If Anyone Eats of This Bread, He Will Live for Ever
Introduction: May you continue to be nourished by
that which (Him Whom) GOD provides for your sustenance and may it (He) enable
you to continue to see and live out the mission that GOD gives to you.
Before
an army heads out on a mission, those in charge must be sure that all the
soldiers have provisions to last them during the exercise of their duty. The
longer and more difficult the job to be done, the more provisions must be
obtained.
We
are on a mission that is eternally more important than anything else. We are
charged to wage war on evil and win the battles so that the ultimate victory
(that has already been won) can be experienced by all. Our Leader has provided
for us. He has the provision we need. The provision is Jesus, Himself. We are
asked to take Him into ourselves and be nourished for eternal life and then we
will be able to fulfill our mission, our mission of continuing to announce the
Good News.
“Taste
and see the goodness of the LORD.” These words from the Responsorial Psalm
could easily be the theme of today’s readings. Our First Reading presents the
account of a frustrated, despairing Elijah being nourished by food and drink
provided by GOD so that he could continue on the journey that GOD had set
before him. The passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians reminds us that
we must do as the Lord Jesus has done – become a sacrificial offering to GOD.
The Gospel continues Jesus’ “Bread of Life” discourse in which He once again affirms
that He is the Bread of Life – the Gift of GOD for the world. All we need do is
open ourselves to the Goodness of GOD and take and receive that Goodness and we
will be nourished for our life’s journey.
First Reading 1 Kings 19:4-8: The angel gives Elijah
food to reach the mountain of God
Commentary:
The
wicked Queen Jezebel had slaughtered all the prophets of the Lord except
Elijah. Elijah had then mounted a competition with the prophets of Baal,
challenging them to bring fire down from heaven to consume the bull they were
sacrificing to Baal. Despite Elijah’s taunts, they had failed miserably,
leaving the field to an easy victory by Elijah, whose God produced a flawless
display of pyrotechnics, climaxing in a splendid holocaust. Nevertheless, Elijah
still felt threatened, fled, and announced that he had had enough of life,
whereupon he fell asleep in a sulk. God’s reaction to this petulant behaviour
is touching. First, he wakes Elijah up to an excellent breakfast, then he
provides a sufficiently substantial lunch to fortify Elijah for a forty-day
trek through the Sinai desert. Typical of God’s forgiveness and indulgence! His
chosen ones complain to him roundly, and he treats them pretty roughly at
times. Look at the relationship between Jeremiah or Job and God! Teresa of
Avila put it, ‘If you treat your friends like that, no wonder you have so few
of them.’ At least it shows that we are expected to treat God with intimacy and
frankness, voicing our complaints to our Father.
Responsorial Psalm 34:2-9, Taste and see that the Lord
is good.
Psalm 34
is the response of an individual who realizes that GOD answers the requests of
the faithful and provides what is needed to continue one’s life. It is also an
exhortation to others to come to the LORD GOD and experience the Goodness of
the LORD. It is only when one is willing to taste and see what GOD is willing
to provide that one can fully appreciate the love and care that GOD has for the
individual and the community of believers.
Second Reading Ephesians 4:30-5:2, Forgive each other as
readily as God forgave you
Commentary:
In
the early Church confirmation was known as the sealing in the Spirit, a rather
beautiful image, which stems from this passage. In the ancient world, long
before general literacy, everyone had a personal seal to mark documents or
possessions. We are the soft wax, which by confirmation are permanently set as
belonging personally to the Spirit of God, so we are in that sense the
possessions of the Spirit. The Spirit is ever alert to our needs, supporting us
before we realise our need of support, wise in guidance, unlimited in
generosity, tireless in forgiveness. Being sealed by the spirit commits us to
the same sort of consideration for others.
Gospel John 6:41-51, Anyone who eats this bread will
live forever
Commentary:
We
always think of this Bread of Life Discourse as centred on the Eucharist, but
the first part of it – just like the Liturgy of the Word in the first part
of the Mass – is centred on the Bread of Life which is the revelation of
God. The ruling quotation for this kind of Jewish sermon is, as we saw last
week, from Exodus, ‘Bread from heaven he gave them to eat’. Then halfway
through comes a quotation from the prophets, a sort of half-time booster quote.
This quotation from Isaiah comes in today’s reading, ‘They will all be taught
by God’. Its context is the personal relationship of each believer to the Lord.
The Lord will sow in our hearts individually the knowledge of himself so that
each of us has a personal, secret link, to be cultivated by prayer. If we listen
to the Father and learn from him, we come to Jesus, who has seen the Father. So
in this reading the emphasis is on listening, seeing, and believing the
revelation of the Father. This is no abstract set of truths but a personal
knowing, just as we know those we love on earth. Only at the end do we move on
to the final topic of eating the Bread of Life.
Reflection: God
offers his people abundant life, but we can miss it. What is the bread of life that
Jesus offers? It is first of all the life of God himself - life which sustains
us not only now in this age but also in the age to come. The Rabbis said that
the generation in the wilderness has no part in the life to come. In the Book
of Numbers, it is recorded that the people who refused to brave the dangers of
the promised land were condemned to wander in the wilderness until they died.
The Rabbis believed that the father who missed the promised land also missed
the life to come. God sustained the Israelites in the wilderness with manna
from heaven. This bread foreshadowed the true heavenly bread that Jesus would
offer his followers.
Jesus
is the "bread of life": Jesus makes a claim only God can make:
He is the true bread of heaven that can satisfy the deepest hunger we
experience. The manna from heaven prefigured the superabundance of the unique
bread of the Eucharist or Lord's Supper which Jesus gave to his disciples on
the eve of his sacrifice. The manna in the wilderness sustained the Israelites
on their journey to the Promised Land. It could not produce eternal life for
the Israelites. The bread that Jesus offers his disciples sustains us not only
on our journey to the heavenly paradise, it gives us the abundant supernatural
life of God which sustains us for all eternity.
The
food that makes us live forever: When we receive from the Lord's table
we unite ourselves to Jesus Christ, who makes us sharers in his body and blood
and partakers of his divine life. Ignatius of Antioch (35-107 A.D.), an early
church father and martyr, calls it the "one bread that provides the
medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us
live forever in Jesus Christ" (Ad Eph. 20,2). This supernatural food is
healing for both body and soul and strength for our journey heavenward.
Do
you hunger for the "bread of life"? Jesus
offers us the abundant supernatural life of heaven itself - but we can miss it
or even refuse it. To refuse Jesus is to refuse eternal life, unending life
with the Heavenly Father. To accept Jesus as the bread of heaven is not only
life and spiritual nourishment for this world but glory in the world to come.
When you approach the Table of the Lord, what do you expect to receive?
Healing, pardon, comfort, and rest for your soul? The Lord has much more for
us, more than we can ask or imagine. The principal fruit of receiving the
Eucharist or Lord's Supper is an intimate union with Christ. As bodily
nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens us in charity
and enables us to break with disordered attachments to creatures and to be more
firmly rooted in the love of Christ. Do you hunger for the "bread of
life"?
Lord
Jesus, you are the living bread that sustains me in this life. May I always
hunger for the bread which comes from heaven and find in it the nourishment and
strength I need to love and serve you wholeheartedly? May I always live in the
joy, peace, and unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, both now and in the
age to come.
Daily
Quote from the Early Church Fathers: Studying
the Scriptures with humility, by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"My
ambition as a youth was to apply to the study of the Holy Scriptures all the
refinement of dialectics. I did so but without the humility of the true
searcher. I was supposed to knock at the door so that it would open for me.
Instead, I was pushing it closed, trying to understand in pride what is only
learned in humility. However, the all-merciful Lord lifted me and kept me
safe." (excerpt from Sermon 51,6)
ownership and grief: “Do nothing to sadden the Holy Spirit with Whom you were sealed against the day of redemption.” —Ephesians 4:30
We want to
love God the Holy Spirit, for we are begotten of the Spirit (Jn 3:8), are
filled with the Spirit (see Acts 2:4), and follow the lead of the Spirit (Gal
5:25). Nevertheless, we can sadden or grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30).
We have
been sealed with the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30). This means we have been marked or
branded as owned by God. The Spirit’s work through our lives should be an
exterior expression of this interior mark, sometimes called a “character”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1272, see also 1269). Being sealed with the
Spirit means the potential absence in our lives of certain natural human
attitudes such as “all bitterness, all passion and anger, harsh words, slander,
and malice of every kind” (Eph 4:31). The absence of these expressions of our
fallen nature indicates that we are born again, have a new nature, and are
owned by God. Being sealed with the Spirit also means the potential presence of
kindness, compassion, and forgiveness (Eph 4:32). To err is human; to forgive
and show kindness and compassion even to our enemies is truly divine. This
indicates we are owned by God.
We love
the Holy Spirit by showing that God owns us. We grieve the Spirit by pretending
to own ourselves and doing our own thing. Don’t grieve the Spirit.
Prayer: Father, may I say and live the following
statement: “I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not
my own; Christ is living in me” (Gal 2:19-20). “If anyone eats this bread he
shall live forever; the bread I will give is My flesh, for the life of the
world.” —Jn 6:51. Praise Jesus risen! He wants to raise us from the dead!
Alleluia forever!
The personal
question/action for today: What worldly “junk food” have I been
taking that does not nourish me for my life’s journey toward the house of my Abba-Father
Who happens to be GOD? Have I been willing to fully “taste and see” the Good Bread
of Life and allow it to be my provision and provision? Do I become what I eat as
I take the Bread of Life and thus imitate the Lord Jesus Who nourishes me? What
can I do to offer the invitation to others to come, “taste and see” by the way I
treat them?