LEFTOVER FRAGMENTS

The Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetere)

We’re at Lent’s mid-point. This Sunday goes under several names: Laetere Sunday, from the opening word of the Latin Introit for today’s Mass (laetere means “rejoice”); “Refreshment Sunday,” because of the Eucharistic emphasis of the day (from the appointed Gospel), and, in England, Mothering Sunday. That one I’ll leave to an Anglophile to explain. The purple color of the vestments today is changed to rose (hence this day is also called "Rose Sunday"—as is the Third Sunday in Advent). All these different things, though, point in the same direction. We are taking a “breather” today. We don’t set aside our Lenten disciplines, but we relax a bit today. Tomorrow, we start the last half of our race, for which the past days have prepared us. Today, listen to a Bach cantata while enjoying a bourbon—or Chet Atkins while having a beer. Go for a drive along PCH for the pleasure of having the wind blow in your face or write a good, long letter to an old friend. Put aside an hour today to enjoy.

One of my favorite verses in the Psalter is “the Lord hath pleasure in His people.” Even though we’re sinners, even though we fail, time and again, to live lives of grace, He delights in us. He loves us.

In the Gospel read at Mass today, Jesus is confronted with a problem. Five thousand people are following Him around, listening to Him teach, waiting for Him to heal the sick and wanting Him to solve their problems. The apostles approached Jesus and, pointing to the immense crowd, said “They’re hungry. All of them. And there’s nothing we can do about it. This could turn ugly.” Andrew, Peter’s brother, said to Him, “There’s a lad here, with five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” Jesus took those five loaves and two fish and fed the crowd with them, giving everybody “as much as they would.” There were even leftovers. This is where it gets interesting.

St John writes, “He said to his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.’ Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above…”

Up to this point, St John tells us about the miraculous feeding—but in these last lines, he tells us there was meaning in what Jesus did. They filled twelve baskets after everyone had eaten everything they could. Twelve baskets for the twelve apostles, twelve apostles for the twelve tribes of Israel, the complete number of God’s people. Jesus is concerned that “nothing be lost,” but the nothing He’s concerned about isn’t pieces of bread—even Miracle Bread. It’s God’s people He doesn’t want lost. It’s you and me. We're the fragments of His Body.

In the early Church, painted on the ceilings of the catacombs and on the walls of their churches, there is a frequently recurring picture—a basket of loaves surmounted by two fish. Our earlier ancestors in the Faith understood today’s Gospel story was a foreshadowing of the Eucharist—God’s on-going, still-miraculous feeding of His people.

In the Eucharist, God feeds us on Himself. It isn’t merely a help to our souls—for Christians it is our One Necessary Food. We’ll starve without it. Christ intends this Food to be the primary way in which He dwells in us and we in Him. That’s why the Church does this over and over and over and over and over again. Every Sunday, every holy day without exception. This is what He has commanded us to do.

What is it we’re doing?

We are feeding on the Body and Blood of Christ, “to our great and endless comfort,” as the Prayer Book says. But something much more is going on with this Bread no longer bread and this Wine now changed. The Eucharist is not just Jesus present with us for Holy Communion, as essential as that benefit is. The Mass is more than “praying Jesus down.” It is lifting Him up—and ourselves with Him.

In the Mass, we offer to God our gifts—our money, our Sunday prayers and weekday concerns, and with those, the Prayer Book says, “the Priest shall then offer, and place upon the Holy Table, the Bread and the Wine.” We offer these things-money, prayers, intentions, bread and wine-as tokens of ourselves. Then we pray over them. Standing in Christ's place, the priest says the Prayer of Consecration, speaking Jesus’ words, declaring this bread and wine to be His Body and Blood. That done, we continue to pray, offering “this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” (the Greek word for “thanksgiving” is eucharist). We offer to God that which He has just given to us. We place before Him on the Altar Christ’s Body and Blood as “our bounden duty and service.” This Gift, Christ come among us, He then returns to us in Holy Communion.

Nowadays, it's easy for Christians to lose sight of what the Mass is. For almost fifty years, Christians of every stripe have been taught that the Eucharist, Holy Communion, is a sacred meal for us to eat and remember. Ancient notions of Sacrifice and Presence have been laid aside so we can be comfortable and lounge in church (I remember going into the old Roman Catholic cathedral in Las Vegas in the late 80’s and seeing an elderly priest celebrate Mass in one of the small side chapels—his congregation was only one little old lady—while three construction workers on their lunch break sprawled across the back pew eating sandwiches and joking. For a moment I watched in disbelief and then confronted them. Their behavior, I told them, was unacceptable; even if they didn’t believe anything was going on at the Altar, they were not only insulting the people present but God Who was there, too, whether they knew it or not. They scuttled out of the church. After Mass, the priest thanked me but worried that I might have scared them away from church; I told him they should be scared—had they touched Moses’ Ark they’d have been killed!). The Altar is a place of Awe. We genuflect towards it, bow to it, kiss it when we approach it and touch it only with reverence, not because it’s expensive, but because of Who Comes to us on it. When Jesus is with us, it’s His throne. Fr Rogers used to tell me the church had a roof over it because it had an Altar under it.

Christ is with us, because He delights in His people. If we are indeed His people, the sheep of His pasture, we should delight in Him. In the Mass we do this as we can nowhere else.

“We, being many, are one Bread, and one Body: for we are all partakers of that one Bread,” St Paul says. We are the individual fragments of His one Body, and He wants none of us lost. When He draws us together for the Eucharist, He makes us one by feeding us on Himself. He gives Himself to us because He loves us, because He delights in us. “The Lord hath pleasure in His people.” He takes pleasure in you.


Enjoy Refreshment Sunday.