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
Ps 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54
R. (24b) 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
Eph 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
Jn 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.”
The
gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Remember last week we talked about the loaves and the fish?
About Jesus feeding the crowd from just those five loaves of
bread and two fish, given by that young unselfish boy who
gave his all? Well, in today’s gospel reading, those folks
are still hungry and they seek out Jesus once again because
he wasn’t where he was before. They found him across the sea
in hopes that he would feed them again. That sounds like a
pretty big effort to go and search for Jesus for more food,
doesn’t it? You would think that they would put all of that
running around and all of that energy into finding a market
where they could buy some food, may stop and get a drink of
water while they were at it. Did the food that He gave them
taste any different than what they could buy at a market?
Frankly I don’t know the answer to that question; I didn’t
live in those days and times. However . . .
They found him and they asked him “Rabbi, when did you get
here?” But Jesus knew what was on their minds and that is
why he said to them, “You are looking for me not because you
ate of the loaves and were filled.” And he told them to stop
looking for food for their bellies, and not work for food
that satisfies the hunger in their stomachs. O yes, that
applies to us as well. Because that food will perish and we
will still be left hungry, but work for the food that
endures for eternal life which the Son of Man gives. For
this food is the work of God that they and we, believe in
the one he sent.
Show us a sign, something that we can see so that can
believe in you were their remarks. Are we asking that
question too, “Jesus, show us a sign that we can see so we
can believe in him?” Those folks quoted the old scripture
about God sending food down from heaven, some kind of food
called mana, at the request of Moses. Jesus assured them
that bread was not by the hands of Moses or of his request,
and then says something that completely turns the whole
issue of food around, “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.”
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never
hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
They must have been able to understand what he meant, and I
wonder whether we really understand, after two thousand
years that separate us from those words. All the same, the
very language we use might still have something from the
bread he spoke about. In English we sometimes say that an
attitude or a skill is like bread and butter to someone.
Perhaps because we mean that he or she is so accustomed to
it that it has become a second (or eve a first) nature to
her or him, to you or I. That is what he meant my friends to
them and to us, “Take me, take me, as your bread of your
life. Take me, take me, as the bread the Father is sending
from heaven. Take me as the fountain in your life. Take me
as the principle, for your every reason, for your life from
day to day, from hour to hour.”
If we take him as our bread and butter in life, we always
choose what is good for the world, what is good for
humanity, for all of us. It would mean that our effort for
peace in the world and in our lives would no longer be a
mere pious desire or the subject of a clever few, but a task
that asks our effort. It would mean that the hunger in the
world would no longer be an incident at the margin of our
lives or the topic of a naïve social analysis, but a
challenge to provide the bread they are looking for every
day. It would mean that we would enter the mercy and sadness
Jesus had because of our situation in this world today,
because of our situation in this country today. If our
leaders looked for that food to feed themselves instead of
the quest for control, power, greed, self righteous, self
serving, “Who gives a care about the people, it’s all about
us” selves, it would make them live like Him, voices for the
voiceless, sufferers for peace, organizers of justice and
not corruption, chasers of evil, instead of being that evil,
and healers of wounds, instead of being the ones inflecting
the wounds upon the people of this country.
But that most likely will not happen folks, and that is why
we, each one of us who are the victims of government
sinfulness, that we must be all of that, and I do not mean
that we stop fighting for our rights, but even more so. For
then we, who without too much hesitation call ourselves by
Jesus’ name, would be like Jesus in that way; the voice, the
sufferer, the organizers, and the chasers, and the healers,
making him our bread in life.
I sincerely hope that this message was meaningful to you.
Thank you and God bless. Your brother in Christ –
