Homily for June 22, 2025

A couple of days ago I was talking with a small group of children who were telling me what they learned of the different ways that people serve in the Church. How some will give of their time to help the poor on the streets, or wash & iron the linens used at every Mass, or help the priest distribute Holy Communion, and others.   I shared how, shortly after I received my First Communion, I wanted to be like that guy who got up at the Ambo and read at Mass.   I was like, what, 9 years old? And now—in hindsight—I realize that the Lord was gradually calling me to serve His people.   I didn’t become a Lector until I was 17, but the Lord kept asking me.

What I didn’t realize is that He was asking me to give something more than just a little bit of my time and talent on Sundays—I absolutely loved being a Lector, an EMHC, to swing the thurible, to be a sacristan!   The Lord was glad that I was serving the Church in those roles, but He was also inviting me to give more—not just a little bit but all of myself.   It’s what a life-long vocation requires: that we give not only part of ourselves but all of who we are. Answering our vocation requires sacrifice.   When the Lord calls a man and a woman to Holy Matrimony, they give up the life they had previously to give themselves wholly for the other.   Not to mention the call to parenthood!

When we think of Abraham in the Book of Genesis, he didn’t get a job description from God; instead He just told Abraham: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.   The Lord asked sacrifice of Abraham.   Leaving home behind was a sacrifice already.   In our reading today, he went to fight off the kings in battle to rescue his nephew when he came across Melchizedek, king of Salem (later known as Jerusalem).   Melchizedek offers bread and wine to bless Abraham, to bless the Lord and give Him thanks for Abraham’s victory!

It couldn’t be more obvious that Melchizedek’s sacrifice foreshadows the Eucharist.   Abraham, in response, tithed Melchizedek (he gave 1/10^th of everything he had).   The Lord later asked Abraham to sacrifice more than a tenth: to sacrifice his own/only offspring: Isaac.   The angel of the Lord stopped Abraham once He knew Abraham’s fidelity.   In the Eucharistic Prayer we invoke the sacrifices offered by Melchizedek, by Abraham, and the sacrifice of Abel, who offered the firstlings of his flock.   For a sacrifice offering to count, it needs to cost us.   Spouses offer their own body, their own career, even their own culture, for love of each other and their children.

The sacrifice of Melchizedek, priest of God Most High; without father, mother, or ancestry, w/obeginning of days or end of life, thus made to resemble the Son of God (we read in the Letter to the Hebrews) is a foreshadowing of Jesus Himself and His eternal sacrifice.   Even what Christ uses to feed the multitude requires sacrifice: Give them some food yourselves.   All they had was 5 loaves and 2 fish. It wouldn’t even feed the Twelve, but they trusted that the Lord was asking for a sacrifice of them.   Not only did they feed the multitude until all ate and were satisfied, but they had leftovers! They filled twelve wicker baskets.

I think that, in our Western/utilitarian mindset, sacrifice necessarily means a loss. ‘But our goal is to increase revenue, isn’t it!?   How come a good God would ask of me to sacrifice my precious time/my comfort/even my career?’   We have been lured by the promises of individualism, where it’s all about me. True love (meanwhile) requires sacrifice.   True love is to do what’s in the best interests of the other.    True love is foundational for any vocation to flourish: spouses, parents, consecrated life, priesthood.   W/o love (w/o sacrifice) I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.

Old Testament sacrifice itself is a foreshadowing of the greatest expression of God’s love.   God stopped Abraham’s sacrifice but did not stop the sacrifice of His own Son on the Cross.   Melchizedek (a king and priest) offered a sacrifice to God Most High—a sacrifice of bread and wine.   Jesus is the king/the eternal high priest;   the priest’s job is to offer sacrifices, to intercede for his people.   And that’s exactly what Jesus did, as the one priest w/o beginning or end: He offered the once-for-all sacrifice to intercede on our behalf, for our salvation!

He used the same items that Melchizedek used; the difference is that the bread & wine are not something other/something apart from Jesus.   Jesus is both the priest offering the sacrifice but also the offering itself.    I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”   On the cross, in the moment of the offering, the devil kept finding ways to tempt Him not to follow through: He saved others; he cannot save himself… Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.   But it was never about Him; it was about us.   St. Catherine of Siena said that, ‘it was not nails that held Jesus to the cross; it was love.’   This is my body, which will be given up for you.

The Eucharist is pure love. The Eucharist is God Incarnate Himself. He held back nothing of or for Himself, but gave His whole Body and Blood on our behalf.   Not only as an event to mark our timeline as something from 2K years ago, but He also gave us the memorial of the Eucharist, that we may participate in that same sacrifice.  Every time we approach this Altar, we receive the real sacrifice of love.   We receive Love incarnate under the semblance of bread and wine.