Jesus As the Bread of Life. Sunday 19th Week Ordinary Time Year B

By Sanctus Mario Last updated Aug 9, 2021 1,374 10

ads

Sunday Breakfast With the Word Sunday 19th Week Ordinary Time Year B

1 Kings 19:4-8, Ephesians 4:30-5:2, John 6:41-51

In the country of the Philippines, the staple food is rice. Rice is loved, cherished and eaten by almost everybody. No day will pass without them eating rice. Rice is eaten in the morning, afternoon and night. So, one day I decided to ask one of them the reason they love rice so much. He said to me “we cannot do without rice, it is very essential to every Filipino.

Therefore, rice is basic to their daily needs. Another one told me “rice is our staple food and a basic food for every Filipino, no Filipino hates rice”.

Hence, to understand what Jesus means by being the bread of life, we need to look into the importance of bread in the life of any jew.

Just like the Philippines take rice as their basic food, the Jews consider bread as their basic food item. It is a staple food known to satisfy their daily hunger and desire.

Bread is such a basic food that someone can survive only on it for a longer time. In the land of the Jews when someone gives you bread, it shows love and hospitality, it is a sign of welcome (Genesis 18:5-6, Genesis 19:3).

In 1 Samuel 9:7 David promises to show Mephibosheth kindness because of his father Jonathan and promises that he would eat bread at his table continually. So, Bread is a sign of love and serves to solve their basic human need.

The understanding of this is needed as we continue to journey through the readings of John 6. Therefore, when Jesus uses “bread of life” to describe His identity, He is invariably telling the Jews that just as bread is necessary for their physical life, He is very necessary for their spiritual and eternal life.

And just as bread is a sign of love, hospitality and care to the jews, He is giving His life as a sign of His love, hospitality and care to them. In essence, if they want to achieve eternal life, they cannot do without Jesus; who is the Bread of Life.

God Cares For His own.

1.Today’s gospel is from John 6 and to understand it we need to start from the beginning of the chapter. So, the gospel begins its journey with Jesus feeding the crowd after seeing how they look like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus satisfies their hunger.

Then gradually, He tries to explain to them the need not to rely only on the physical food but the spiritual food which He Jesus can give.

2.Therefore the physical and spiritual food are signs of God’s love for us. As what the bread represents, when Jesus says that He is the bread of life, He is invariably telling the people how God loves them and wishes to give them eternal life.

What this reveals is that God cares for His own. He cares for our physical and spiritual well being.

3. The care and the love of God are also evident in the first reading. In the first reading we see how Elijah went into the wilderness, on a day’s journey, and sitting under a bush, Elijah began to wish himself dead.

The point here is that Elijah was running away from Jezebel who was planning to eliminate His life. This is Elijah who called down fire from heaven and killed all the prophets of Baal. The same Elijah could not withstand the attack of Jezebel. He ran away to save His life.

In essence, despite how strong we are, we also have our low and weak moments. It was at the point of his weak moments that Elijah cried to the Lord to take away His life. But instead of taking away His life, God sends an angel to Him to give him food to eat and water to drink. Elijah also ate the baked bread two times and got so strong that He was able to walk for forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb.

The bread that Elijah ate strengthened Him again to walk. The Mount Horeb that Elijah went to is called the Mountain of God. Therefore, we are on the journey of life to see God face to face. We are on the journey to eternity. The spiritual strength to do this can only come through Jesus the Bread of Life.

Hence, Jesus came that we may have life and have it in abundance. It is through Him that we can walk through the challenges of this life until we reach our destination in life.

4.Just like the bread is very important to an ordinary Jew, is also how Jesus is very important for our salvation. Just as Bread is needed to sustain an ordinary Jew or as rice is needed to sustain an ordinary Filipino is also how Jesus needed to sustain our journey to eternity. Yes, he satisfies our physical needs but without him, we cannot be saved.

This is a sign of God’s love for us, who offered His Son for the salvation of the world. This Is why He says in John 6:33, that the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

The Bread for the Journey of Life.

In the first reading, Just as Elijah went through the desert, there are times we also wander through the desert, through problems, challenges and low moments of our lives. The journey of Elijah is also like the journey of life.

In this journey, we will encounter a series of challenges. Just as God intervened in the time of Elijah, we always need the grace of God to wander through the desert of life.

Desert, here means lack. There are those times when it seems you are lacking the spiritual strength to do your work, the spiritual strength to be close to God, the strength to pray hard. There are times it looks as if you lack God’s grace, hence the way to rejuvenate us again is through Jesus.

He says in the last Sunday gospel “Whoever comes to me will never go hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). Hence, we need to come to Him and believe in His Mighty Presence during these times. Immediately Elijah ate the baked cake, he walked forty days and forty nights. Therefore, the spiritual strength that one needs to walk through the desert and journey of life must come from the bread of life: Jesus Christ.

When We Do Not Understand.

1.The gospel of today begins with the Jews who were complaining to each other about what Jesus said. Jesus said ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven’. They begin to ask ‘Surely this is Jesus son of Joseph. We know his father and mother. How can He now say, “I have come down from heaven”?

These people know the family of Jesus. They know when Jesus was born and presumably know when He was still a kid. Therefore, to come now and say that He comes down from heaven sounds to them as rubbish talk.

This is why they begin to question among themselves what Jesus means by this. Six times in this context, Jesus affirms that He comes down from heaven (John 6:33, 38, 41, 50, 51, 58).

The point is that the Jews have not yet come to see Jesus as the Messiah they are expecting. This is why they reminded Him last Sunday that Moses fed their fathers with manna, so what signs can Jesus do, so that they will believe in Him.

The point is that they expect a messiah that will come down from the clouds of heaven and fight their enemies. But Jesus was born in the family of Joseph and Mary, so they know Him very well. They do not understand Him when He says that he comes down from heaven.

2.Hence Jesus is using this context to explain to them that He is truly the Messiah who is going to save them. Hence the jews do not understand what Jesus means. They took Him literally.

Therefore this suggests that there are things that we cannot understand unless with the eyes of faith. This is when our mind goes beyond what we see. An example is the Eucharist. When you see the Eucharist, what you see is bread and wine, but what you see goes beyond what your eyes can see.

Hence, when we do not understand this, we will always put ourselves in confusion like the jews did. We will always question the authenticity of what we see. Hence, when Jesus talks about the bread of life, He goes beyond the satisfaction of immediate hunger or physical food to mean eternal life. To understand many things that Jesus says, we need the eyes of faith.

We Need The Bread of Life.

In the gospel, the people murmur against what Jesus said. Jesus tells them explicitly that no one can come to him unless the Father draws him. Therefore, Jesus makes it clear that they must be open to God’s grace.

It is God who will surely draw them and everyone who responds to the Fathers call also responds to the son.

2. Jesus makes this statement because the jews have already seen themselves as the chosen people of God. They see God as their birthright. So, they thought that by the virtue of being a jew, they are already chosen. Hence, Jesus teaches them that they must open themselves to Him, come to Him And believe in Him. They must respond positively to God’s grace.

Therefore, they need Jesus to be saved. In essence, some of us may think that we are already saved and do not need salvation, some feel they are closer to God than others, Hence Jesus teaches that we must constantly open ourselves to God.

We need Jesus the bread of life to be saved. Just as bread is basic human food for the jews, Jesus is basic for the salvation of our souls.

3.Secondly, in our ministry, we have to understand that the work of drawing souls and inspiring people comes from God. Therefore God Is the one in charge of everything that we do, both spiritual and physical.

This is why Jesus says that they shall all be taught by God: Jesus quoted from Isaiah 54:13,

The idea is that all those who belong to God are taught by God. God will teach His people by Himself, i.e. He will teach them within their hearts. Only those who are taught in this fashion will come to Jesus.”

Therefore Jesus is telling the jews that if they are truly sons of God, they would come to Him. Their rejection of Jesus proves that they are still strangers to the grace of God. Therefore, to hear and learn from the Son is to hear and learn from the Father.

3. Jesus is the word of God. And Jesus gives life. When we hear the word and keep it because of what it is, our spiritual life increases. Therefore, we need this bread of life to grow in spirituality and remain close to God.