You have heard of converts but have you heard about reverts?  This is a playful name others and I have given to Catholics who stopped practicing their Faith, perhaps joined another denomination, and then decided to come back to the Church...which means they started coming back to Mass.

On more than one occasion, I ask them what has led them to revert to the Catholic Church.  At least one, if not the most important, reason is that they 'miss Holy Communion.'  The truth proclaimed by our Lord in John 6, in today's Gospel, has deeply penetrated their hearts; though the preaching, music, outreach may be better in another church, they know that they are missing His 'flesh for the life of the world' and their life as well.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in my homily, when God wants to transform the world God sets up events to prepare people for this massive shift.  In theology we call this prefiguration.  So if God is going to forgive sins through the sacrament of Baptism and thus give people a whole new relationship with Himself, God leads his people through the Red Sea to prefigure this saving experience.  In the First Reading we read that Elijah is fed by an angel centuries before the Eucharist; his follower Elisha multiplies bread as well.  Jesus Himself also prefigures the multiplication of His Body in the miracle of the loaves and the fishes.

Even Catholics who have lost the Faith have a kind of homesickness for the Mass.  As I have mentioned before in this space, when writer James Joyce departed the Faith [as well as Ireland] there was one day of the year when he would come to Mass in France, the home of his exile...Holy Thursday, the day when the Eucharist was instituted.

For others, perhaps many others, Jesus making Himself truly present--Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity--is just too good to be true.  But think about it: aren't the people, places, works of art and music, animals we cherish 'too good to be true'?  Is there not something ineffable about them?  We can attempt to explain why we love them but at some point  the words fall apart and we are happily reduced to a revering silence.

So Jesus loves us, and when you love someone you want to be with that person more than anything.  In His very human and divine imagination, in His very Jewish appreciation of meals and ritual, He devises this sacrificial meal to make Himself, His death & His rising present for His beloved.  And us?  We're just not used to being loved so utterly, tenderly, and imaginatively--we're not 'used to' God!  Perhaps we say, by our attitudes or actions, what my young nephew said when invited to do something he'd rather not, "I'll pass."

Innumerable times throughout Catholic history the Eucharist has been profaned.  One of the most horrific scenes in ROMERO, the film account of Archbishop Romero's defense of the Salvadoran poor, is when soldiers turn their machine gun on the tabernacle.  The consecrated hosts fly up into the air when the bullets tear into the tabernacle and the stricken Archbishop hurries to pick them--Him--up.  And despite insults and unbelief Jesus still, day after day, feeds us with His presence.  To use words stolen from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians, in Holy Communion Jesus really shows Himself to be humble, gentle, patient and loving.

As I conclude my ministry here in Capitola I have to tell you that one of my great sorrows as a parish priest has to do with people dropping out of the practice of their Faith or transferring to another denomination.  One of my greatest joys is to witness the loving reception of Communion by the people of the parish and to see how many come, day and night, to be with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  And, finally, one of my greatest hopes is that, nourished by Him in the Eucharist, our parishioners, especially the newly initiated, will go out to be with Him and serve Him in those who fall through the cracks of our society or are rejected or have no one to love them.

It is mind-blowing that with all our sins, corruptions and distortions we Catholics have for the past twenty centuries obeyed that command given at the Last Supper "Do this in memory of me."  Wonderful as it is, the Word was not enough; music and preaching were not enough; a lovely building and kindly people were not enough; even the doing of good works was not enough.  The more than enough of Jesus' true presence in the Eucharist was finally what He decided was needed by us human being starved for love.

It calls to mind the touching truth Pascal discovered: The one who does not love too much does not love enough.