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)
Refrain: The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
1) 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. (Refrain)
2) He commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven;
he rained manna upon them for food and gave them heavenly bread. (Refrain)
3) 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. (Refrain)
Second Reading (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.
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."
[Text from: Lectionary for Mass Volume I, Copyright 1970, 1986, 1992, 1998, 2001 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. Washington D.C. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Copyright 1970, 1997, 1998 Contraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
The English translation of some Psalm responses, some Alleluia and Gospel verses and the Lenten Gospel Acclamations, some Summaries, and the Titles and Conclusion of the Readings, from the Lectionary for Mass copyright 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc., Washington D.C. All rights reserved.
The poetic English translation of the sequences of the Roman Missal are taken from the Roman Missal approved by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States, copyright 1964 by the National Catholic Welfare Conference, Inc. All rights reserved. ]
Days of the Lord, Volume 5, pp. 165-172. The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 1993.
The Cultural World of Jesus, by John J. Pilch, pp. 118-120. The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN. 1996.
The Word Encountered, by John F. Kavanaugh, pp. 91-92. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 1996.
Catechism: #1391-1401 (Fruits of Eucharistic Communion and the commitment it entails); & #1524-1525 (Viaticum as the last sacrament of the Christian). United States Catholic Conference, Washington, D.C.: 1994.
- Taking Jesus into our hearts and our lives brings us peace. The offer of Christ is life in time and life in eternity. That is the greatness and the glory of which we cheat ourselves when we refuse his invitation.
- But God has not only set his seal on Jesus; he has set his seal on all of us, deep in our hearts. Our union with God is much like the union of a husband of wife in marriage. This comparison is not unusual in the Hebrew Scriptures: Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezechiel all characterize the covenant between the Lord and Israel as a marriage. But there is also one wonderful, romantic book called the Song of Songs in which God is portrayed as the lover and his people are his beloved. Contained therein are the following verses which further emphasize this relationship:
- Set me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm.
Set me like a seal on your heart, how right it is to love you.
For love is stronger than death, stronger even than hell.
The flash of it is a flash of fire, a flame of Yahweh Himself.
Come then, my love; come, my beloved.
No flood can quench our love, for love has no end.
God has created us for him alone, and only in God will we find true happiness, just as a husband and wife should find true love in their union, a love which grows stronger year after year.
The Word of God, Our Spiritual Bread of Life
Today's gospel reading is the second of five installments which we will be hearing in the weeks to come from the Sixth Chapter of John's gospel. Last week, we heard John's narrative of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and today we heard how our Lord deals with the reaction of the Jews to that miracle. In order to better understand the readings in today's liturgy, there is some background information which we should know about them, and about the gospel in particular.
First of all, there is a great deal of relationship between the first reading from Exodus and the gospel from John. The Exodus reading relates how the people were murmuring against Moses saying to him: "How dare you lead us out of Egypt (as if they didn't jump at the opportunity of getting out of town as quickly as possible). At least there we had enough food to eat. Now you're going to let us starve to death in the desert." Well, God hears their rumblings and promises to send flesh every evening, and their fill of bread in the morning. In John's gospel, the Jews are murmuring against Jesus also. "Give us some sign so that then we might believe in you." (Sounds a lot like what the people gathered around the cross said to him too.) Jesus knew that they were just interested in more free food. Then the people go on to mention how their fathers ate the manna in the desert, which is based on the Exodus passage we just heard.
Now for the Israelites, the manna had always been regarded as the bread of God, and there was a strong rabbinic belief that when the Messiah came he would again give the manna. The giving of the manna was held to be the supreme work in the life of Moses, and the Messiah was bound to surpass it. In essence, the Jews were challenging Jesus to produce the bread from God to substantiate his claims to be the Messiah. Jesus' answer to them was twofold. First, he reminded them that it was God who had given them the manna from heaven, not Moses. And secondly, he told them that the manna was not really the bread of God; it was only a symbol of the bread of God.
Earlier on, Jesus is telling the Jews that there are two kinds of hunger, physical and spiritual, and that all they were interested in was feeding their physical hunger. But there are other spiritual hungers of the heart and soul which can be satisfied only by Christ. 1) There is a hunger for life - and in him alone is life made more fulfilling. 2) There is a hunger for love - in him alone is the love that outlasts sin and death. And 3) there is a hunger for truth - in him alone is the truth of God. All of these can be satisfied only by Christ because, as Jesus says, our work is to believe in him whom God has sent.
To prove that he is the only way to the Father, Jesus goes on to say that God has set his seal on him. Now we need to understand that in ancient times it was not someone's signature which authenticated a document, but their seal. It was the seal, imprinted with a signet ring, which made a document valid, which authenticated a will, which guaranteed the contents of a crate or sack.
- Rabbis had a saying that "the seal of God is truth". The Talmud says that one day the experts in Jewish law were praying and fasting together, when a little scroll fell among them. They opened it and on it was only one word, ameth, which means truth. Ameth is spelt with three Hebrew letters: aleph, the first letter of the alphabet; min, the middle letter; and tau, the last letter. The truth of God is the beginning, the middle and the end of life.
And the truth of God can only be found in Jesus, because God has set his seal upon him. He alone is God's truth incarnate, and it is God alone who can truly satisfy the hunger of the soul which he has created. (1)
If there were two words which could summarize today's readings and last week's gospel, they would be faith and trust. In the desert, God tested the faith of the Israelites because they had to trust in him to send the manna on a daily basis. If anyone tried to hoard some for themselves, it became moldy in the arid climate. In the gospel passage last week, we heard how our Lord fed the multitude with the loaves and fishes. One of the possible explanations for how he accomplished this miracle was that the crowd that came to hear him was swelled by travelers to Jerusalem for the Passover. They surely would have brought food enough for the journey but probably were unwilling to share it with the crowd until they realized that Jesus was sharing the little that he had with them. Thus, Christ overcame their selfishness by his thoughtfulness and they shared what they had with those around them. Thus, they too had to have sufficient faith in God to trust that he would provide them with food for the remainder of their journey.
It would be easy for us to criticize the Israelites for their lack of faith and trust in God in the desert. In focusing in on the fact that they used to be able to eat all they wished in Egypt, they forgot all the negative aspects of slavery, the beatings, the otherwise intolerable conditions. Likewise, in his narrative of the miracle, John uses language which means that the crowd ate their fill; and here they were, a few days later, clamoring for more signs, just as their ancestors did in the desert. Both groups displayed a pitiful lack of faith.
But before we judge them too harshly, we ought to look at ourselves and see how we have acted towards our Creator. How often do we remember to thank God for all the food which he has provided us? He has sent the sun and the rain to nourish the crops and created the animals which provide us with sustenance. Is it our work which has cultivated the crops? Absolutely. But it is God who has blessed the work of our hands out of his love for us. And then, just like the Israelites, how often do we consider only our physical needs and not our spiritual ones? How often do we find things to do which are much more practical and tangibly rewarding than spending time in prayer or attending Mass. And it is not so much what we say during that time, just that we spend it with the Lord.
- One night while babysitting, a grandfather passed by his granddaughter's room and overheard her repeating the alphabet in an oddly reverent fashion. "What on earth are you doing?", he asked her. "I'm saying my prayers," explained the little girl. "But I can't think of exactly the right words tonight, so I'm just saying all the letters. God will put them together for me, because he knows what I'm thinking." (2)
Now that is faith. She knew that what she said in prayer was not anywhere near as important as spending the time just doing it. God doesn't need us to tell him about ourselves; he already knows us and our needs all too well. But we need to spend the time in prayer to remind ourselves where our strength comes from, to remind ourselves that it is God who provides us with our spiritual food, the bread of life. This is private prayer. But we also need communal prayer, a time to gather together to be fed by the Word of God and receive the Bread of Life at the table of the Lord.
Our Lord tells us in today's gospel that our work is to believe in him whom God has sent. God desires so much to become a part of our lives that he takes the gifts of bread and wine which we offer and changes them into the Body and Blood of his own Son. But the gifts of bread and wine are only symbols, just as the manna in the desert was only a symbol of the bread of God. The gifts of bread and wine which we offer for God to use represent our very selves with all of the gifts and talents which God has given us. We place them on the table of the Lord for God to use as he sees fit. But is our belief in God strong enough to cause us to spend some of our precious time - which God also has graciously bestowed on us - with him in prayer and in Eucharistic celebration? Or are we like the Hebrews: only concerned with our own physical welfare? Spend some time with the Lord: I think you'll find that, like they say on the A & E cable channel, it is time well spent.
1. The Gospel of John, copyright 1975 by William Barclay, pp. 154-156. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, PA.
2. Alphabet Prayer, from A Fresh Packet of Sower's Seeds, Third Planting, p. 8. Copyright 1994 by Brian Cavanaugh, T.O.R, Paulist Press, Mahwah, NJ 07430.
(Copyright 2009 by the Spirit through Deacon Sil Galvan, with a little help from the friends noted above. Permission is freely granted for use, in whole or in part, in oral presentations. For permission to use in writing, please contact the human intermediary at deaconsil@comcast.net.)
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Lord Jesus, you give us our physical nourishment in the food which you so graciously provide. Lord, have mercy.
Christ Jesus, you give us our spiritual nourishment through your Word and the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Christ, have mercy.
Lord Jesus, you are truly the Bread of Life. Lord, have mercy.
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Celebrant: With faith and trust in God's power to provide for us in our need, we bring our prayers and petitions to the Father.
Deacon/Lector: Our response is: "Lord, hear our prayer."
That all Christian believers may one day be united around the one table of the Lord, we pray to the Lord.
That the Lord will provide us with a good harvest to help us to feed a hungry world, we pray to the Lord.
That all those on vacation may return to us safely renewed in body, mind and spirit, we pray to the Lord.
That the Lord will continue to provide for our physical and spiritual needs, we pray to the Lord.
That all of our brothers and sisters will be treated as our equals in the sight of God regardless of their race, color, nationality or religion, we pray to the Lord.
That all of those who have contracted the Corona virus will be healed, that those who have died will be welcomed into the loving arms of their Savior who suffered for them and that their grieving families will find strength in their faith, we pray to the Lord.
For all the intentions we hold in our hearts and which we now recall in silence. (Pause) For all of these intentions, we pray to the Lord.
Celebrant: Gracious Father, you sent your own Son to be our bread from heaven. Grant us the grace of your Spirit to always care for the physical, spiritual and emotional needs of others. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.