St Augustine’s Church
10 June 2007

In today’s Gospel, there is a clear link between the feeding of the five thousand people and the Blessed Eucharist. St Luke describes how Jesus took the bread and raised his eyes to heaven, then he blessed the loaves and broke them and gave them to his disciples. These are the very words that we have continued to use in the celebration of the Mass down the centuries: “On the same night that he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and thanked God for it and broke it” and gave it to his disciples.”

The Gospel account points to something very central about the Blessed Eucharist in its very last statement: “when the scraps remaining were collected, they filled twelve baskets.” When they had all eaten as much as they wanted, they discovered that they had far too much bread. In the same way, at the marriage feast of Cana, they bride and groom had not just enough wine to be able to offer drinks to their guests – they had 120 or so gallons of the very finest wine!

What these events are saying to us is that we completely underestimate how generous God is. God does not simply meet our immediate needs. He responds to longings that are so deep in our hearts that we are not even able to put them into words (cf. Rom 8:26).

One of the greatest problems in our times is our need for hope. We look to the future and we see all sorts of possibilities, good and bad. We look at the good things that might happen: possibilities for enriching human life through science and technology and communications; we see a world in which many diseases may be conquered; we see the possibility of achieving justice and peace to areas of conflict and of enabling developing countries to have the education and health care and decent living standards to which our brothers and sisters in those places have a right. And yet we know that, when all of that is done, we will still not have overcome the fragility that we experience because of illness and death and the fear that we have that we may become the victims of evil and betrayal and greed.

We look to the future and we also see the bad possibilities. We fear that the future may bring ever more ingenious and ruthless forms of terrorism; we fear that the damage we are doing to the planet may make life much more harsh for the generations that come after us; we fear that it may be a future marked by wars about scarce resources, even water, and by a lack of sufficient supplies of energy to maintain the kind of life we have been accustomed to; we fear that the great possibilities of science and technology will be abused and may often be a source of more harm than good.

In some ways we are like the people who built the tower of Babel. We are absorbed in trying to ensure our own future through our own efforts. We find that not only can our efforts not do what we hoped; they may leave us worse off than before.

The problem is that our hopes are unrealistic and they are too small and too timid. Pope John Paul said that in Europe today there is a temptation to what he called a dimming of hope (Ecclesia in Europa, 7). He also pointed to the reason why that is happening: “At the root of this loss of hope is an attempt to promote a vision of humanity apart from God and apart from Christ” (Ecclesia in Europa, 9). At the root of the loss of hope, in other words, is the loss of a vision of the meaning of life which is opened up and transformed by God’s love.

Today’s readings, and every celebration of the Eucharist, tell us where our hope is based – not on what we can achieve through our own efforts and possibilities offered by the world around us. Anything produced by our own efforts, however commendable, or out of the possibilities of this creation, will be limited and impermanent. It can never answer our longings for endless unthreatened joy.

Our hope is based on the death of Christ which we proclaim until he comes again in glory. That death was his entry into a life where there will be no more death or mourning, and where God makes all things new (Rev 21:4, 5). In that world all our efforts and possibilities and achievements will be taken up and transformed into the joy which will be the eternal life of the Body of Christ, the life that grows in us through the Eucharist.

The most powerful signs of hope, Pope John Paul told us, are the martyrs. They show us in an unmistakeable way their belief that only in the Risen Christ can we find the fullness of life for which we long. Anything, however desirable or good in itself, which separates us from him is not only worthless but harmful. Those of us who have had contact with the Irish College in Rome over recent years are sadly aware of one of the most recent witnesses to that hope. Father Ragheed Ganni, who was ordained in the Irish College was gunned down after celebrating Mass in his parish church in Mosul in Iraq. He had been very conscious of the danger he was in – his sister had been injured in a bomb blast; he had been subjected to many threats. Soon after his return to Iraq from Rome, he wrote a letter to the College saying: The most difficult thing was not knowing whether I’ll see the sunset of that day. In the evening I could never guarantee that I’ll see the sunrise on the following day.” But, he went on: “I still feel the current situation is a way to give testimony in a world seeking hope.”

His hope had its centre in the Eucharist. An article written after his death by someone who knew him well began:

"Without Sunday, without the Eucharist the Christians in Iraq cannot survive": that was how Fr Ragheed spoke of his community’s hope, a community that was used to facing death on a daily basis, that same death that yesterday afternoon faced him, on his way home from saying Mass.”

In our celebration of the Eucharist, we touch the core of our hope – the risen life of Jesus who has conquered death and pain and betrayal and injustice. God’s generosity to us is lavish and extravagant – far greater than we could ever have expected. The hope that answers all our longings is not an idea or the building of a more just and humane society. It is a Person, Jesus Christ. He is the goal of human history and the answer to all the yearnings of the human heart (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 45).

We are sent out at the end of Mass on a mission – to bring our faith in Jesus into the whole of our lives and to allow the hope of Christ to shine through us so that others can see it. Our procession this evening is an expression of our willingness to undertake that mission and to bring our faith in him to a world seeking hope. Jesus walks with us this evening as a reminder that he walks with us always as he promised. The Risen One who walks with us is the beginning of the fulfilment of God’s extravagant promise to us.

+Donal Murray
Bishop of Limerick