HOMILY EASTER WEEK 03 05 – Year I
Transformative Faith:
Optional Memorial of St Peter Chanel
(Acts 9:1-20; Ps 117; Jn 6:52-59)
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An atheist professor was told about a little girl who claimed her newborn kittens were atheists. Finding that intriguing, he went to visit her and see for himself. When he arrived and asked to see her atheist kittens, she told him they weren’t atheists anymore – they were Christians, because now their eyes were open!
The readings today invite us to peer more deeply into the great mystery of our faith in Jesus as Risen Lord and Bread of Life.
We are presented with two very different readings that hinge upon transformative faith. The first reading from Acts is all about St. Paul’s transformative experience of encountering Jesus on the road to Damascus. Saul, a zealous believer in the one God of Israel and persecutor of the followers of the Way he saw as heretics, is shocked to find that this Jesus he thought was an imposter was actually risen from the dead to a new life, and also identified himself with his followers, the early Church, his Body.
The blindness that overcame Saul was symbolic of how blind he was in his previous belief system that excluded any possibility of a Trinitarian God as blasphemy. It also became for him a liminal space, a threshold, a time of profound transition and transformation from one way of seeing reality to a whole new way of seeing reality – a change so profound, a reversal of his whole belief system so dramatic, that it would take three days (the same time that Jesus was in the tomb) for him to recover from that shocking reality. That shock was so great Saul actually went into a three-day fast (no food or water), deepening that time as liminal space for profound transformation to take place. As an Oblate, I have participated in a series of four-day fasts (no food or water for 72 hours) in Alberta, so I have an idea what that was like for Saul. Every time I fasted that way, I would receive a significant awareness for my life at that time, such as my need to grieve, but I would think it was nothing compared to what Saul went through.
The fact Saul had to be led by the hand, and Jesus used Aeneas to heal him by laying his hands on him, is also important. God works best through community. An individualistic “me and Jesus” spirituality is not the way God usually works in our lives – God works through community. Cary Landry had it right by singing “We come to you through one another.”
Saul then emerges from his blindness to a new belief system and a new name – Paul. He is baptized into the early church community, the Body of Christ, is filled with the Spirit of the Risen Lord he encountered on the road, and becomes an instrument of God, proclaiming Jesus is the Son of God, the same words spoken by the Ethiopian eunuch: “I believe Jesus is the Son of God.” After the initial shock, it took three years in Arabia for Paul to absorb who Jesus was and how forgiven he was by Jesus, as well as to reread all the Old Testament writing and prophecies in the light of the resurrection.
Sr. Teresita Kambeitz OSU of Saskatoon, who journeyed on a “Footsteps of St. Paul” pilgrimage years ago, came back with the conviction that St. Paul was not so much converted, as he fell in love with Jesus in that encounter, and that transformed his life.
The gospel invites us to ponder more deeply the mystery of Jesus as the Bread of Life and his Real Presence in the Eucharist. Jesus uses strong language in this passage – “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” – language so strong in this Bread of Life discourse in St. John that many of his followers left and stopped following him.
Jesus goes on to claim those who eat his flesh and drink his blood “have eternal life,” that his flesh and blood are true food and drink, and that those who eat this bread will live forever. This again is truly strong, physical language that has challenged the faith of humanity over the ages.
Here is what Bishop Irenaeus, who gave his life for this faith as a martyr, had to say about the Eucharist, from his Treatise against Heresies:
“We are his members and we are nourished by creatures, which is his gift to us, for it is he who causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall. He declared that the chalice, which comes from his creation, was his blood, and he makes it the nourishment of our blood. He affirmed that the bread, which comes from his creation, was his body, and he makes it the nourishment of our body. When the chalice we mix and the bread we bake receive the word of God, the eucharistic elements become the body and blood of Christ, by which our bodies live and grow. How then can it be said that flesh belonging to the Lord’s own body and nourished by his body and blood is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life? St Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians that we are ‘members of his body,’ of his flesh and bones. He is speaking of a real human body composed of flesh, sinews and bones, nourished by the chalice of Christ’s blood and receiving growth from the bread which is his body.”
St Peter Chanel
We are invited to honor one such martyr today, St. Peter Chanel. Born in 1803, the young shepherd Peter made such an impression on the parish priest that the cleric gained parental permission for Peter to attend school, which eventually led to the seminary and ordination. In 1831, Peter joined the Marists hoping to fulfil his desire for missionary work, but he was asked to teach in the seminary. Finally, in 1836, Peter and several others set sail for the Pacific Islands. They landed on an island a few miles north of Fiji and were well received. But as their influence grew, the local chief became suspicious and in 1841, upon hearing that his son desired baptism, the chief sent warriors to assassinate the priest. Peter was canonized as a martyr in 1954.
We are privileged to live the spirit of St. Peter Chanel even now as we celebrate the Eucharist – an act of faith in the power of the Holy Spirit to transform these humble gifts of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus himself, as he asked us to do at the Last Supper.
May our celebration continue to deepen our faith in Jesus as Risen Lord and the Bread of Life, transform us into the Body of Christ, and empower us to live out the Eucharist through selfless service to our brothers and sisters in the world.
