19th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

1Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:30-5.2; John 6:41-51

Last week Jesus offered the people true bread, the bread of God, which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They had responded enthusiastically: Sir … give us that bread always.

Jesus’ reply was unexpected and challenging: I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.

Now the atmosphere has changed and the people are uneasy; it appears the teaching has become too challenging. The Jews begin complaining to each other. The 'Jews’, of course, are not the Jewish People as a whole; John is speaking only about their leaders and supporters who were opposed to the Lord and rejected him.

So they complained to each other: Surely this is … We know his … How can he now.. ?

It all boils down to this ‘we’ against ‘him’, doesn’t it; the consensus of men or the revelation of God?

On another occasion Jesus had asked the Apostles: ’Who do people say the Son of Man is?’ (Mt 16:13) And they said, 'Some say he is John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets'. 'But you,' he said 'who do you say I am?' Then Simon Peter spoke up, 'You are the Christ,' he said 'the Son of the living God'. Jesus replied, 'Simon son of Jonah, you are a happy man! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.’

Us or God – we or him – men or revelation – opinion or truth – flesh and blood or the Father in heaven? Who decides what is true? The electorate, the majority, the consumers, community standards? Jesus is not looking for our opinions, or our clinical tests, or our consensus – he is seeking disciples who can say with Peter: Lord … you have the message of eternal life, and we believe… .

So the Jews were complaining against Jesus and we note that they turned to one another for support. Truth can stand alone, error requires noise and numbers, as though what is believed by a hundred shouting men must be truer than what is believed by only one. When noise and numbers attack truth steels itself, raises its eyes to heaven and patiently waits. As Pope Benedict has told us, truth is the most powerful reality in existence. It needs no armies to defend it and, ultimately, it always prevails.

So Jesus stands his ground unflinchingly. He doesn’t run away or back down, he is not even distracted: Stop complaining to each other… No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me…

This is not the only time Jesus would speak these words to his opponents. In chapter 8 of John’s gospel he will tell them: If God were your father, you would love me, since I have come here from God… The devil is your father, and you prefer to do what your father wants.

As we learned last week, Jesus is ‘the work’ of the Father; sent by the Father to speak his words and to do his will. Only those who acknowledge the Father as their God can accept his Son and the truth he teaches.

In today’s Gospel Jesus continues to insist on his unique relationship to the Father: They will all be taught by God, and to hear the teaching of the Father, and learn from it, is to come to me. Not that anybody has seen the Father, except the one who comes from God: he has seen the Father.

It is only because he has come from the Father as the Son that eternal life comes to those who believe in him. I tell you most solemnly, everybody who believes has eternal life.

The ‘Jews’ refuse to come to Jesus. The substance of their complaints is that Jesus claims to be bread from heaven. His teaching unfolds to them with unambiguous simplicity:

• God, the Father, desires to feed his people.
• He has sent me, his only Son, to accomplish this work.
• I have come to give you living bread from my Father in heaven.
• I am that living bread.
• You must come to me, believe in me and eat me.
• The bread that I give is my flesh.

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

Exodus 16:2-4.12-15; Ephesians 4:17.20-24; John 6:24-35

Revelation is that part of God’s teaching which cannot be changed because it comes from above, from God himself. We humans can arrive at a certain degree of knowledge of God by thoughtfully reflecting on the truth, the goodness and the beauty we see in creation but this knowledge is limited; we eventually reach a line we cannot cross.

God comes to meet us at that line – and to take us beyond it. What we learn we could never come to know of ourselves; that is why we call it revelation. It is a great gift from God in which he, so to speak, uncovershimself to us, pulls back the veil, and leads us into the deep mysteries of his own being. And, of course, learning about God is always learning about ourselves.

The Scriptures are the history of God’s revelation of himself in the human experience of his chosen people.

The first thing we notice when we begin to read scripture is the clarity, purposefulness, and consistency of God’s revelation. God knows what he is about and what he wants to tell us. This truth is nowhere more comprehensively expressed than in the words of last week’s gospel: he himself knew exactly what he was going to do. God’s revelation unfolds before us, page after page, century after century, as he waits for his people to finally understand, to grasp with heart and mind the riches he offers.

The second thing we notice is that most people, when confronted with the revealed truths of God, manifest a kind of fumbling incapacity which misunderstands, doubts, contradicts, and even rejects. Faced with this historical obtuseness of his people God might well have spoken the exasperated words of Jesus to his disciples (Mtt 17:17): How much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you?

Yes, indeed, we are very slow to understand, a slowness defeated only by the patient compassion of our God. We truly are the sheep of the shepherd; the helpless children of the loving Father. No wonder Jesus said: Make the people sit down; and then gave out the loaves: to all who were sitting ready. What a beautiful and telling image of our proper relationship to the Lord!

 And so the Lord wants to lead us today further into the truth. With the benefit of hindsight we already know what that truth is even though it will only be fully stated in three weeks time. But let’s not anticipate.

Having given the people bread to eat, bread which filled their stomachs, he now prepares them for the next stage in his teaching but note that Jesus calls not so much for understanding as for belief. This demand, repeated throughout the teaching, is foundational to grasping that it is mystery at stake, not understanding. They actually ask Jesus what God requires of them and he answers: you must believe in the one he has sent.

And so Jesus continues: Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life, the kind of food the Son of Man is offering you. Jesus, who has given them bread for the life of their bodies, is now suggesting there is a food for eternal life and that he, the Son of Man, is offering it to them.

They challenge him for a sign to show they should believe and then, recalling how Moses gave their ancestors ‘bread from heaven’ (the manna), they quote the scriptures to him: as scripture says: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

Jesus first corrects them. It was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven but my Father who – and instead of the expected words who gave you bread from heaven – Jesus says: who gives you the bread from heaven. In other words, it is the Father who gave the Hebrews bread from heaven then, and it is the Father who is giving you the bread from heaven now.

This bread is the true bread. Why? Because the first gave life only to the Hebrews while this bread ‘gives life to the world’.

The response of the people is not unexpected. Who among us would not answer with them: Sir, give us that bread always.

But immediately is felt the small tremor preceding the major earthquake. First a strange silence, then a questioning puzzlement, then a ‘What did he say? Did he say that he is the bread of life?’ Yes, that’s what he said.

Jesus answered:

I am the bread of life.

He who comes to me will never be hungry;

he who believes in me will never thirst.

A moment later the tremor passes. ‘Well, remember, he did once say he was the vine, and he did say he was the good shepherd, and he did say he was the gate of the sheepfold so I guess he is just using colourful language again – a metaphor.’

There will be more disquieting tremors next week as Jesus deepens his teaching. For the moment, we who already believe, we who have already experienced the earthquake yet to come can relish the simple, intoxicating beauty of the phrase ‘I am the bread of life’.

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

2 Kings 4:42-44; Ephesians 4:1-6; John 6:1-15

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. In the fullness of time, God the Father sent his Son as the Redeemer and Saviour of mankind, fallen into sin, thus calling all into his Church and through the work of the Holy Spirit, making them adopted children and heirs of his eternal happiness. [Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church No 1]

The moment of creation is described for us in the Book of Genesis. It is a revelatory moment in which the veil is taken from our God who stands revealed in his sheer goodness and generosity.

How did he do it? Was it just as Genesis describes in a series of six days; or was it a big bang, containing within it the seed of his entire creative plan which would unfold over billions of years? We don't really know.

What we do know, without any uncertainty or ambiguity, is that our God is awe-inspiring in his perfection, in his goodness, in his mercy, and in his extraordinary readiness to shower his creatures with every good gift.

If we read carefully the quotation above from the Compendium we will see that the sending of the Saviour is placed in the same paragraph and thereby tied to the statement on creation. This is, of course, because the redemption is the completion of creation and we have come to understand that God saved us with the same lavish generosity with which he created us.

Lovers of Sacred Scripture will recognise this generosity of God in every page of the inspired text, beginning with that first command: Let there be light!

And then: Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants, and fruit trees bearing fruit with their seed inside, on the earth.

Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth within the vault of heaven.

Let the earth produce every kind of living creature: cattle, reptiles, and every kind of wild beast.

The limitless generosity of God bursts forth in his creation of the universe with its billions of stars, its sun and moon and earth with its myriad entrancingly beautiful life-forms - and then - all this, all this, he gives to man, to Adam and Eve, to you and to me.

God's generosity fills the whole world like a fragrant perfume. He pours it out on his creation like the perfume poured out by Mary on the feet of Jesus, perfume which filled the whole house. It embraces us. It rejoices us and is irresistibly attractive to those who have some degree of spiritual sense and are alive to their world. Indeed, the generosity of God seduces us into wanting to give ourselves to him. No wonder the Psalmist cried out: What return can I make to God for all his goodness to me? [116:12]

If this 'galloping goodness' of God, in which he gives far more than is necessary, is seen in creation it is even more clearly seen in Redemption.

Jesus, sent to redeem fallen mankind, had already accomplished this task merely by his Incarnation. Even the pain of the circumcision, just to mention one occasion, would have been sufficient to save us all considering it was suffered by Jesus, the only-begotten Son of the Eternal Father, and therefore had infinite value before the Father.

But his generosity knows no bounds. He wishes to leave us in absolutely no doubt that we are loved absolutely. It is not until he has stretched out his arms on the cross and is about to die that he can say: It is accomplished.

It is as if he were saying 'I came to earth to show mankind how much I love them and how my love always reaches deeper and wider and higher than their sins. In all sorts of ways I have sought to do this. Now I have exhausted all the possibilities. There is nothing more I can do to show them my love. I have achieved my goal. It is accomplished.'

What return can I make to God for all his goodness to me?

But let us return to the readings of today's Mass. There is something of the 'big bang' in today's Gospel with the five loaves and two fish exploding into food for thousands. (The First Reading from 2 Kings has already prepared us for this with a similar feeding of one hundred men with 20 barley loaves and some fresh grain in the ear.)

The people are very conscious of this power in their midst which is able not only to satisfy their hunger but which can do so superabundantly - twelve hampers of scraps were left over from the meal.

The crowd notices the concern Jesus has for them and it draws and attaches them to Jesus whose intent is to teach them that he can feed much more than their bodies.

This bread is multiplied and given to all as a clear expression of that unconditional love with which he would call all into his Church (see quote above from Compendium).

Today we have come to this church to be fed by the same Christ who stood on the mount and fed his people. We have come not to fill our stomachs; we have come for the Bread of Life.

May it be for each one of us healing and strength and may it call forth from our hearts a generosity which will cause us to give ourselves to one another and to all who hunger for love.