18th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Reflection: Jesus offers us the bread of life
By SISTER MARY McGLONE
The fox said to the Little Prince, “It is only with one’s heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
That one simple line from “The Little Prince” is one possible introduction to the Gospel of John. We can understand much of John’s Gospel as variations on that theme. As John leads his readers through meditations on Jesus, he repeatedly highlights people who interpret Jesus’ message very literally, only for Jesus to lead them into something much deeper.
Today, as we continue our journey through Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, we begin with the story of God’s gift of manna in the desert. Moses’ frightened and hungry people told him they wished he had left them to die in Egypt. The journey toward freedom was too hard. Oh, how humans can varnish memories of the past, gilding it while they whine about the present!
The desert wanderers longed for the good food that they remembered whether or not they really had it. Still and all, they felt real hunger until God (via nature) provided them with all they needed to survive. Although the name “manna” means something like, “What on Earth is this?” they later called that mysterious desert food the bread of angels (Psalm 78).
As we pick up on John’s meditation about the bread of life, we hear echoes of the beginning of his Gospel. The people who had eaten with Jesus one day, sought him the next. They asked, “When did you get here?” That question echoes the question of Jesus’ first two followers, who asked, “Where are you staying?” Jesus’ response was, “Come and see” (John 1:37-40).
Aware that his popularity came more from food rather than his message, Jesus invited those looking for him to get beyond their fixation about eating well (a task the frightened or materialistic can hardly accomplish) so that they could feel and feed their deeper hunger.
Thinking that maybe they should toil harder or differently, the group asked Jesus, “How can we do the works of God?” Trying to move them beyond a shallow world of meaning, Jesus responded that it’s not a matter of tasks, but a new way of understanding life, “Believe in the one [God] sent.”
That response not only told them there was more to life than good food, but it also undermined any idea that they could make themselves worthy of God. Like he did with Andrew and his companion, Jesus invited them to seek to understand who he was and why he was among them. That was the invitation to belief.
Jesus tells them that, like their ancestors in the desert, God is offering Jesus to them as the bread that gives life to the world. When they say, “Give us this bread always,” they have no idea what they are asking for, but the request opens them to what Jesus wants to offer.
The people who chased after Jesus saw him as a wonder-working supplier of bread and fish, but he wanted them to hunger for more from him. In a country like ours, most people don’t look to Jesus for their basic needs. Our world offers an overabundance of things and experiences to distract us from our real hungers.
We can be mesmerized by outright lies or the manipulative promises of advertising. Shallow entertainment and owning the best clothes or car (add what you will) feeds our spirit on the equivalent of junk food. Things that offer superficial purpose and a shallow sense of security disconnect us from the deep need for meaning and the mystery of life, the needs unique to us as humans.
A major problem we share with the Israelites in the desert is that the road to freedom from trivialities seems too hard and costly. The manna they and their descendants remembered with such nostalgia hardly seemed a feast at the time. Their desert time was a hard pilgrimage and time of fasting, not so much from food as from their illusions about what mattered most. For us, the journey to the heart, to allow ourselves to feel our deepest hungers is frightening because we know there’s no quick fix to the vulnerability we discover on that road.
Paul says as much to the Ephesians with the image of putting on a new self, a true human being who cannot be satisfied with futile pursuits or deceitful gratifications. What Jesus calls belief in him, Paul describes as renewal “in the spirit of your minds.”
Today’s liturgy invites us to have the courage to ask Christ, “What are you doing here? What do you want to offer us?” If we really live into these questions, we will learn that the bread of life is here for us in many varieties, even though it seems invisible to the eye.
Reading I
(Exodus 16: 2-4, 12-15)
The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
The Israelites said to them,
“Would that we had died at the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt,
as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread!
But you had to lead us into this desert
to make the whole community die of famine!”
Then the LORD said to Moses,
“I will now rain down bread from heaven for you.
Each day the people are to go out and gather their daily portion;
thus will I test them,
to see whether they follow my instructions or not.
“I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites.
Tell them: In the evening twilight you shall eat flesh,
and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread,
so that you may know that I, the LORD, am your God.”
In the evening quail came up and covered the camp.
In the morning, a dew lay all about the camp,
and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert
were fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground.
On seeing it, the Israelites asked one another, “What is this?”
for they did not know what it was.
But Moses told them,
“This is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.”
Responsorial Psalm
(Psalm 78: 3-4, 23-25, 54)
R. The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
What we have heard and know,
and what our fathers have declared to us,
we will declare to the generation to come
the glorious deeds of the LORD and his strength
and the wonders that he wrought.
R. The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
He commanded the skies above
and opened the doors of heaven;
he rained manna upon them for food
and gave them heavenly bread.
R. The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
Man ate the bread of angels,
food he sent them in abundance.
And he brought them to his holy land,
to the mountains his right hand had won.
R. The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
Reading II
(Ephesians 4: 17, 20-24)
Brothers and sisters:
I declare and testify in the Lord
that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do,
in the futility of their minds;
that is not how you learned Christ,
assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him,
as truth is in Jesus,
that you should put away the old self of your former way of life,
corrupted through deceitful desires,
and be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
and put on the new self,
created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.
Gospel
(John 6: 24-35)
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him,
“Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus answered them and said,
“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.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”
So they said to him,
“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”
So, they said to him,
“What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?
What can you do?
Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written:
He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”
So Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven;
my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.”
So they said to him,
“Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them,
“I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”