What God desires From Us. 18th Week Ordinary Time of the Year B

REFLECTIONSSUNDAY BREAKFAST WITH THE WORD

By Sanctus Mario Last updated Aug 4, 2024 3,202 33

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Sunday Breakfast With the Word 18th Week Ordinary Time of the Year B

Exodus 16:2-4,12-15, Ephesians 4:17,20-24, John 6:24-35

A priest told a story of a man who was wandering around when he was celebrating mass. As the mass was going on, the man was busy moving around. After the mass, the priest met the man and asked him the reason he was not paying attention during the Holy Mass. The young man replied to Him that the reason he came is not to attend the Holy mass. He only came to seek financial assistance. So, he came and saw that the mass was going on and decided to wait. The priest asked him, “Does it mean you are not interested in the Holy mass?” The man replied to the priest “the holy mass won’t give me anything.

Secondly, a story was told of a bishop who went for a pastoral visit. After the mass, the bishop was moving around touching and blessing some people. When the people saw the bishop, they began to rush to Him and some people lifted his hands to lay on their heads. Then there was a certain young man who remained unperturbed at what was going on. Some people who were around him began to push him to go and receive His blessings. The young man said, “The bishop should hold his blessing, for now, I need money more than that blessing”.

Recently, the thirst for the spiritual is going down. We are more interested in what to eat, what to wear, how to appear gorgeous, the nails and eye shadows to put, the necklaces to wear, the pleasures and parties to enjoy. Hence, once church is mentioned, we begin to give excuses why we shouldn’t go to church, we give excuses why we won’t receive holy communion etc.

Like the two stories above, today we are occupied with the incessant quest for material things to the extent that we are losing interest in the spiritual. What God desires from us is beyond the material things that we see. When God provides something for us, He expects us to look beyond that to capture what that signifies or means.

Human beings are concerned with the acquisition of material things. We are more interested in how to satisfy our human needs more than the spiritual.

God in his infinite love and mercy gives us these things but He expects that through them we shall know how much He loves and cares for us. But we fail to do this and continue to seek more. Man remains ungrateful and insatiable.

Hence, when we do not get what we want from God, we lose hope and lose faith in God. What God desires from us is beyond the physical needs to satisfy our spiritual needs. We do not have to forget the soul as we take care of the body.

God Always Provides Our Needs.

1.In the first reading, the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron. They question the reason God leads them into the desert to allow them to die of hunger. Because of this, God promises Moses that He will rain down bread from heaven for them. Hence, the people will come there to gather their daily portion.

God tells Moses, “Tell them in the evening twilight that you shall eat flesh and in the morning, you shall have your fill of bread. God in His love, made bread fall from heaven. He does this to show He loves the people. He does this to show the people that they should trust Him because He is in charge of their needs.

2.God tells Moses in today’s first reading “In the morning, you shall have a fill of bread so that you may know that I am the Lord, I Am your God”. Hence, the reason God does that is to let them understand that He is their God and that He can feed them despite the lack of food in the desert.

Therefore, the essence is that they should not be worried about provision. He is in charge. Even when the Israelites saw how the environment was filled with fine flakes in the morning, they asked Moses “what is this” which in Hebrew means “Ma’n Hu?” {?מן הוא}

Hence, it is from this question that we derive the origin of the name “manna”. Manna means “what is this”.

Moses replies to them that this is the bread the Lord has given them to eat.

This bread comes from God directly. God gives us this directly to eat. So, God always provides for our needs despite the lack. He does this to show us that He is always in charge and will always nourish our thirst.

3. In the gospel, the people referred to this manna which God uses to feed the Israelites. They referred to it, to make Jesus feed them with the same bread as He did in the feeding of the five thousand.

But Jesus replies that it is not Moses who fed them with the bread from heaven but the father. And this bread which comes down from heaven gives life. When the people ask Jesus to give them the bread always, Jesus refers to Himself as the bread of life.

Therefore, the bread that was fed the Israelites, though it is to satisfy their immediate needs, goes beyond that. The people failed to look beyond that because of the quest to satisfy their immediate needs.

4. God always provides for our needs. Sometimes when God provides us with our immediate needs or answers our prayers, He expects us to read meaning in that and go beyond that to learn what He can do and who He is.

But we fail to do this because we are only concerned about our material needs. Also when that material needs do not feel like coming the way we want, we lose faith and begin to grumble like the Israelites.

It is their quest to satisfy their earthly hunger that made the people grumble against Moses and Aaron. Hence, our quest to satisfy our daily needs makes us complain, grumble and even fight among ourselves. Hence, even if God provides us with those things we will remain unsatisfied.

So, what God desires from us is to look beyond our daily provision to trust and believe in Him.

It is also a call to trust and believe in Jesus, through whom our salvation is sure. This is the reason St Paul tells us in the second reading to put away every selfish and deceitful desire and be renewed. We need to put on the new self and seek God’s righteousness first.

Hence, this is what God desires from us. He desires that as we seek to satisfy our material needs, let them lead us to relationship and closeness with God.

5. The bread that comes from down from heaven prefigures the one whose coming is to nourish and give us life. The responsorial psalm today calls it the heavenly bread and the food of the angels. We eat this every day at the eucharistic table. God feeds us with this bread at the altar every day to fill our lives with graces that will help us overcome and walk through the temptations and challenges of this world until the end of time.

Our Quest For Material Things.

1.In Deuteronomy 18:18, God promises Moses that He is going to raise a Prophet like him from among his brothers. He will put His words into His mouth and he is going to speak all that He commands.

So, after Jesus fed the multitude, which is an event that happened before that of today, the jews thought that Jesus is the prophet they have been waiting for which God promises to send to them. They saw Jesus providing bread with the way Moses did and they recognised Jesus as the prophet.

2.They even wanted to force Jesus to recognise Him as their earthly king. (John 6:14-15). So, on the following day, that is after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, many of the people that were fed wondered where Jesus had gone with the disciples. When they saw that neither Jesus nor His disciples were there, they also entered into the boat and sailed to Capernaum to meet Jesus.

3.Here, we can see how the people sacrificed their time, sacrificed even their rest, seeking Jesus. This shows that people are more interested in the stomach more than the soul. Entering the boat shows that they need to sail through the sea to go to Capernaum to meet Jesus and yet the people sacrificed that.

In the same way, we can sacrifice a lot to get what we want. We can go to any extent to fulfil our bodily desires. In the quest for material possessions, man goes even to the extent of risking his life to make it in life. Yet the person that says He loves God will not sacrifice only 2 km to attend church.

4. We can sacrifice even our financial resources for the pleasure of this world, but when it comes to God, we remember that we are weak, tired and poor. It is hard for us to sacrifice even our time and our resources for the worship of God.

Today, the quest for material things is eating deep into the moral fabric of society. What we desire is to be rich, wealthy, and have more money in our accounts. We pray for destiny helpers etc, hence we sometimes forget to desire a close relationship with God. We forget to seek God’s mercy and the salvation of our souls. The quest for material things has made us forget to pray for our last end and eternal life. Today we pray only for miracles, breakthroughs and upliftment.

When We want to get What we Want.

When the people saw Jesus, they said “Rabbi, when did You come here? First of all, they respectably addressed Him and shouted Rabbi!! Maybe trying to get His attention.

Hence, this is exactly what happens when we want to get something from someone. We give the person pet names and praise Him or flatter him. Also asking Jesus “when did you get here” was as if they were very caring. Hence when people want to get what they want, they first present an image of someone kind, caring and innocent. But when they get what they want, they change overnight.

2. Knowing what they have in mind, Jesus did not answer the question. Jesus would have answered straightforwardly by saying “yes I walked on the sea of Galilee, then my disciples went through the boat, that is how I came here”. Hence what God desires from us is to be straightforward in our actions. What God desires from us as Jesus shows here is not pretence but being straightforward in action.

3. Jesus tells them plainly that they seek Him not because of the signs but because they ate loaves of bread and were filled. So, here you can see that instead of telling them when and why He came to Capernaum, Jesus tells them the reason they came. There is no time for pretence here. Why they came is not that they are caring as they want to show but because they want more food.

4. This also shows how insatiable we can be. Hence the insatiability of man shows in his quest for material things. We acquire but we are not satisfied. We tend to acquire more and more. The more we acquire, the more we seek for more. Therefore, there is no contentment in this world. If you think there is a level you will reach in this world and everything would be alright with you, please think again. Even those who have, want to have more. This is the reason many politicians refuse to bow out of the political game. Their hunger for having, increases by having.

5.Like the people today, we want to acquire the whole world, this is the reason a man would like to dispossess their family inheritance from his brothers and try to have them alone. This is the reason many will do everything to be on top, even if it means killing another person. We want to have more yet we forget that we will abandon all these in the end.

The Insatiability of Man.

Despite whatever man has or wants to have, he can never be satisfied. He remains insatiable. Despite having been fed by Jesus they still seek Him. They seem not to be satisfied, therefore there is nothing you can gain in this world that will give you satisfaction.