BREAD FROM HEAVEN FOR LIFE ON EARTH.
August 1, 2021
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - B.
An Ashanti proverb says: “Give me a fish and I will eat
today, teach me to fish and I will eat for a lifetime.” And a Portuguese
proverb adds: “In a breadless home, everyone complains and nobody is right.”
Man is supposed to eat in order to live. We do not live to eat.
Food is for life and not the contrary. God always provides for mankind's needs,
and often, in the way we less expect it. God is kind, compassionate, and love.
He cannot see us in need and keep indifferent. What he asks from us in return
is to work not for passing things, but for what is eternal, not for a portion
of food that lasts a moment, but for the food that truly gives and sustains
life.
In last Sunday's Gospel, we heard that Jesus did a miracle
of multiplying loaves of bread. With five barley loaves and two fish, he fed
more than five thousand people. This miraculous feeding has amazed the crowd
who is now running for him. But actually, they were not so much after him for
who he is, but for what he did. Even today, many people, run always where they
can find their feed, where their interests are satisfied. Jesus clearly
understood that fact. Thus, in today's extract, he opens a great catechism
about the bread of life. He starts answering the people who ask when did he get
there: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw
signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that
perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man
will give you.”
This is a call for you and me, people thirsting for the Lord
and following him day and night. We should strive for what gives life, not for
the passing things. And the Lord shows the way to that which gives life, his
body, the true bread of life.
In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read this about
the Holy Eucharist: “As bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the
Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life;
and this living charity wipes away venial sins. By giving himself to us Christ
revives our love and enables us to break our disordered attachments to
creatures and root ourselves in him: Since Christ died for us out of love, when
we celebrate the memorial of his death at the moment of sacrifice we ask that
love may be granted to us by the coming of the Holy Spirit. We humbly pray that
in the strength of this love by which Christ willed to die for us, we, by
receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, may be able to consider the world as
crucified for us, and to be ourselves as crucified to the world... Having
received the gift of love, let us die to sin and live for God.” CCC 1394. So,
the Eucharistic bread is a sacrament that renews us and opens us to the newness
of life in Christ.
In the first reading, we hear that God sent the Manna to his
starving people in the desert. To Israel in the journey towards the Promised
Land, the Lord gave them bread from heaven, a providential meal as bread to
sustain them in their journey. Each day, the people were to go out and gather
the day's portion. The Psalmist can thus invite to sing: "The Lord gave
them bread from heaven."
Besides being a providential meal, the gift of the Manna was
also a test of faithfulness for the people. The Lord gave it to them to see if
they would, after being fed by him, keep his words and follow him, stop
grumbling. But the history of Israel will teach us that it has not taken them
long for them to complain again against God and Moses. They found the Manna
disgusting and always the same. Man's heart is versatile, never satisfied or
contented. No matter what the Lord does for us, we complain.
For us Christians, the Manna was a prefiguration of a more
providential meal, the true bread from heaven, Jesus, the Bread of Life. In the
Gospel, after the miracle of the multiplication of bread, the Lord is teaching
the people about the bread of life. He tells them that it is not Moses to give
the bread from heaven, but His Father. And this bread from heaven is him,
Jesus. He makes a solemn declaration: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to
me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
The Lord Jesus reveals himself as the bread we need for our
life. We often hunger for so many things and think to find satisfaction in
material things and food. Unfortunately, all we eat and all we have, instead of
keeping us alive anticipate our going down into the grave. Only Jesus, the Son
of God, the one who came down from heaven can open us to true and everlasting
life.
Therefore, St. Paul, in the second reading, exhorts us to
put aside the illusory desires of this world and the body made of corruption.
We are now to invest ourselves in the newness that is brought about by Christ
Jesus. We are urged to open to the spiritual revolution.
The Holy Eucharist is the bread that leads to that spiritual
revolution. In the Eucharist, the bread from heaven is given to sustain our
life on earth. For, it nourishes and leads us into the goodness and holiness in
the truth. In the Eucharist, we are fed on Jesus Christ to become what we eat.
For, in the Holy Eucharist, we partake in a bread that not only sustains our
life but also transforms us into Christlike. We do not eat something corporal,
but more spiritual, a bread for life. The Eucharist is the bread of life for
our life.
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