August 4th 2024. Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
GOSPEL John 6:24-35
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .
GOSPEL John 6:24-35
When the people saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into boats and crossed to Capernaum to look for Jesus. When they found him on the other side, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered:
‘I tell you most solemnly, you are not looking for me
because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat.
Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life,
the kind of food the Son of Man is offering you, for on him the Father, God himself, has set his seal’
Then they said to him, ‘What must we do if we are to do the works that God wants?’ Jesus gave them this answer, ‘This is working for God: you must believe in the one he has sent.’ So they said, ‘What sign will you give to show us that we should believe in you? What work will you do? Our fathers had manna to eat in the desert; as scripture says: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’
Jesus answered:
‘I tell you most solemnly, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven,
it is my Father who gives you the bread from heaven, the true bread;
for the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.’
‘Sir,’ they said ‘give us that bread always.’ Jesus answered:
‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me
will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.’
The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ
SUMMARY
The theme of food is very important in Scripture. At creation God provides us with a garden of food. He is a father who wishes to nurture us, but he also imposes limits on what we can consume. He prescribes a diet. Some things are not good for us. Do we trust him or do we distrust him? Is he trying to limit us, or is he protecting us from damaging ourselves? We seek compensations, self-gratifications, from the things we consume. The “life” we get from these compensations does not last. This is the “bread” that does not endure. Jesus exhorts us to seek the bread that lasts to eternal life. This is the bread we ask for in the Pater Noster and which is given to us daily by the Father, even though we often refuse it. Through the Eucharist we become enlightened and begin a new sort of relationship with life. We begin to welcome life as the bread that God gives us, the things that the Father sends our way on a daily basis to lead us to heaven. God has provided us with a healthy diet, a bread that will nurture us to eternal life. Let us entrust ourselves to him and eat this bread, instead of seeking to procure for ourselves other breads that do not last and do not give life
The theme of food is very important in Scripture. At creation God provides us with a garden of food. He is a father who wishes to nurture us, but he also imposes limits on what we can consume. He prescribes a diet. Some things are not good for us. Do we trust him or do we distrust him? Is he trying to limit us, or is he protecting us from damaging ourselves?
This Sunday we continue reading from Chapter Six of John’s Gospel. This text is too rich to be read all at once, so we will be following it for the next few Sundays. After the great sign of the multiplication of bread and fishes, the people follow Jesus to the other side of the sea. Then he begins his discourse in which he describes the spasmodic, anxious search of the people to continue enjoying the bread that he had given to them the previous day. The liturgy introduces this Gospel with a first reading that describes the complaints of the people of Israel against Moses. They even invoke death itself because, they grumble, they have been brought out into this wilderness where there is nothing to eat. They rebel violently against Moses and Aaron because they want a guarantee of food. The theme of food or bread is very important in Scripture. At the time of creation, the Lord makes humanity in his own image, male and female, and then he gives them food. This provision of food is a paternal act. In the second chapter of Genesis we discover that there are limits to the kind of food that humanity must eat. There is a tree in the garden which is the tree of relationship with God the Father. And the fruit of the tree is what God has asked me not to eat. Do I trust him or do I distrust him? Is he trying to limit me, or is he providing me with paternal protection? A parent nurtures, rears, and protects his children, The things he gives to his child are the things that bring life. And this is the crux of the issue: do we trust or distrust the paternity of God? Believe or grumble? Trust or doubt?
We seek compensations, self-gratifications, from the things we consume. The “life” we get from these compensations does not last. This is the “bread” that does not endure. Jesus exhorts us to seek the bread that lasts to eternal life. This is the bread we ask for in the Pater Noster and which is given to us daily by the Father, even though we often refuse it. Through the Eucharist we become enlightened and begin a new sort of relationship with life. We begin to welcome life as the bread that God gives us, the things that the Father sends our way on a daily basis to lead us to heaven.
God gives us the bread that we ask for in the Our Father. This bread can bring us life or we can refuse it. Some of the self-destructive behaviour of humanity occurs through the vice of gluttony, a form of behaviour that is addictive. It appears to give us a sort of compensation but in reality it is destroying us. All dependencies and substance abuses turn into forms of slavery. When Eve eats of the tree, she thinks that she is on the road to life but in reality she is damaging herself. The same if true for everyone who sins through gluttony. The new bread, the bread of salvation, is the bread that Jesus exhorts us to search for. The bread that comes from the Son of Man, from the initiative of God, is completely different to the “bread” that consists in the consolations and self-compensations of the bread that we search for. The bread we look for needs to be consumed again and again, It does not last. We need to change diet and begin being nurtured by a different kind of food. Through the Eucharist we become enlightened and begin a new sort of relationship with life. We begin to welcome life as the bread that God gives us. The Our Father is the prayer of the children of God and in it we ask the Father for the bread of today. We ask that we may be able to live for today. If we look at things honestly, we will note that all form of dependencies are attempts to flee from today. The bread that is announced in today’s Gospel is the bread of trust. We eat the bread that comes from heaven, that is given in the sacrament of the Eucharist, but which extends itself to a relationship with life on a general level, a life of complete entrustment to our heavenly Father.
God has provided us with a healthy diet, a bread that will nurture us to eternal life. Let us entrust ourselves to him and eat this bread, instead of seeking to procure for ourselves other breads that do not last and do not give life
On this Sunday we hear Christ saying to us, “Eat of the bread of heaven. Take that which God gives you. Do not be there trying to select and formulate your own bread. Entrust yourself to the Father!” Anyone who has even undertaken a diet knows that the diet works as long as you continue to trust and obey the dietician. The courses of treatment prescribed by doctors tend to work better if the patient actually follows the directions of the doctor. If we look on our life as a therapy for eternity, if we look on his ordinances as a road to heaven, and if we cease making an absolute out of our desires for gratification, then, maybe, the absolute will become our relationship with God. Maybe the only way to arrive at heaven is to undergo times in which my desires are not satisfied. For the bread that I seek is often as small as I am myself, whilst I refuse the bread that the Lord gives me, the bread that leads me to heaven!
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