I have a dream of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail one day. It will probably always be a dream. First of all I’m not an experienced hiker. I’ve pretty much only done day hikes. I’ve never hiked out far enough to set up a tent that isn’t on an already established campsite, usually with a bathroom and shower available. My parents one day gave me a great birthday gift of glamping in a super fancy Yurt on Savage Mountain with muffins delivered every morning, don’t think I would have that on the trail. Secondly, I can’t imagine, outside of a Sabbatical, getting away for six months and if they ever did give me a sabbatical, I would probably be too old to hike. Then as a priest I’d have to pack extra stuff for Mass and my prayers, yeah it is a good dream and might just stay that way. If I am realistic I can imagine how it would go. Day 1: Wow! This is awesome. It is so peaceful and beautiful surrounded by God’s grandeur, this granola is delicious. Day 2: Boy am I tired, it is a good tired, the granola is good though. Day 3: Stupid rain, I’m soaked and my feet hurt, granola is soggy. Day 4: My foot is a big blister, I think I’m lost, and I hate granola. Day 5: Help! I recently heard a true story about two people hiking the trail. One of them brought extra good food, which added to his pack weight. Another hiker was going ultra-light and teased the hiker with the extra food, laughing at him. At night one sat around a campfire enjoying his delicious meal, the other was grumbling in the cold chewing on a little cracker. Even when he was invited to share dinner together the guy just finished his cracker and went to sleep. I think the angel in our first reading would tell that guy who was miserable the same thing he told Elijah, “Get up and eat or the journey will be too long for you.” You might be fit and have all the right gear, but the journey of the Appalachian trail will be too long for you if you don’t try to have a good meal and fellowship every once in awhile, something more than a granola and being alone. The success rate of hiking the whole AT in one year is only 25%. The journey of life is too long and difficult without good food and the fellowship that comes along with it.
The Mass is our food and fellowship that we need for the journey of life. Here we receive the Bread of Life, which Jesus states in the Gospel is Him. “I am the Bread of life.” Here we also sit around the fire of the Holy Spirit that inspired the Scriptures and tell the stories of our faith. We share this Sacred Meal and spend this Sacred Time together. We take part in Holy Communion, not only when we receive the Eucharist, but when we share in communion with each other. This is one of the reasons why a big focus area of the Pastoral Council is to foster relationships and link both new and old parishioners together, especially those who live near each other, in order to extend the welcome of Christ and heighten our experience of Holy Communion when we come together every weekend. I don’t think we can emphasize this enough. We know that Christ will be here in the miracle of His True Presence in the Eucharist, but what if He didn’t show up or was missing? We would all be worried, and the celebration would be greatly diminished. Shouldn’t we feel that way if any one of us weren’t here or was missing? Our celebration of Holy Communion is diminished when anyone is not here and it is greatly heightened when more and more people come. One of my greatest fears is not that someone might miss Church – it is that Church might not miss someone who isn’t here. I know with a big Church I can’t know everyone who comes or doesn’t come, heck, I am still trying to remember names. However, that is really your job. Imagine for a moment if something happened and you weren’t able to make it to Church for a while. What if nobody reached out to you to say that you were missed or ask how are you doing? You might not want to come back at all. I know we are all so darn private now a days, we hardly know our neighbors, and that includes our neighbors sitting next to us in the pews. Can I encourage you during the Sign of Peace today to introduce yourself to those sitting next to you and get to know each other’s names, maybe you already do that is great, after Mass introduce yourself to someone new. And here is the most important part of this challenge, next weekend look for the same people and say Hi before or after Mass. Get a Church buddy or two, families get to know each other, dare I say this is as important for communion as receiving the Eucharist? How long can your faith be sustained through the long journey of life if you just come to Church as a stranger and leave as a stranger? How weird would it be to share an amazing meal together and not know anyone around the table and not talk to each other? Would that be truly nourishing to your soul? Look I’m not saying you become best friends or that Church has to be like the bar in Cheers ‘where everyone knows your name’, but it sure would be great to know that somebody in Church does know your name and ‘is glad you came’. Studies show that people and families feel more and more alone and isolated and that one of the big reasons that people come to Church is to be part of a community. We are missing an essential part of Holy Communion when we don’t commune with one other and at least know that somebody in the Church knows us and is looking for us. Oh, by the way, this will also help us as a community to recognize visitors and new parishioners and make them feel extra welcome. Wouldn’t that be great if that was a hallmark of St. Katharine Drexel, a place where you are not just a bump on pew, but a treasured member of the community! I find that every Church thinks they are welcoming, and they are for those who are involved or been around for awhile. But being a welcoming Church to new parishioners, visitors, and those who can only come on Saturday or Sunday takes effort on all of our behalf to actually talk to one another and not just to God and our clique.
Okay, community is an essential part of our Sacred Meal where we receive the Bread of Life that is Jesus. However, even if we all knew each other and treasured one another there could still be a big problem. I remember one Thanksgiving where my family decided we would try to eat extra healthy and we made a ‘tofurkey’. You ever heard of this? It is tofu made to taste like turkey. It was the most god awful Thanksgiving meal ever. The thing I remember about it was the smell. It did not smell like Turkey, or anything that one should eat. It was probably good for us, but I just couldn’t get past the smell. Did you know that flavor is a combination of taste from our mouth and smell from our nose? In fact, studies have shown that 80% of flavor really comes from smell. Have you noticed things taste bland when you have a stuffed up nose? Try to eat something today while holding your nose and you will see the difference.
St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, “So be imitators of God – to offer to God a fragrant aroma.” The fragrant aroma of God is good and appealing. Think warm bread, flowers, fresh laundry. St. Paul encourages us to imagine what kindness to one another smells like. What odor is given off from compassion and forgiveness. What I love about this is smell is something we really can’t control. It comes off of us whether we like it or not. If we are imitators of God, people will notice it even if we don’t say anything at all. It will permeate the air around us. Likewise, bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling is something that can fill the air and cause us to lose our appetite. No amount of Axe spray can cover this up (I’m speaking to you high school guys). This means even if you are around a family table the meal will be ruined if there is a bad smell. Along with the effort we make to be intentional about community, we also have to be intentional about being imitators of Jesus Christ, who we receive in the Eucharist. If we are just going through the motions and not real disciples or striving to be so, it stinks, and our Sacred Meal will be affected. It will turn people off if we are not truly giving selflessly in service of others. Nothing stinks worse than selfishness and stinginess. That is why it smells so good in here – those blue bins in the narthex filled every weekend with food and clothes smells divine, the scent emanating from the room where our Haiti Committee meets is so sweet, those bringing Communion to our nursing homes and homebound leave a trail of wafting fresh baked bread, walking into our social justice committee meetings is like a whiff of fresh brewed French vanilla coffee. Wait until you smell the plaza for our Inclusion Project concert! This service and outreach makes us hungry for Jesus and we want more and want to do more. Let us pray that our Church will always be filled with the sweet smelling incense of kindness and compassion and that we remove the stench of bitterness, anger, and tofurkey.
To sustain ourselves for the long and difficult journey of life we must eat the Bread of Life, may we do so as a familiar family of faith enjoying the wonderful smells of community and service because we are imitators of and becoming what we receive – the Body of Christ.
