St. Bernard Catholic Church 100th Anniversary / 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024

 
The Most Rev. José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles
 
St. Bernard Catholic Church 
Los Angeles, California 
August 17, 2024
 
My brothers and sisters in Christ,^[1]
 
As I said, I’m very happy to be with all of you today for this special celebration — this anniversary Mass on your 100^th anniversary.
 
So, let’s give thanks to God today for his goodness, for all his blessings and all his graces during these past one hundred years! That’s a long time, isn’t it? So we have to be grateful to God for these 100 years as we are.
 
And also let’s thank God today for all your pastors, priests, deacons, religious sisters, all the ministers and volunteers and benefactors, and all the faithful men and women who built this church through their hard work and sacrifices down through the years.
 
Let us offer these prayers through the intercession of your patron, St. Bernard.
 
As you know, St. Bernard was one of the great reformers in the Church, and he called us all to a deeper life of prayer, a simple lifestyle, and a concern for the poor.
 
So we ask him to be with us today and to intercede for this parish established in his name, that we may grow in our love for Jesus and our desire to build his kingdom in our time and place.
 
As we all know, for the past few weeks in our Sunday Gospel readings, Jesus has been teaching the crowd about the mystery of the Eucharist.
 
And I think it’s very special that we reflect on this because the Eucharist in your parish — in the Church — in the life of Catholics is the center of our life.

It’s interesting that began these reflections several Sundays ago with his miraculous feeding of the five thousand by the Sea of Galilee. And as we know, then Jesus took a boat to the other side to Capernaum, and started teaching them about the Eucharist.
 
And in the Gospel passage we just heard, Jesus is nearing the end of his teaching. And many in the crowd are confused, and they start having discussions and arguments because they cannot understand what Jesus is talking about.
 
People want to know: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
 
I think we can understand the reaction of the people. What Jesus is saying must have been shocking to them cause they had never heard anything like that before.
 
But Jesus stays calm and repeats what he has been saying. And he makes this amazing beautiful promise.
 
He tells them: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”
 
Incredible, beautiful.
 
The Eucharist, my dear brothers and sisters, as we know, is why Jesus came down from heaven, it is why Jesus came down from heaven, so we could be lifted up to heaven! He died so that we might live and live forever with him.
 
The Eucharist is the sacrament of love, the sign that he leaves for us to remember his love. More than that, the Eucharist is the means by which we enter into this mystery of love.
 
So that’s what every time that we come to the celebration of Mass, it is, as we know, a beautiful and special moment for all of us. Because we know that Jesus is really present in his Body, his Blood, his Soul, and his Divinity.
 
And as we know, we are living in the time of Eucharistic Revival in our country. And we are rediscovering this sense of awe and amazement of what the Eucharist is all about.
 
So in this time of revival, Jesus is calling us once again: “to taste and see the goodness of the Lord,” as we were singing just before today.
 
The Lord is inviting us, as we heard in the first reading: “Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed!”
 
Now, my dear brothers and sisters, is a very special time in our lives as Catholics and in our lives as members of this parish, is a time to renew our faith, renew our love.
 
Just think about the first parishioners here 100 years ago were thinking — it was a beautiful blessing for them, the establishment of this parish. That’s the same excitement that we should have today.
 
Now is the time to hear once more the beautiful promise that Jesus makes to us: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”
 
So Jesus wants to change us, to transform us. His Body and Blood becomes a part of us, and when we eat and drink, we become a part of him. That’s our spiritual life, our vocation — to be another Christ, Christ himself.
 
The saints teach us that through the Eucharist, we are being changed into Jesus, little by little, day by day.
 
So as we celebrate this beautiful anniversary, let us ask for the grace to live with thanksgiving. Let us live from the holy Eucharist!
 
St. Bernard, pray for us!
 
And let’s ask for the help of our Blessed Mother Mary.
 
As the Word became flesh in her womb, may she help us to always have life from the flesh of her Son and to live forever with him in heaven.