Last Sunday, I walked out of Mass.
It was at St. Suburbia's in the next town, where Fr. Leo preached an inoffensive little talk with at least some connection to the Gospel reading. That was the end of the "Bread of Life discourse" in John 6. Fr. was saying that the Eucharist is part of God's ongoing message to humanity: "Do not fear: I am with you." And that was OK. If only he'd known when to shut up!
The ad-hoc lector had read the "short form" of the Epistle text from St Paul to "the Christian community at Ephesus". And so he had not read us the passage (is it chapter 5?) that feminists don't like: "Submit yourselves to one another, out of reverence for Christ": wives, "be subservient" to your husbands [ooh, that's bad], and husbands, love your bride and lay down your life for her.
Since that part of the text had not been read to us, there wasn't any urgent need for Fr. Leo to speak about it, but he couldn't leave well enough alone: yes, he went back and read it. He opined that "women have a problem" with it, and declared that that passage was the best proof there is that St. Paul hadn't written Ephesians.
Fr. Leo just didn't seem to have gotten the point of the Gospel pericope that he had also read to us.
Now, I'm not shocked to hear that some Scripture scholars say that Ephesians differs in vocabulary and structure from other letters of St. Paul, and they think that it may have been put together by a follower of St. Paul as a summary of his teaching. As a theory, I've no problem with that: but the homily is not intended as an opportunity for a priest to attack the teachings of Scripture that we find hard.
That very Gospel passage from St. John had focused on the problem of a "hard teaching": on the break between (on one hand) Jesus, who taught that he was going to give us His flesh and blood to eat and drink, and (OTOH) those disciples who decided they didn't believe any more, and left him.
A "hard teaching", when it comes, is a challenge to me, and it's a mistake to write it off as inauthentic -- when more often it is I who am inauthentic!
The Spirit sent me out into the wilderness, so to speak, and so I left.
There was still plenty of time to get to St. Devotio's, and it was worth it: Fr. Daniel Dharmu, SMA, a young Indian-born missionary, just five years a priest, was visiting, and spoke about his work in East Africa. He's doing evangelization on the front line, bringing the Gospel to people who haven't heard it before, and performing about 250 adult baptisms a year. His 40-mile-by-20-mile mission zone has so many mission stations that he can only say Mass at each one monthly. Now, that is doing the work of God. That is a faith response to the Gospel.
Update: That other priest must be getting around!
