23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024

Today’s Gospel reading is a simple one—on its face, it speaks to the impact of Jesus’ ministry. He performed such wonders that people could not help but talk about Him, such was their astonishment at His healings and miracles. These acts of Christ led to the following of the multitudes we read about in John 6; but, let us also remember why the multitudes ceased following Him. They followed because of the works they saw, but they left when He professed works they could not see. They believed what they had seen, but did not possess the faith to believe what is unseen. They did not trust Him enough to take Him at His word.

Our Lord, in this reading from Mark 7, performs several acts which should immediately be familiar to us. He touches a man’s infirmities—the matter of his illness—raises His eyes to heaven, and speaks. At the moment of His pronunciation, nature obeys. Similarly, we witness this action performed and recited by Christ’s minister, beginning by extending his hands over the offerings in the epiclesis—Be pleased, O God, we pray, to bless, acknowledge, and approve this offering in every respect; make it spiritual and acceptable, so that it may become for us the Body and Blood of your most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The priest here prays in humble petition, asking for and telling us that he will perform the same acts as Christ. He then takes the bread in his hands, touching the matter of the sacrament. While narrating our Lord’s acts in the prayer, he raises his eyes to heaven, and then bowing in reverence, he speaks Christ’s words—This is My Body. This is My Blood. At the moment of this pronunciation, nature obeys.

What Christ demonstrated visibly, His ministers perform sacramentally and invisibly. By the evidence of physical healing, Christ demonstrates what He said of the paralytic in Matthew 9—“which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” Through healing the deaf mute, Christ demonstrates His authority to command nature. He says to us, through my touch and my words, nature obeys. My Father spoke and all that is came to be. When I speak, all that is becomes new. He passed this authority to His apostles when He gave the keys to heaven to Peter and pronounced what you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and what you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. He leaves us no choice—in John 6 He says that the act of belief is the act which saves—the act of belief is the act of obedience!

His minister obeys by taking up the power of the keys and imitating our Lord in the sacraments. We obey by trusting His words, heeding His promises given to His Church, and following after Him. How do we know the Eucharist is His body? Because He said it is, and He demonstrated to us that His word is the truth to which nature conforms itself! How do we know that there is life after death? Because He died and rose again, as He said that He would! How do we know that He is true God and true Man? Because He said before Abraham was, I AM! Those words were not just the words of a prophet, but spoken with the power and authority of God. So powerful were those words that when the mob came to arrest Him in the garden, demanding His life, He responded to them I AM and that great armed mob drew back and fell to the ground at the sound of Him!



Do not let today’s Gospel simply be a story. Let it be, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews writes, the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The multitude who left Jesus, never to return, murmured and scoffed, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? He gives us precisely what He promised, not mere symbol or pageantry, but reality—because the very substance of nature bends its knee to His command. Let this Gospel be our conviction, modeled by Peter—You have the words of eternal life.