19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
This homily was given at the House of Mercy, a homeless shelter in Rochester, NY.
How often do we think of our senses as ways of describing our relationship with God? Could touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste be means for us to strengthen our relationship with God?
Our readings today all speak of our experience of God in terms of our senses. Our Psalm praises God beautifully, inviting us to “taste and see the goodness of the LORD.” When Elijah, in our first reading today from 1 Kings, is in such deep despair that he asks God to take his life, an angel twice touches Elijah to wake him and then orders him to eat. And so God makes God’s presence known to Elijah through Elijah’s senses of touch and taste. In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks of himself as “the bread… from heaven.” Jesus is no ordinary food. Even the manna with which God fed the people of Israel in the desert while they were fleeing slavery in Egypt does not compare to the food Jesus offers. Manna had offered temporary relief from hunger. Jesus offers himself as the food necessary for our salvation; food that is eternal; “the living bread… from heaven” and “flesh for the life of the world.” Jesus offers us salvation we can sense: touch, smell, see, hear, and taste.
Yet Jesus invites us not just to take in God’s presence in our world by our senses. The Letter to the Ephesians from which we hear today says that “Christ handed himself over to us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” But immediately before this we hear in Ephesians, “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love.” Ephesians asks us to make God’s presence felt or, better yet, smelled as “a fragrant aroma” by the way we live “as beloved children” of God, “in love.”
And so my question is this: How does God smell in our world? How, by the way we live, are we making God smell in our world? Is God being smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted; more fully experienced as a God of goodness and love; a “fragrant aroma”; “the living bread… from heaven… for the life of the world” because of the way we live as Christians?
Many if not all of us here at the House of Mercy could answer truthfully, “Yes,” to this question. God lives and is experienced here. We hear God; the Word of God in our Scripture readings and here at Mass. We hear God in our lively celebration of Eucharist each Sunday; the participation of all of us in our beautiful music at our Sunday Mass. We see God in one another gathered here and then going forth from here to act in justice on the gift of God we receive in our worship. We taste God: Jesus Christ really and truly present under humble bread and wine in our Eucharist. And we taste and smell God present when we are fed and provide food here for many of this city’s homeless and otherwise hungry. We touch God in our sign of peace here; our works of peace out in our streets. These are powerful signs of God’s presence especially in this part of Rochester still beset by poverty; homelessness; hunger; violence.
God lives and we sense God present and alive here at the House of Mercy! But I would be missing one of the means in which God has been present and alive here if I did not mention my late Basilian brother priest and regular presider at our Mass here, Fr. Joseph Lanzalaco. Today I stand in Fr. Joe’s place, since he was first scheduled to preside at this Mass. In his own humble, friendly, and loving way, Fr. Joe brought people; brought us together to where God could be experienced: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. Many of us met Fr. Joe and sensed God present at his funeral Mass a-week-and-a-half ago at my home parish, St. Kateri, at Christ the King Church. Those of us here who could not be bussed to Fr. Joe’s funeral were with us in spirit and in prayer. I cannot speak for Fr. Joe (and he will without doubt correct me if and when we meet in heaven), but I picture him on the day of his funeral with all of us; with God present, smiling down on all of us there. I can imagine Fr. Joe speaking words to us from heaven similar to those of St. John Paul II to the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome in the moments before he died: “I came to you, and now you have come to me. And I thank you.”
God was present among us in Fr. Joe’s life and priesthood among us, was present on the day of Fr. Joe’s funeral, and is present here now: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. But is it not a bit arrogant and irreverent for us to reduce God to something accessible to our human senses; to something material?
I do not believe so, for two reasons. First, God has made God’s self human, one like us in all but sin in the person of Jesus Christ. Yes, God is entirely “other”; spirit and not something material we can sense. But, in the person of Jesus Christ, our God “humbled himself to share in our humanity.” Our God chose freely to share in our ability to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste in order to raise us up to a “share in the divinity of Christ.” Would we fear a God who takes on our humanity; our senses in this way? I would hope not. We could fear God becoming human, but this fear is itself a kind of arrogance and irreverence; a way to limit God. At its extreme (this error has been committed and condemned in our Christian history), this fear makes matter; the world; all of us whom God created as good out to be somehow bad. This is a lie. We know and so God invites us not to fear a God who, as Pope Benedict XVI says of Christ, “worked with human hands… thought with a human mind… acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved.” So that we might be saved and so that, through our senses, we might glory in the love and goodness in God’s creation, Jesus Christ made himself like us, able to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste.
And here lies the second reason why I believe we are right to seek God by our human senses; that this is neither arrogant nor irreverent. God did not stop at sending an angel to wake Elijah from his sleep of despair with God’s touch. God did not stop at feeding Elijah on Mount Horeb so that his prophecy might continue. God did not stop at feeding the hungry people of Israel with manna in the desert, or at Jesus’ feeding the multitudes on a hillside in Galilee. God did not even stop at sending us his own Son, Jesus Christ, our “living bread… from heaven”; “flesh for the life of the world.”
No, our Psalm urges us to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” But may we not stop at this. God still has not stopped working in and through us. God has given us our senses so that, in the love and goodness of God’s creation we may smell, touch, see, hear, and taste the presence and work of God the Creator. And yet we, with God, are co-creators. We have a mission: Make God seen and heard by our worship as one community of faith. Make God somebody we can touch by extending to one another a hand of peace; by working for peace and justice; nonviolence at all costs. Make God tasted by feeding those who suffer poverty and hunger; by inviting more people to the table of the Eucharist. Make God smelled; breathed in and out of us in everything we say and do. “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,” Ephesians says today.
This is our mission. At the end of time, when Jesus Christ returns, we may stop. Until then, we will not stop because God will not stop in each and every one of us. In Christ fully human God took on “flesh for the life of the world”; took on our senses: touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste. God has given us the gift of these same senses to bring us salvation and for us to make God’s goodness and love known; experienced; touched, smelled, seen, heard, and tasted.
Our readings today all speak of our experience of God in terms of our senses. Our Psalm praises God beautifully, inviting us to “taste and see the goodness of the LORD.” When Elijah, in our first reading today from 1 Kings, is in such deep despair that he asks God to take his life, an angel twice touches Elijah to wake him and then orders him to eat. And so God makes God’s presence known to Elijah through Elijah’s senses of touch and taste. In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks of himself as “the bread… from heaven.” Jesus is no ordinary food. Even the manna with which God fed the people of Israel in the desert while they were fleeing slavery in Egypt does not compare to the food Jesus offers. Manna had offered temporary relief from hunger. Jesus offers himself as the food necessary for our salvation; food that is eternal; “the living bread… from heaven” and “flesh for the life of the world.” Jesus offers us salvation we can sense: touch, smell, see, hear, and taste.
Yet Jesus invites us not just to take in God’s presence in our world by our senses. The Letter to the Ephesians from which we hear today says that “Christ handed himself over to us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” But immediately before this we hear in Ephesians, “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love.” Ephesians asks us to make God’s presence felt or, better yet, smelled as “a fragrant aroma” by the way we live “as beloved children” of God, “in love.”
And so my question is this: How does God smell in our world? How, by the way we live, are we making God smell in our world? Is God being smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted; more fully experienced as a God of goodness and love; a “fragrant aroma”; “the living bread… from heaven… for the life of the world” because of the way we live as Christians?
Many if not all of us here at the House of Mercy could answer truthfully, “Yes,” to this question. God lives and is experienced here. We hear God; the Word of God in our Scripture readings and here at Mass. We hear God in our lively celebration of Eucharist each Sunday; the participation of all of us in our beautiful music at our Sunday Mass. We see God in one another gathered here and then going forth from here to act in justice on the gift of God we receive in our worship. We taste God: Jesus Christ really and truly present under humble bread and wine in our Eucharist. And we taste and smell God present when we are fed and provide food here for many of this city’s homeless and otherwise hungry. We touch God in our sign of peace here; our works of peace out in our streets. These are powerful signs of God’s presence especially in this part of Rochester still beset by poverty; homelessness; hunger; violence.
God lives and we sense God present and alive here at the House of Mercy! But I would be missing one of the means in which God has been present and alive here if I did not mention my late Basilian brother priest and regular presider at our Mass here, Fr. Joseph Lanzalaco. Today I stand in Fr. Joe’s place, since he was first scheduled to preside at this Mass. In his own humble, friendly, and loving way, Fr. Joe brought people; brought us together to where God could be experienced: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. Many of us met Fr. Joe and sensed God present at his funeral Mass a-week-and-a-half ago at my home parish, St. Kateri, at Christ the King Church. Those of us here who could not be bussed to Fr. Joe’s funeral were with us in spirit and in prayer. I cannot speak for Fr. Joe (and he will without doubt correct me if and when we meet in heaven), but I picture him on the day of his funeral with all of us; with God present, smiling down on all of us there. I can imagine Fr. Joe speaking words to us from heaven similar to those of St. John Paul II to the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome in the moments before he died: “I came to you, and now you have come to me. And I thank you.”
God was present among us in Fr. Joe’s life and priesthood among us, was present on the day of Fr. Joe’s funeral, and is present here now: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. But is it not a bit arrogant and irreverent for us to reduce God to something accessible to our human senses; to something material?
I do not believe so, for two reasons. First, God has made God’s self human, one like us in all but sin in the person of Jesus Christ. Yes, God is entirely “other”; spirit and not something material we can sense. But, in the person of Jesus Christ, our God “humbled himself to share in our humanity.” Our God chose freely to share in our ability to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste in order to raise us up to a “share in the divinity of Christ.” Would we fear a God who takes on our humanity; our senses in this way? I would hope not. We could fear God becoming human, but this fear is itself a kind of arrogance and irreverence; a way to limit God. At its extreme (this error has been committed and condemned in our Christian history), this fear makes matter; the world; all of us whom God created as good out to be somehow bad. This is a lie. We know and so God invites us not to fear a God who, as Pope Benedict XVI says of Christ, “worked with human hands… thought with a human mind… acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved.” So that we might be saved and so that, through our senses, we might glory in the love and goodness in God’s creation, Jesus Christ made himself like us, able to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste.
And here lies the second reason why I believe we are right to seek God by our human senses; that this is neither arrogant nor irreverent. God did not stop at sending an angel to wake Elijah from his sleep of despair with God’s touch. God did not stop at feeding Elijah on Mount Horeb so that his prophecy might continue. God did not stop at feeding the hungry people of Israel with manna in the desert, or at Jesus’ feeding the multitudes on a hillside in Galilee. God did not even stop at sending us his own Son, Jesus Christ, our “living bread… from heaven”; “flesh for the life of the world.”
No, our Psalm urges us to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” But may we not stop at this. God still has not stopped working in and through us. God has given us our senses so that, in the love and goodness of God’s creation we may smell, touch, see, hear, and taste the presence and work of God the Creator. And yet we, with God, are co-creators. We have a mission: Make God seen and heard by our worship as one community of faith. Make God somebody we can touch by extending to one another a hand of peace; by working for peace and justice; nonviolence at all costs. Make God tasted by feeding those who suffer poverty and hunger; by inviting more people to the table of the Eucharist. Make God smelled; breathed in and out of us in everything we say and do. “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,” Ephesians says today.
This is our mission. At the end of time, when Jesus Christ returns, we may stop. Until then, we will not stop because God will not stop in each and every one of us. In Christ fully human God took on “flesh for the life of the world”; took on our senses: touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste. God has given us the gift of these same senses to bring us salvation and for us to make God’s goodness and love known; experienced; touched, smelled, seen, heard, and tasted.
