Father Andrzej Wyrostek
Homily from the Televised Mass, NewsCenter1
The 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 18, 2024

Over the last several weeks we have been looking at this Gospel passage and the kind words of Jesus, who speaks to us about him being the Bread of Life. And we have two ways to look at this message for us. In one of the definitions that we ascribe to as a definition for the sacrament is that the Sacrament is a visible sign of the invisible reality. Meaning simply that God uses the created world to help us to understand or to grow deeper into understanding who is the Creator, who is the giver of those created things. 

In every Sacrament, like in this Eucharist, we are going to use a simple gift of the earth — of bread and wheat, and then wine made of the grapes. We make bread out of those products as well as wine. Then, through the prayers of the consecration we invoke the Holy Spirit to come upon those gifts. To make them holy. To contain in them the real presence of God.

I’ve been looking into that because our human nature will still tell us when we received the holy Eucharist that this is just still bread and wine. But in a supernatural reality in our hearts through faith we look at those as simple gifts of this created world, as the elements that contain the true presence of God. 

How can we justify that in our thinking? I’ve been reflecting on it in a way of friendship. Many of us have friends for a short time, but we all have some of those friends that go back decades or to the beginning of our life that we remember. Some of them we keep in touch with on a regular basis. Some of them we may be visiting with every few years or maybe decades. But when we meet with them, we immediately connect on the level that has built that friendship for the lifelong event, lifelong journey. And we rejoice, and we don’t ask questions — why did we not talk for so long perhaps — but we catch up on the information. We continue to build friendships through a variety of ways. We know in our hearts that something good is present, something important is in place for us. 

My friends as we look through the gift of faith at the presence of God in our lives, in a variety of ways, sometimes we keep that friendship with God alive and strong. Sometimes we allow the time or the business of the daily routines to preoccupy us and forget for a moment about the true giver of our life and this world. But God does not forget us. He is a true and good friend. When we find the time to reconnect with him again, we will find that moment as a life giving blessing, as an important moment of our journey. Something that inspires us anew, to live the faith knowing that God doesn’t count the time. He looks into our hearts, hearts that hopefully desire to strengthen the friendship with God and with each other.

Pray for each other this week as you become visible signs of God’s presence into this world. As Christians, as Catholics, as people who follow the precepts of God’s teaching, we are called to be the visible sign in this created world of God’s presence.