A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus heard of the death of John the baptizer. He withdrew by boat from where there to a deserted place all by himself. The crowds heard about it and followed Jesus on foot from the towns. When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast multitude, his heart was moved with pity, and he cured their sick.
As evening drew on, his disciples came to him with the suggestion, this is a deserted place, and it is already late. Dismiss the crowds now so that they may go to the villages and buy some food for themselves. Jesus said to them, there is no need for them to disperse. Give them something to eat yourselves. We have nothing here, they replied, except five loaves and a couple of fish.
Bring them here, Jesus said. Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed and broke them, and gave the loaves to his disciples, who in turn gave them to the people. All those present ate their fill. The fragments, which remained when gathered up, filled 12 baskets.
Those who ate were about 5,000, not counting women and children. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. You often hear references made very laudatory to how our blessed lord was aware of the needs of the people, the hoi polloi, the vulgar crowd, How he cured their sick and, on several instances, at least two, fed them in a very wondrous way. That is very true.
The point is this, what kind of a dent defeating that handful of people, even there were 5,000, what dent did that make, or what in the starving people of the world, or the few cures that our blessed Lord made, what dent did that make in the totality of the multitude of people all over the world who were crippled and blind and deaf and all the rest? Just think about that for a few minutes. If Christ was God, why didn't he remove sickness entirely? If there be a good and benevolent God, why do we have death at all? Why do we have suffering?
Why do we have a lack of food? Why do we have anything that you call evil? Because that's what we're talking about, the existence, so called existence of evil in the world. Well, that's not what I'm the point I'm making. I am coming to another point.
It is true Christ fed the multitudes. It is true he cured a handful, a a miniscule. You can't exaggerate how small this is compared to the the number of people existing in our lord's own day. What was 5,000 compared to even the mall the people all living in Palestine? These were populous areas.
There's one thing our blessed Lord did do. He did bring us food for the multitude over the whole world. He did bring his wondrous healing power for the entire multitude of men and women living in the world, and not only in his own day, but to the end of time. But he didn't do it by giving them some bread, even if he multiplied the loaves in a wondrous way, And he didn't do it by just curing a few deaf people or a few lame people or a few blind people or a few people with palsy or leprosy. He did it by giving us his own flesh and blood.
My flesh is your bread, and my blood is your drink. And he gave us himself to rescue us, not to eliminate what we call physical evil, but to raise us above it, to give us the wherewithal to survive it. This is the great message of Christianity, nothing like it has ever occurred. Christ didn't deny that people were sick, but he cured a handful, a tiny little handful. But more than that, he came to cure men not only of his own time, but for until the end of time, to cure them from everything that would would what?
Would destroy them. Destroy them in what sense? Is a man destroyed because he dies of starvation? Is a person destroyed because he has leprosy? Is a person destroyed because he's blind and deaf?
Think of Helen Keller. As our blessed lord said, it's not what goes into a man that destroys him, it's it's what comes out. What I'm coming to now is this. We began yesterday the reading of the sixth chapter of Saint John. It'll take about three or four Sundays to get through it, and by that time people have forgotten what came first or what came second or anything.
This is absolutely absurd to attack a serious question, breaking it down into these little bits. You don't do that even with a dime novel, if you have any sense. And yet this is what we do with these mightily important texts. This sixth chapter of Saint John is this enormously famous chapter having to do with God's our Lord's promise to give us his flesh and his blood his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. It's a it is absolutely overwhelming, that chapter.
And there is nobody who has charged it with being spurious or that it does that is that it has lost integrity, that it is that it has that is not authentic. None of those charges. This is you can't escape it. You can't get around it by finagling words, whether you read the Greek or the Latin or the English or the Hebrew or anything. The point is, it's there.
But you see, you're not going to get the impact of this by reading just a bit of it today and then let a whole fortnight go and then read another bit of it. And friends, I what is more important as I ask you? And I'm asking your opinion. I know what the church's opinion is. The church says that the the eucharistic sacrifice is the summit and the apex of Catholic worship, And that's being forgotten today, where the Eucharistic sacrifice means the real presence of Jesus Christ, that the bread is his physical flesh and the wine is his physical blood.
How do I know it? I don't know it by my senses. I don't know it because a bunch of theologians tell me. I can only accept such an absolutely crazy idea on the credibility of God. How can I possibly, possibly believe that bread, and it's not even ordinary bread, can become God?
And that wine can become God just because some man says a few words, how can you possibly believe that except on the authority of God? Remember, in the sixteenth century when the reformers came into play, these were powerful, God fearing, sincere men of high intelligence. There were other things too, but they were these. The first thing they attacked was the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and the second was the mass. They agreed on this.
Only Luther, only and he did not prevail. Remember, he was not the great champion of Protestantism, Calvin. It was Presbyterianism that prevailed. Only Luther said there's some kind of real presence. Only one.
The rest of them said no. We say that a true Catholic today says yes. Why do you say yes? I say a true Cathy because there are plenty of Catholics who don't say yes. Today, we have gone so far towards ecumenism that we are forgetting truth, the truth of Christ Church.
And the Catholic Church has stood solidly even when the whole of Northern Europe deserted her on the real presence of Jesus Christ physically present in the Eucharist. I don't care what philosophical term you use for this. You don't have to be an Aristotelian. But you do have to believe to be a Catholic that the that the bread and the wine become the body and blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, physically present. Don't ask me how.
I only know to be an honest to God Catholic, that's what you have to believe. And certainly the second Vatican Council reaffirmed this in no uncertain language. There's no pussyfooting about the second Vatican Council on this matter. Now I come back to this chapter six of Saint John. I urge you, get it and read it in its entirety.
It's powerful. It's absolutely overwhelming. Then take it still more in conjunction with the miracles that precede it. And this is one of them, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the walking on the water. And here and then take this in conjunction then with the finally the Last Supper, where Christ said, This is my body and this is my blood.
Do this in commemoration of me. This all has to be taken together. And what do you come out with? You don't come out with a philosophical demonstration, of course you don't. But you come out with extremely strong motives of credibility based on the credibility of Jesus Christ.
Who if he is not God, he is the world's worst liar and charlatan the world has seen. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.