18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
In the First Reading for the 18th Sunday from Exodus the Israelites complained of hunger, so God promised to send bread from heaven and meat at dusk. God sent them manna from heaven as food demonstrating His power and care for all of them. In the second reading from Ephesians we are told to Discard your old ways and renew your mind St Paul tells us not to continue to live the aimless life the pagans live. He then tells us that we should be renewed by the spiritual revolution, embracing a new self, crafted in righteousness and holiness, as taught by Jesus Christ.
Our focus in In the Gospel reading is food for the body that is bread and food for the soul that is Jesus the Bread of life. Jesus tells the people that they are only following him because they have enjoyed the food that physically satisfies them; they should work, he says, for the food that leads on to eternal life. The one thing which earns this food is believing in the one God has sent. To be nourished by Jesus one must have faith in him. This implies a personal relationship with Jesus. Once this personal relationship has been established everything else finds its proper place and true purpose. The Galileans promptly ask Jesus for a sign to aid their belief in him a sign like the manna their fathers ate in the desert. Jesus points out that it was God, not Moses, who sent the manna from heaven and he compares himself to the God who now gives them the real bread from heaven. Jesus declares that he himself is the bread come down from heaven.
Whoever believes in him will never be hungry. Yet there are so many people in our world who suffer from physical and spiritual hunger. I think that these days with all the possibilities for so many things we need to be the bread of life for all those who are out there who have lost the faith or those who are searching and many people are. What does it mean to be the Bread of Life to others? It means two things: Feeding the hungry through our work with and donations to organisations that bring physical relief to the people who need it in the world. It also means that we are a light of faith to others showing that God the Father sent Jesus from heaven to be our spiritual food, our strength, our hope, and our joy as we live our lives as Christians. There are so many people in the world that are hungry for the bread of life that Jesus tells us about in this Gospel Reading and the question for us today is how will we feed their hunger so that they can make the choice to accept this great gift of God as we have done?
Fullerton T 