offer. He doesn't need anything. God needs nothing. God makes the whole world ex nihilo, from nothing. Therefore, God doesn't need anything in the world. We can't give God something he doesn't already have. But when we give to God what he doesn't need, he can return that gift elevated and transfigured for us.
That's a basic biblical principle, basic gospel principle. Take the little you have, give it to him, it'll be elevated, transfigured unto the feeding of the world. So what happens at mass, not the physical multiplication of these little hosts, something much more marvelous. What happens is the transubstantiation of these elements, this ordinary bread drawn from the earth and from human labor, this ordinary wine drawn from grape and vine and human labor become through the power of Christ transubstantiated into his body and his blood. The feeding of the crowd, the physical feeding of the crowd is emblematic therefore, everybody, of the feeding of the soul that takes place at mass. We go up the mountain, we sit and listen to the word.
Then we bring the little that we have, and then we find it elevated for the transformation and feeding of the whole world. That's where we are, at what we call the liturgy of the Eucharist. Isn't this wonderful? I skipped the line where Jesus takes these elements and he gives thanks. What do we call the prayer by which these elements are transfigured, but the Eucharistic prayer? Eucharistein in Greek just means to give thanks. The priest or the bishop is operating, we say in persona Christi, in the very person of Christ. It's Christ giving thanks to his father once more, and this leads to the feeding of this crowd physically and of every crowd that gathers for mass spiritually. I just love the last detail, because it reflects probably the practice already in vogue at the time.
When they'd had their fill, Jesus said to the disciples, "Gather the fragments left over so that nothing will be wasted". So they gathered them into 12 wicker baskets. What happened at the end of mass? From the earliest days, if you doubt me by the way, read Saint Justin Martyr, in the year 155 has an account of what Christians did on Sunday. It's recognizably the mass and he makes the point, at the end, the fragments of the elements are collected and are brought to those who are absent and to the needy and to the poor.
If this were just some kind of vaguely symbolic ritual that we were doing, once we've gone through the ritual and everyone's been uplifted, why would you bother with the elements? Unless you believed that they had really been transformed into the body and blood of Christ? Why would you bother gathering them up unless they had really been transubstantiated? You see it, Justin Martyr in 155, but you see it even here in the Gospel of John. And we watch it to this day.
When you're at mass next time and you're through with communion and you're watching the ministers come back as they gather the fragments to put back in the tabernacle, that's the practice being described here. So everybody, as we commence this about five-week long meditation upon the Eucharist, we start with the mass. We start with the mass. It's in the context of the mass that the Eucharist makes sense. And let's keep our eyes and souls and minds open these next several weeks as we explore the mystery of this greatest of sacraments. And God bless you.