19th Sunday of Ordinary Time
This Sunday we hear Jesus telling the Apostles that he is the bread of life. The Gospel reading deals with a doubting audience, and at times we are also members of that doubting audience. The people who heard Jesus were shocked and critical of his claim to have come down from heaven as the Bread of Life. Despite the miracles they had witnessed, and the words of wisdom they heard preached with such convincing authority, they could not take the extra step to accept His claim. Many people these days are also unable to make that extra step on their faith journey. We, on the other hand are able to take that extra step because our Christian faith has come to us from Jesus, passed down through the generations of those who went before us.
We know where he came from, we know where we are going and we know how to reach that destination. The personal faith that we have means that “God out of the abundance of his love, speaks to us as a friend and lives among us as the living bread which came down from heaven. The Gospel lesson for this weekend tells us that we can’t live our lives by ourselves as we search for answers when we have doubts. We find Jesus who is the answer to the doubts we have through the teachings of the church and through our communion with him through the eucharist the bread of life. When we gather at the Eucharist we bring ourselves and our needs in prayer to God. We bring ourselves to God because God is with us and continues to be with us in good and bad times through the sacramental life of the Church and through the Eucharist in particular.
When we see the Eucharistic Bread, we believe that it is Jesus who is there before us: such is the faith we have in the Eucharist the bread of life. In our day-to-day lives we are empowered to be imitators of God’s love and we are asked to pass that love on to those around us. So, at the end of each day, when we give thanks for all of our blessings, most of all, we give thanks to God for the presence of Jesus in our lives and the lives of those who are around us as we remember that Jesus is the bread of life.
Fullerton T 