Part of the learning curve for the Apostles of Christ was learning that the word dismissal was not part of Jesus’ ministry, at least not when crowds are hungry for him. It’s true the Lord will dismiss his own disciples in the sense of heading off to the mountain for some solitary prayer. Or, dismiss a small crowd inside a certain house so he could raise a 12-year old girl from death. But generally speaking, and in the larger picture, Jesus dismissing a large or small crowd simply does not reconcile with his public ministry of establishing God’s Kingdom on earth. On the contrary, I bet all of us are adept at dismissing certain people at certain times. And if we cannot dismiss them easily, we may give a hint like, “Can’t you hear your bed calling you at home?” Or, you simply stretch out your hands like Jesus on the Cross, let out a loud yawn, and say, “Boy, I’m tired!” This sort of dismissal, which the Disciples tell Jesus to perform to the crowd following him, is never found in the actions and language of heaven. Or heaven on earth. Even when it seems his back is against the wall, thousands of men, women, and children with no food following him to a deserted place, the thought of dismissal remains far from the mind of the Son of God. We know the story; they are told to sit down, take it easy and relax for a short time, and be fed to complete satisfaction. “All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You’re not dismissed. Come to the water. You who have no money, and even you who do have money, come receive grain and eat. Come to the table of the Lord where there is no cost to be fed.” Now, the simple, yet fundamental point for today is this; in the lack of Jesus dismissing the crowds, was that closeness and proximity to him only during the time of his public ministry? When the Lord accomplishes all he set out to do, when his hour had arrived, when he gave his life for ours, and when he flew off from the mountain on the bungee cord that only goes up, ascending to his glory, did dismissal now become part of God’s language, when he was no longer with them in the flesh? Isn’t it one of the harder parts of our relationship with Christ to – at times – accept and believe he has not dismissed us from his abiding presence? We have even in our time the great St. Teresa of Calcutta living for decades what is spiritually called “a dark night of the soul.” Which simply means to a disciple, “God has dismissed me. While I remain faithful, and I don’t turn my back on him by not turning my back on my brothers and sisters, while I sustain a daily prayer life and plead for his intercession for this person and that person, my experience is, ‘Lord, where did you go? Did you dismiss me, tell me to go back to my own village and buy food for myself?’” This sense of separation from our Creator and Savior, where he apparently tells us to leave his presence and go home is the darkest part of our relationship with the Lord. And all of us at one time or another have come to know firsthand that experience of apparent Divine dismissal. But, if nothing else, Jesus is consistent. The action taken toward the overwhelming crowd following him and the challenge to feed them, spiritually and physically, is a continuous action until the day we stand before him. At times along the way, we need to battle against moments of seeming darkness, the darkness of God seeming to dismiss us. And the three best ways – the top 3 list – to battle against the appearance of Jesus dismissing us are: 1) Reception of the Eucharist, 2) Read and hear the word of God, and 3) Sustain a daily prayer life. These are not magical answers on how to avoid the dark night of the soul. They are not magical answers, period. They are real parts of our Catholic lives, choices that we make, in order to not experience something that God will never do to us. Dismiss the crowds? No way! Feed them yourselves, because dismissal is language unknown in heaven, and unknown on earth in the language of Christ. Instead, we have “I will be with you until the end of the age.” And in an age of pandemic and greater violence, we need to trust even more in Jesus’ real presence among us.

“Whoever has ears ought to hear.” Some of us may have hearing issues. We may not hear half of what we used to. Or half of what we want to. In baseball we used to call a few umpires who heard every word from the players bench, especially the bad stuff, “rabbit ears.” He heard everything and enjoyed throwing coaches and players out of the game if he heard something he didn’t like. Jesus is basically telling us to be like that umpire by way of hearing; have rabbit ears for the kingdom of heaven. Hear all that the Lord is saying about it, and respond to it in word and deed. “Whoever has ears ought to hear.” Hear what? The challenges and responsibilities that accompany our presence in the kingdom of God which stands among us in the present. When pondering the Lord’s kingdom, the true balance and full truth of his kingdom is to understand it in a two-fold way; that it is now, before us, within us, following us around like a hungry dog as we carry their food. And, that the kingdom in its fulfillment is a future condition for our souls and bodies, where the glory of God will enrapture us in life eternal. Some believers tend to emphasize one end of the kingdom over the other end. They focus so much on the good works of now that they have no vision of the future prize. Or, they have a vision of the future prize without practicing the importance of what it takes to get there; faith and good works. An overemphasis on either will create an imbalance in our spiritual lives. For those who have ears to hear, we build up God’s kingdom through his ever-present grace by faith and good works, making our world a better place and not a worse place, while yearning for eternal life with those we love. That combination hears Jesus loud and clear. The parables our Lord uses when speaking to the crowds reveal this 2-fold approach to our faith. In the famous parable of the wheat and the weeds, we recall that, in our Baptism, we have been sown in Christ. Therefore, we are wheat. We can only become weeds by outwardly and openly rejecting our faith in Christ. The goal of our wheat is to be stored into God’s barn. As we grow taller and older, or shorter and older, the barn gets closer and closer. Its’ seems like God’s barn is walking toward us to secure our place within. That’s the future element of this parable. The present element, the now part, is seeing ourselves as God’s wheat, and making an impression on weeds that they convert to wheat. That’s also called being a Saint. The weeds that end up in the bundles for burning, many of them didn’t have some wheat in their lives to lead them to the love and goodness of Christ. If they did, many of those weeds would convert to wheat. That’s how the power of love and mercy operate. That even the worst weed can be saved into the barn. The one crucified next to Jesus is the Scriptural proof of this; “Today, you will be with me in my barn in paradise.” The mustard seed has a greater focus on the present kingdom; to grow in the Lord and not in the culture of this world, because here we have no lasting home. To grow into adults who will share and defend our faith, and not grow cold or complacent with it. The mustard seed parable attends to being pruned, cut, sliced and diced, formed and shaped into letting God lead. That’s what good Christian parents do; they slice and dice, form and shape, they prune their children to be servants of the Most High, leading them to full growth. And the yeast parable, the bakery parable, is similar to the mustard seed in its growth. But the yeast symbolizes the Christian virtues, making the wheat the best tasting bread, and not some, green piece of whatever you want to call it. “Yuk!” That’s our life without the yeast of Christ; “Yuk!” The future part of this parable is the great paradox of Christianity; that when the wheat is fully baked with the yeast within, we reach our perfection through the doors of death. If anyone one of us is presently watching (slowly) a loved one going through the dying process, we’re watching their yeast within the wheat grow to perfection. When I looked on the face of my friend Fr. Bob Bruso last week as he lay in his casket, I saw him as never looking so good, knowing he was now looking on the face of God. That’s the yeast and wheat fully baked. “Whoever has ears ought to hear.” The parables of Jesus call us to the kingdom now and in the future. To live in his kingdom now is a world of both messiness and beauty, while preparing to be stored in his barn after our days here are complete.

The fruit yielders. A new name for all of you. You are a fruit yielder. Not a fruit destroyer, but a fruit yielder. One of the central teachings/understandings surrounding this famous parable of Jesus is the issue of protection. To be a successful fruit-yielder over the length of our years is to seek and be open for the spiritual protection God extends to us each day. We do not live the life of Job, where God said to Satan, “Okay, he’s yours. Test him. You can do anything you want with him except take his life.” Just the thought of such a possibility should send a shiver down our spine. Instead, the Cross of Jesus and all its meaning has removed any Old Testament possibility of God allowing the Devil free reign over us without the protection of the Spirit, his grace, his angels, and the Communion of Saints. When Jesus gave up his Spirit, our personal protection that comes down from heaven brought us from being a pure target for the enemy to being protected by the Lord’s power and grace. His death was the moment when the powers of love and protection became our closest friends. In the parable of the sower and the seed, the first three failures where the seed yields no lasting fruit, that failure results from the lack of desiring divine protection. And what a time to seek it, right now. The first 3 possibilities of seed-growth in this parable that Jesus teaches, they end in spiritual destruction. That section of the parable could be called The Parable of the Titanic, ending in disaster. What sort of disaster? The sort that prevents us from living a full life for the Lord, settling for some bad-tasting fruit that fails to make the world a better place in preparation for heaven. Instead, you are fruit-yielders. It’s written all over your faces. In your hearts; in your prayer life; in your search for peace; in your good works; in your love of neighbor; and in your unbreakable bond of love for your Savior. Bringing all these human and divine elements together, alongside the greatest protection of all that we have – the Eucharist – allows us to live in the Divine protection necessary to produce 30, 60 and 100-fold. God becomes a shield about us, preserving us for life eternal. There are some fruit-yielders in the present living in fear of a virus and other current issues. Some folks are understandably cautious. But others are living in panic mode. People who have not given in to the lure of riches; or worldly anxieties in the way Jesus means that term; they are not dealing with persecution; they have a deep root of faith. Us fruit-yielders here, we pray for them. we pray for them to do a U-turn to a safe place, receive that Divine protection found firstly in the Eucharist, and reach the fullness of the 4th person in our Lord’s parable. In the parable of the sower and the seed, the difference between the first three people who fall short, and the last person who yields much fruit, is our desire to do what needs to be done to ensure divine protection. That takes courage. It takes stepping out of our comfort zone. And it takes a deep love for the Eucharist.

A good word to reflect on at this time is the word dignity. And we can place alongside dignity the word “worth.” “You are worth more than many sparrows.” One trap we never wish to fall into is the trap that something other than the human person beholds greater dignity and worth before God. This has never been the understanding of ourselves in our Christian faith, and, it does not reconcile with what Jesus quietly speaks to his Disciples in the solitude of where this Gospel is set. One of the great verses in Scripture testifies to the Lord being the firstborn of all creatures. When St. Paul wrote those words in Colossians, he did not write that Jesus was the firstborn of man and woman. He wrote “all creatures” all creation, everything created from the mouth of God, is renewed in the resurrection of Christ. And I like using this verse from Paul to answer the dog question, “Father, do dogs go to heaven?” The technical, theological answer is that only creatures with reason, with the capacity to choose or reject heaven, can walk past the Pearly Gates. It is believed St. Peter never said, “Fido, show me your good works,” and received an answer. Now, before you get angry with me because of how much you love your dogs and other creatures, I go back to St. Paul’s verse in Colossians, that Jesus is the first-born of all creatures, and leave it at that. That tends to satisfy dog-lovers and their answer to “Do dogs go to heaven?” At the same time, we are worth more than many sparrows, and many dogs too. Our dignity is exponentially greater, because that’s how God created things. There is an order to dignity and worth before God’s presence and in God’s sight. And we are at the top of the created chain. This is why Jesus became one of us, and not a turtle. Along the way we can lose sight of this holy truth of dignity and worth. Of our value of living in Christ. We may forget we are worth more than many sparrows. We may lose sight of the lasting truth that never changes that we are the only creature made in the image and likeness of God. Especially when there are riots, lootings, burning down businesses and vehicles, social discord, the killing of a person who didn’t need to die, and such. It’s easy to lose sight of our true value, our worth, our dignity, where we become the dogs, and dogs become us. But we must return to this basic Godly truth; that while many human forces seek to separate, conquer, divide, and cause violence and chaos among people whom God has claimed as his own, and whose Son was sent into the world to redeem us. While many forces among us work the powers of discord and separation, imitating the demons that Christ called out of possessed people he encountered. While confusion can and has reached a fever pitch, there has to remain a group willing to stick out their necks, not fear others who kill the body, and speak and act the words of Jesus that says we are worth more than many sparrows. At the heart of Jesus’ message this week is the remembrance of our true worth, the honest value of who you are. While others may forget their dignity and worth, it’s the calling of the Christian not to stand in judgment, but to call others to that higher plane. To evangelize our greater worth, putting aside discord because it lessens our value, and taking on peace and brotherhood that reveals God within us.

As similar to the latter part of Lent, most of the Easter season except for the 7th Sunday of Easter when Churches reopened, Corpus Christi Sunday takes on an element of absence. We’re grateful that we can gather together and celebrate the liturgy where those who are in attendance can approach the altar of the Lord and receive the Body & Blood of Christ. Where spiritual communion, for those who performed one during the time of absence, is now in the rearview mirror. It’s good to have certain things behind us. Our sins fall into that category. But also something that was meant to hold us over until we were able to return to the real thing. The fullness of the Eucharist. So, while there’s joy in Mudville at 353 Grove Street, and the addresses of all Catholic Churches throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, joy emanating from your beautiful presence here in pews that are taped off, there remains a certain level of sadness too. Sadness that not all our folks are ready to bring themselves from the holdover of spiritual communion to reception of our Lord’s Body & Blood. Not to mention those who are ready to be here now, but cannot because of underlying medical conditions, age, or physical or emotional incapacity. Our hearts and prayers are with this entire absent group of believers and saints. We love them; we care about them; we miss them, looking ahead to the day when they return to the Upper Room. But as with all things Christ, the joy always defeats sadness, though both can be present simultaneously. The joy of our Lord’s resurrection and victory over the ultimate virus, death, is our better half. Our companion and friend. Moses in today’s 1st reading reminded the Israelites of how God cared for them as a large group of wanderers when they escaped the clutches of Egyptian slavery. Part of Moses’ reminder was the satisfaction of their stomachs. They complained in the desert of how hungry and thirsty they were. And who wouldn’t be hungry and thirsty in a desert after wandering around for months and years? Makes sense to me! But from the heavens came a food – a bread – never seen by anyone previously, unheard in all Jewish cookbooks, flakes of hoarfrost every morning straight from the ovens and bakers of heaven – even better than Crown Bakery – landing softly on the desert floor while they slept. The delicious flakes came down from heaven in the midst of the night like Santa dropping down a chimney on Christmas Eve. Then, they walked out of their tents after a good night’s rest on the sand, noticed the flakes on the surface, and asked, “What is this? We have never seen this before.” Moses reminded them after 40 years of wandering how God fed them and care for them. God so loved his Chosen People that the only ones who died in those 40 years were the obstinate complainers, which nobody likes, and those of natural old age causes. Everyone else survived 40 years in the desert, crossing over the Jordan, entering the land of promise. The bread from Crown Bakery in heaven gave them strength to carry on each day. The show-bread and stomachs made for a satisfying combination. Jesus, many centuries later, when out doing his desert ministry, stumbled upon one of those breads, picked it up off the desert ground, and said, “You see this bread? This bread is now me.” He said, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man in the desert of this world, and, unless you drink the blood of the Son of Man from the Rock of this world, the Rock being the Church built on Peter, you do not have life within you.” In other words, you will not make it to the Promised Land. When we hear and ponder these explicit words of Christ speaking to the crowds, there’s no need to stretch the imagination too far to figure out why the churches from where Jesus preached on the hills of Galilee, why they began to empty out like he was contagious with some deadly virus. This is what can happen when some itinerant preacher from Nazareth picks up a slice of hoarfrost off the desert floor and says, “You see this? This bread is now me. A Person. And I command you to eat this. Not so that your stomachs will be satisfied for a few moments in this passing world. But that your entire body, soul, and spirit will pass into the joys of the Promised Land that lasts forever.” That’s how much he loves us. He wants us with him forever. But, as the naysayers and non-believers have spoken, only a crazy person can believe that that bread is now a Person. A Divine Person! Only a crazy person can practice cannibalism. I’m humbled and grateful to proclaim from the mountaintops that I’m part of the crazy group of believers. And I pray you are also. We pray too for all our dear brothers and sisters who have not walked away from Jesus because of his challenging, loving words. Those who cannot be here for various reasons related to a virus. We love you; we care about you; we miss you. And we want you back to receive the flesh that is true food, and blood that is true drink.