Monday of the Third Week of Easter

“This is the work of God, believe in the one he sent.”

This week’s teaching about the Eucharist begins with Jesus’ claim to our faith in him. Catholics often like to think we have a monopoly on the Eucharist. No other Christian denomination defines the Eucharist with the word transubstantiation, and that should somehow make us unique and even -- dare we say it? -- right.

Fortunately Saint John’s Gospel says nothing about that medieval definition. Rather, it insists we must believe in the one God sent. Transubstantiation is only one way of explaining the inexplicable.

James Weldon Johnson, in the prologue to his marvelous book of poems, God’s Trombones, Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, wrote:

There is the story of one [minister] who after reading a rather cryptic passage took off his spectacles, closed the Bible with a bang and by way of preface said, "Brothers and sisters, this morning -- I intend to explain the unexplainable -- find out the undefinable -- ponder over the imponderable -- and unscrew the inscrutable."

Rather than unscrew the sixth chapter of Saint John, we should welcome the challenge that Jesus issues to us, Believe in the one sent.

I ponder this moment in our Church history and wonder how will I believe in Jesus today. Almost fifty years ago Pope John XXIII called the bishops of the entire church to Rome and convened the Second Vatican Council. He knew the Church, despite the awesome respect it enjoyed in many places, needed reform. It was snarled in its doctrines and invested in its traditions. It needed fresh air. It needed especially to update its ceremonies. Although many people attended church, few of them prayed with the priest. They prayed behind him and in spite of him but not with him. The Mass had lost its congregation. Earlier reforms of the 20^th century had begun the reforms. Children were making their first communion at the “age of reason;” the missal encouraged people to “follow” the Mass; the revived Gregorian Chant helped them participate in some of the prayers. But the congregation didn’t even respond to the priest’s greeting, Dominus vobiscum. They didn’t know what he meant by that.

Since then we have seen a marvelous change. People participate and enjoy the Mass. They sing the prayers, proclaim the Old and New Testament readings, distribute and receive the Blessed Sacrament and obey the command of Jesus to drink from the cup of his blood. We now pray the Mass together, rather than the priest alone. The RCIA is also reviving participation in the church as new members experience our mysteries not as dogmas but as events.

But history is marching on and we’re facing what may be the most challenging crisis since the Reformation began. What will we learn from the priest pedophilia scandal? Clearly the scandal is a complicated story. Bishops, priests, police and district attorneys have all been implicated in the scandal. Many people knew what was happening but did nothing. They believed they were protecting the faith even as they ignored terrible crimes.

Perhaps, rather than trusting in “the one he sent” to lead this parish or this diocese through a painful ordeal of guilt and shame to penance, healing and atonement, they suppressed their own consciences and abetted the crimes. But, inevitably, responsibility for the crimes moved upward from the parish to the diocese to the national synod to the entire Church. Today the Pope himself is under fire. 

As the preacher said, “When God needs me to help him, we will all be in very deep trouble.” Let us pray that we learn through this scandal to live by faith.