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Writer's pictureImmersed in Christ

A History of Mystery

by Fr. David M. Knight


August 11, 2024

Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time  

Lectionary 116 

1 Kgs 19:4-8/Eph 4:30—5:2/Jn 6:41-51


How much mystery do you see in the history of God’s dealing with his People? Are you conscious of the same mystery in his dealing with you?  

 

Where God acts, there is mystery. When we recognize his action, that is a mystical experience. All of Jewish history is one prolonged mystical experience, interrupted only by periods of forgetfulness. Two things made the People conscious of God’s action: the prophets and liturgical celebrations. The prophets explained what God was doing in the events the People experienced. Liturgical celebrations brought God’s action into their “here” and “now.” 

 

Beginning with the Covenant God made with Abraham, he and all his descendants became God’s People. The constant renewal of the Covenant in action were circumcision and observance of the Law, especially the Sabbath. A visible reminder of it was the “tabernacle” and “ark of the covenant,” in which were kept the tablets of the Law. And in front of the covenant, they preserved some of the “manna” (the word means “What is it?”) with which God fed his People in the desert. To Noah, God declared his covenant with “all flesh” (Genesis 6:18-19; 9:11-17). To Abraham he promised land and posterity (Genesis, chapters 15 and 17). Circumcision was the sign of it. Through Moses, he declared them “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation,” and the sign of it was their observance of the Law, especially the Sabbath (Exodus, chapters 19, 20, 24). The words of the Law were placed in the “ark of the covenant” (Exodus 25:16; 40:3; Deuteronomy 10:1-2), that was kept in the “tabernacle of the covenant” (Exodus 38:21; 40:21; Numbers 9:15), which was filled with the “glory of the Lord” (Exodus 40:34-38).) 

 

There on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.... This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, in order that they may see the food with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt’.... Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the LORD, to be kept throughout your generations.” As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the covenant, for safekeeping. (Exodus 16:14-34.) 

 

We can see in the “manna” a preview of today’s readings about Eucharist, which now we “reserve” in the “tabernacle” in church. It is a continuing reminder of the “mystery of the history” of the Covenant—Old and New—which is our mystical experience of God. By making present and visible the Body of Christ, which expresses the history of all Jesus did in his body on earth, it brings all the mystery of his life and death, celebrated at Mass, into the “here” and “now” of our present existence. By preserving the Eucharist in the tabernacle after Mass, the Church is saying, “Let it be kept throughout all generations, in order that all may see the food with which God fed us in the wilderness, when he brought us out of the land of Egypt—out of the corruption of human culture—by Baptism, when we died and rose in Christ to live as a ‘new creation,’ his redeemed and redeeming body on earth.” Even reserved in the tabernacle, the Eucharist is inseparable from the action of the Mass, which makes present the action of Jesus giving his “flesh for the life of the world.” Eucharist expresses the “mystery of the history” of Christ’s life and death, and calls us to continue it.  

 

We continue the mystery of Christ’s history by ministry, in which we “present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God.” In Baptism we pledged that, wherever our live bodies are, we would be “sacrificed” to letting Jesus Christ express himself to others through our physical words and actions. To pledge this, and live it out in all our encounters with others, is to give our “flesh for the life of the world.” We remember this, and recommit to it, in every celebration of the Mass. 


Bread of strength 

 

1Kings 19:4-8: Threatened with death by Jezebel, Elijah “was afraid” and “fled for his life.” After “a day’s journey into the desert,” he sat down under a tree and “prayed for death.” But God sent an angel to him with bread and water. “He got up, ate and drank; then, strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God.” 

This is a preview of Eucharist. If we “eat and drink,” we will enter into the “mystery of the history” of God’s dealings with us and find strength. 

 

Bread of life 

In John 6:41-51 those who did not want to accept the mystery that Jesus confronted them with “began to murmur in protest because Jesus claimed ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” They preferred their ground level experience of him as just “the son of Joseph.” And, if we are honest, sometimes so do we. 

We don’t deny that he is the “Son of God.” But in practice we sometimes prefer to relate to him as if he were just a teacher of truth of goodness on a human level. It makes everything so understandable and, if not always easy, at least achievable with good will and persevering effort. But if we are conscious of Jesus as God, and aware that by the “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” given at Baptism we “became Christ,” then we realize that the only authentic and acceptable way for us to live is to act always on the level of God. This can be daunting.  

 

Jesus addresses this by pointing out: “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.” It is already living on the level of God just to accept the call to live on the level of God. We can’t do it except by the gift and power of the Holy Spirit, which is given to us at Baptism. 

 

If we accept that as a “given” (literally), then, Jesus says, we have to use the gift. We have to act. In three ways: 

 

  1. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” We have to hear in such a way that we learn. If what we hear doesn’t move us to do anything, we are “hearers of the word” without being learners. (See Romans 2:13; James 1:22-27; Matthew 7:24-27; Luke 6:43-49.) 

 

  1. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God.... Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.” We have to “see” the Father: know God, have the intimate, personal knowledge of God that is an experience of divine faith, divine life. We have to experience what it means to believe. This is a mystical experience of being “enlightened by God.” (Read Ephesians, chapter one.) 

 

  1. The one who eats this bread will live forever.” We have to eat in order to live. The “bread of life” is Jesus, whom we receive “from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s body.” We have to “come” to Jesus: seek him out in “word and sacrament,” read the Bible, make use of Mass, Communion and Confession: all physical ways of encountering Christ on the level of mystery; that is, of mystical experience. (Vatican II, Divine Revelation, no. 21. That is why the Council says, “The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord.”) 

 

Be Christ 

Ephesians 4:30 to 5:2 calls us to live out the mystery of our baptismal identification with Christ: 

 

"Be imitators of God, as beloved children. Follow the way of love, even as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”  

 

The word “imitators” is often misunderstood. It does not mean to “imitate” in our human actions the example Jesus gave us in his actions on earth. There is no mystery in that; just good, visible human behavior—unless with the eyes of faith we realize that more was at work in him than just human life. Then we realize that we cannot “imitate” him unless by the power of his own divine life in us; that is, by the power of Jesus himself living and acting in us who are his real body.  

 

To “follow the way of love” means to love others just as Jesus has loved us. This is the kind of love that lets us know “we have passed from death to life.” This kind of love is “from God; everyone who loves [like this] is born of God and knows God.” Therefore, “If we love one another [as Christ loves us], God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” For this we have to give ourselves for others in ministry as he “gave himself for us.” That means to let Christ express his truth, his love in and through our bodily words and actions. 


Insight: What does the awareness of mystery add to knowledge of our history? 

 

Initiative: Cultivate an underlying intention of always acting with, in and through Christ.  

 

Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry




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