August 5, 2018

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time B Exodus 16: 2-4, 12-15; Ephesians 4: 17, 20-24; John 6:24-35 Our dinner table was always an interesting place when I was young. Mom and Dad, my three older sisters, my brother and myself all sat in ‘assigned’ seats with Mom and Dad at either end. We started with grace before meals, then the meal began. My sisters always helped mom in the preparation and all five of us kids cleaned the dishes and silverware. We never could receive phone calls or go out with friends until everything was completed. We really couldn’t rush things along. Unlike the Israelite community in the first reading, no complaining was allowed. It was special because Mom was a great cook and fabulous baker. Dad was the one who determined the meal, since mom only cooked what he liked. It did not matter if we liked it. ‘Those were the rules’…and we followed them as best we could. I remember hearing ‘Do you eat to live or live to eat!’ Today’s readings focus us to see our identity as a eucharistic people. We claim that Jesus is our bread of life. This is our faith statement. Do we trust that the Lord is continually bringing us closer to Himself and showing us how to live as eucharistic people? What does this mean to us? Jesus is the source of our subsistence, our bread of life. He gives us life and sustains each one of us on our journey to heaven forever with the Trinity. This is bringing us right up against the subculture of our society whose values and norms of behavior deviate from those of the mainstream of our Christian culture. We have been experiencing a society that is angry and concerned so much with themselves and not claiming that we need God and that God is the source of our life. In the first reading from Exodus, we hear of the people of Israel who learned how to depend on God for their survival. Then they wavered and complained. Earlier in their journey they feared the Egyptian army would annihilate them; God saved them at the Nile River. Then there was a lack of fresh water, and the people quarreled with Moses about this and he criticized them for testing Yahweh. The text states that it was on this account that the place gained the name Massah, meaning testing, and the name Meribah, meaning quarreling. God continued to love the people by having Moses touch the rock and water constantly flowed. God had a plan for them and it was His design to manifest through them His saving plan for the whole world. Jesus brought this so succinctly and beautifully in John 3:16 where God so loved the whole world that He gave His only Son, Jesus Christ. The cross became the ultimate gift of love which united heaven and earth. The night before He died, Jesus showed us the completeness of His love in the Eucharist. St. Thomas Aquinas said, “Material food first of all turns itself into the person who eats it, and as a consequence, restores his losses and increases his vital energies. Spiritual food, on the other hand, turns the person who eats it into itself, and thus the proper effect of this sacrament is the conversion of man into Christ, so that he may no longer live for himself, but that Christ may live in Him. And as a consequence it has the double effect of restoring the spiritual losses caused by sins and defects and of increasing the power of the virtues.” St Augustine, the great bishop of Hippo in Africa earlier spoke words he heard for the Spirit of God he shared in his conversion story, Confessions ”I am the food of grown men. Grow and you shall feed upon Me. You will not change Me into yourself, as you change food into your flesh, but you will be changed into Me!” The Lord comes to dwell within us and makes us like Himself. We come in gratitude to live our lives differently. This is what the word Eucharist means, thanksgiving…let us become what we consume. Do we do this? Can people see each day that we are ‘different’? Do they see us as Beatitude people? Do they see people who are constantly trusting in God’s help to be people who care and forgive; people who are compassionate and reach out to help people in need; people who are love? Paul was addressing the people of Ephesus, a Gentile audience, who were very caught up in the various ‘philosophies’ of living. He told them to shun the lifestyle of their former ways and ‘Be’ Jesus. “…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.” The attractions of their world were definite distractions to belonging to Christ. Their way of thinking has shifted to a new level of understanding. It is good to look at our own lives for some concrete examples we have experienced. How many of us can look back at our…let’s call it, ’waywardness’ and see how we have changed. We can use and maybe have used the expression ‘I’m not going back to what I was before…never again.’ There is no difference in this from the conversion of St. Augustine and what the early Gentile Christians experienced. Jesus told His listeners, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst.” His listeners that day on the shores of the Sea of Galilee had a problem: they thought that Moses had given the people the ‘manna’ in the desert. They had to be reminded as Moses shared today, “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 for not.” So often when we come to the Eucharist we mistakenly think that it is just ‘me and God.’ Living the Word states emphatically, “Too often we mistakenly view the Eucharist as something meant only for us to receive. We forget that celebrating the Eucharist transforms us to become what we eat and drink, the Body and Blood of Christ. We get so caught up in the sign of Christ’s ‘Real Presence,’ we forget that Jesus feeds us to become really present to others through the way we live.” With this in mind, I reflect on: • Am I living a life of care for those in need? • Am I living a life of service or is it all about me? • At the end of the evening, when I look back on the day, do I see where love has been that day? Have I been on the giving end or the receiving end? Has gratitude been a part of that day? • Have I examined how God has lead me and changed me more into Himself? • Have I reflected on what glorious deeds God has done to feed me this day? • When do I assume I know what people need? What cautions me to listen instead of jumping to conclusions? • How does Jesus as ‘the bread of life’ affect my life? Sacred Space 2018 states: “When God sent down manna from heaven to the Israelites as they starved in the desert, they were delighted at first. However it did not take them long to grow tired of this food. When am I tempted to turn to material things to feed my soul rather than seeking nourishment from the ‘true bread from heaven?” A prayer from Living the Word: “Holy God, You gave our ancestors manna in the desert and You continue to offer us bread from heaven. Help us express our gratitude for that bread of life by feeding those we meet with Your presence, which notices their hungers and shares Your gifts with them.”