Mass for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time.

00:08 - Our celebrant today is Jesuit Fr. Anthony Egan SJ.

00:44 - In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

00:45 - [Amen. ] The Lord be with you. [And with your spirit. ] We prepare ourselves to celebrate this Eucharist on the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

00:53 - We’re also aware that this week we celebrate national Women’s Day, so we pray especially for all women on this Sunday mass.

01:03 - To prepare ourselves to celebrate this Eucharist, we call to mind our sins and ask God for mercy and forgiveness.

01:10 - You were sent to heal the contrite of heart.

01:12 - Lord, have mercy. [Lord, have mercy. ] You came to call sinners.

01:16 - Christ, have mercy. [Christ, have mercy. ] You intercede for us at the right hand of the Father.

01:21 - Lord, have mercy. [Lord, have mercy. ] May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins and bring us life everlasting.

01:29 - [Amen. ] Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to people of good will.

01:36 - We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you, we give you thanks for your great glory, Lord God, heavenly King, O God, almighty Father.

01:48 - Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us; you take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer; you are seated at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us.

02:07 - For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father.

02:19 - Amen. Almighty everliving God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised.

02:39 - Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

02:47 - [Amen. ] A reading from the first Book of Kings.

03:11 - In those days: Elijah went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree; and he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers. ” And he lay down and slept under a broom tree; and behold, an angel touched him, and said to him, “Arise and eat. ” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water.

03:49 - And he ate and drank, and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time, and touched him, and said, “Arise and eat, else the journey will be too long for you. ” And he arose, and ate and drank, and walked in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

04:14 - The word of the Lord. [Thanks be to God. ] Taste and see that the Lord is good! [Taste and see that the Lord is good!] I will bless the Lord at all times, praise of him is always in my mouth.

04:32 - In the Lord my soul shall make its boast; the humble shall hear and be glad.

04:38 - [Taste and see that the Lord is good!] Glorify the Lord with me; together let us praise his name.

04:45 - I sought the Lord, and he answered me; from all my terrors he set me free, [Taste and see that the Lord is good!] Look toward him and be radiant; let your faces not be abashed.

05:01 - This lowly one called; the Lord heard, and rescued him from all his distress.

05:08 - [Taste and see that the Lord is good!] The angel of the Lord is encamped around those who fear him, to rescue them.

05:17 - Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed the one who seeks refuge in him.

05:23 - [Taste and see that the Lord is good!] A reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians.

05:34 - Brothers and sisters: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

05:41 - Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

05:59 - Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.

06:03 - And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

06:14 - The word of the Lord. [Thanks be to God. ] [Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!] I am the living bread which came down from heaven, says the Lord; if anyone eats of this bread they will live forever.

06:44 - [Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!] The Lord be with you.

07:05 - [And with your spirit] A reading from the holy Gospel according to John.

07:11 - [Glory to you, O Lord. ] At that time: The Jews murmured at Jesus, because he said, “I am the bread which came down from heaven. ” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not murmur among yourselves.

07:35 - No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.

07:43 - It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God. ’ Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

07:53 - Not that any one has seen the Father except him who is from God; he has seen the Father.

07:59 - Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

08:05 - I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.

08:12 - This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die.

08:18 - I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. ” Brothers and sisters, the Gospel of the Lord.

08:34 - [Praise to you, Lord, Jesus Christ. ] Do you follow Jesus because of what you can get from him…or do you follow him because of who he is? That’s the question I’d like to reflect on a bit today.

08:52 - As I was reading the account of Elijah in today’s first reading I could not but think of an acronym: TANSTAAFL…There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

09:04 - I first came across this idea as a child in Robert Heinlein’s 1966 classic science fiction novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a delightfully cynical story about how inhabitants of a colony on the moon rebel against earth and declare independence.

09:22 - Behind the ideas in the novel is an economic theory based on an observation of the ancient philosopher Epictetus, that, I quote, “… nothing is acquired for free, and necessarily must cost us something”.

09:39 - The phrase itself is possibly rooted in a past practice in some bars where a free lunch was provided when someone bought a beer.

09:49 - The catch – the food was salty, very salty, inducing the consumer to buy more beer…hence no ‘free’ lunch.

10:00 - In TANSTAAFL terms, the angel’s message to Elijah is something like: “Hey, don’t think I’m just giving you food to laze about being miserable.

10:09 - Get up! You have prophetic work to do!” But is this so? I think we need to see the angel’s calling of Elijah slightly differently.

10:20 - The food is a gift, a sign of life, that God has not abandoned him.

10:24 - A sign that however bad his life’s been, God is still present, still calling him to prophesy.

10:30 - And Elijah responds generously to the call.

10:34 - In theological terms, it’s Grace – God’s free gift – that invokes in us a response out of gratitude, not obligation.

10:44 - We see this again in the gospel, this particular section involving the miracle of the feeding of the thousands, and the beginning of the bread of life dissonance, where Jesus seems to be saying to the crowd “Are you following me for the freebie food – or are you actually following me?” He is not adopting the TANSTAAFL principle – quite the opposite.

11:10 - Rather he’s s encouraging the crowd to move beyond such ideas as free lunches or no such things as free lunches.

11:19 - He is not bribing them to follow him. He is not using such ‘gimmicks’ as a means even to lure them into his world.

11:28 - The miracle he has performed comes simply out of his compassion, his concern for them – but as in the rest of John’s gospels the miracle is a sign – the word, in fact, used for miracle in John is semeion, Greek for ‘sign’ – that points back to who Jesus really is, with the invitation to the crowd – and to us – to follow him.

11:50 - To follow him not because of what he can give us, but who he really is.

11:56 - I must confess that this makes me worry about our Christian lives and the state of the church today.

12:03 - It often seems that gimmicks and tricks to keep people in Church has replaced the call to discipleship.

12:09 - Check out the average religious channel on TV and you see a plethora of promises of miracles, healing and – most disturbingly – the suggestion that following Jesus will make you rich.

12:21 - There are even churches that make the latter message explicit, usually with the coda that this will happen only if you tithe generously to them.

12:31 - Its, well, a scam – a bit like offering a free, but salty and hence thirst-inducing lunch.

12:41 - Less blatant but as a result more insidious is another phenomenon.

12:47 - The way we often turn our relationship with God into a kind of contract: I’ll do everything by the book, go to church every Sunday (at least when it is possible, when this pandemic is over and things get back to normal), and in return God will protect me in this life, and when I die I’ll go to heaven for eternal bliss.

13:09 - How often do our prayers become like that? I’ll admit it.

13:14 - I’ve done this myself during my life – prayers and promises and bargaining with God.

13:20 - We all have. And to grow in faith, to experience the free gift of grace, we must get over it.

13:28 - Now I am not saying that we should scrap prayers of intercession.

13:31 - In a few minutes, after all, we’ll be doing just this.

13:35 - But I think our prayers must move beyond this.

13:39 - We should, to use a phrase coined by St Ignatius of Loyola, pray as if everything depended on God but act as if it was all up to us.

13:50 - If we pray for those who are poor and hungry, we should also get off our butts and do things to help those who are poor.

13:59 - If we are sick, we should pray for healing – and do whatever is in our power, and the power of modern medicine, to get better.

14:07 - In these times, get those jabs! If we pray, particularly this week, for full equality and dignity of women in church and state, we should be doing things to make this happen.

14:20 - Putting pressure on the powers that be to translate progressive legislation into action, nudging those who resist to change their ways, and trying to live lives that reflect personal commitment to gender justice.

14:35 - Above all, our prayers should move beyond intercession and what mystics call contemplation.

14:46 - Contemplating the person of Jesus himself. For who he is, not what he can ‘give’ us.

14:56 - A parting shot, to disturb you further: imagine for a moment that after this life there is nothing, no heaven, no hell.

15:07 - We just die and our remains return to the cosmic matter of the universe God created from which we all came.

15:14 - Would we still pray, would we still love God, the God revealed to us in Jesus of Nazareth? I hope we would.

15:27 - I hope I would. Let us now together profess the faith we all share by saying together the Apostles’ Creed.

15:46 - I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

16:04 - He descended into Hell; on the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from there He will come to judge the living and the dead.

16:18 - I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

16:31 - [Amen. ] Let us now bring before the Lord our prayers and petitions on this day.

16:39 - We pray that we may come to a deeper knowledge and love of the God revealed to us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

16:48 - We pray that we may deepen this love not out of fear or what we might ‘get’ from him but out of a sense of who Jesus is.

17:00 - Lord hear us. [Lord, graciously hear us. ] As we celebrate International Women’s Day this week, we pray for all women.

17:10 - We pray especially for the end to violence and abuse against women, and for the full equality of men and women in every aspect of society.

17:20 - We pray that work for this equality may be integral to how we live.

17:28 - Lord hear us. [Lord, graciously hear us. ] We pray for those who are poor and marginalised in society.

17:36 - Once again, rather than sitting around waiting for things to happen, we pray that we may all be active agents for change.

17:46 - Lord hear us. [Lord, graciously hear us. ] We pray for an end to this pandemic and especially for health care professionals and researchers seeking a cure for Covid-19.

17:58 - May we cooperate with all those engaged in this pursuit, doing what is needed to avoid spreading the virus and getting our inoculations as they become available.

18:12 - Lord hear us. [Lord, graciously hear us. ] For your own prayers.

18:25 - Lord hear us. [Lord, graciously hear us. ] Loving God, we bring before you the prayers we make, spoken and unspoken.

18:43 - We pray particularly for the strength to act on what we pray for.

18:47 - And we make all these prayers in the name of Christ the Lord.

18:51 - [Amen. ] Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, through your goodness we have this bread to offer: fruit of the earth, work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.

19:33 - [Blessed be God for ever. ] Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, through your goodness we have this wine to offer: fruit of the vine, work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink.

19:53 - [Blessed be God for ever. ] Pray, my brothers and sisters, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God our almighty Father.

20:10 - [May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of God’s name, for our good and the good of all God’s holy Church. ] Be pleased, O Lord, to accept the offerings of your Church, for in your mercy you have given them to be offered and by your power you transform them into the mystery of our salvation.

20:31 - Through Christ our Lord. [Amen] The Lord be with you.

20:37 - [And with your spirit. ] Lift up your hearts.

20:40 - [We lift them up to the Lord. ] Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

20:45 - [It is right and just. ] It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God.

20:55 - For we know it belongs to your boundless glory, that you came to the aid of mortal beings with your divinity and even fashioned for us a remedy out of mortality itself, that the cause of our downfall might become the means of our salvation, through Christ our Lord.

21:12 - Through him the host of Angels adores your majesty and rejoices in your presence for ever.

21:17 - May our voices, we pray, join with theirs in one chorus of exultant praise, as we acclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy [Lord God of hosts.

21:28 - Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.

21:33 - Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

21:35 - Hosanna in the highest. ] You are indeed Holy, O Lord, and all you have created rightly gives you praise, for through your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, by the power and working of the Holy Spirit, you give life to all things and make them holy, and you never cease to gather a people to yourself, so that from the rising of the sun to its setting a pure sacrifice may be offered to your name.

22:00 - Therefore, O Lord, we humbly implore you: by the same Spirit graciously make holy these gifts we have brought to you for consecration, that they may become the Body and Blood of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose command we celebrate these mysteries.

22:17 - For on the night he was betrayed he himself took bread, and, giving you thanks, he said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples, saying: TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND EAT OF IT, FOR THIS IS MY BODY, WHICH WILL BE GIVEN UP FOR YOU.

22:39 - In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took the chalice, and giving you thanks, said the blessing, and gave the chalice to his disciples, saying: TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT, FOR THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND ETERNAL COVENANT, WHICH WILL BE POURED OUT FOR YOU AND FOR MANY FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS.

22:56 - DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME. The mystery of faith.

23:07 - When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim your Death, O Lord, until you come again.

23:15 - Therefore, O Lord, as we celebrate the memorial of the saving Passion of your Son, his wondrous Resurrection and Ascension into heaven, and as we look forward to his second coming, we offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice.

23:30 - Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and, recognizing the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ.

23:52 - May he make of us an eternal offering to you, so that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect, especially with the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, with Saint Joseph, her Spouse, with your blessed Apostles and glorious Martyrs and with all the Saints, on whose constant intercession in your presence we rely for unfailing help.

24:13 - May this Sacrifice of our reconciliation, we pray, O Lord, advance the peace and salvation of all the world.

24:20 - Be pleased to confirm in faith and charity your pilgrim Church on earth, with your servant Francis our Pope, Buti our Bishop, with the Order of Bishops, all the clergy, and the entire people you have gained for your own.

24:34 - Listen graciously to the prayers of this family, whom you have summoned before you: In your compassion, O merciful Father, gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world.

24:45 - To our departed brothers and sisters and to all who were pleasing to you at their passing from this life, give kind admittance to your kingdom.

24:53 - There we hope to enjoy for ever the fullness of your glory through Christ our Lord, through whom you bestow on the world all that is good.

25:03 - Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, for ever and ever.

25:16 - [Amen. ] As the Lord has taught us, so let us pray: Our Father, [who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

25:34 - Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. ] Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days.

25:52 - That by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

26:03 - [For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and for ever. ] Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your Apostles: Peace I leave you, my peace I give you, look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will, who live and reign for ever and ever.

26:23 - [Amen. ] The peace of the Lord be with you always.

26:25 - [And with your spirit. ] Offer each other the sign of peace.

26:40 - Lamb of God, [you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

26:46 - Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

26:52 - Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace. ] Behold, the Lamb of God, the one who takes away the sins of the world, how blessed are we who are called to the supper of the Lamb.

27:06 - [Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed. ] May the Body and the Blood of Christ bring us life everlasting.

27:18 - [Amen. ] Although you cannot receive physical communion with us now, we invite you into a moment of spiritual communion.

27:34 - The great medieval theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, defined spiritual communion as: “an ardent desire to receive Jesus in the Holy Sacrament”, and “a loving embrace as though we had already received him. ” His words are echoed by the great mystic, and fellow doctor of the church, St. Teresa of Avila, who wrote: “When you do not receive Communion, and do not attend Mass, you can make a spiritual communion which is a most beneficial practice.

28:06 - By it, the love of God will be greatly impressed on you. ” At this moment we invite you to focus on Christ, and your longing for union with him.

28:20 - Express your desire to feel his grace coursing through you, giving you strength and courage, particularly in these difficult times.

28:30 - In your desiring union you are united with us, and to Christ.

28:37 - In this moment we experience the reality that is already here.

30:12 - Let us pray. May the communion in your sacrament that we have consumed, save us, O Lord, and confirm us in the light of your truth.

30:22 - Through Christ our Lord. [Amen. ] The Lord be with you.

30:27 - [And with your spirit] Almighty God bless us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

30:32 - [Amen. ] Our mass is ended, let us remain in the peace of Christ.

30:36 - [Thanks be to God. ].